Stakeholder perceptions of event attribution in the loss and damage debate

Abstract

In 2013 the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for loss and damage (L&D) associated with climate change impacts was established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). For scientists, L&D raises questions around the extent that such impacts can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, which may generate complex results and be controversial in the policy arena. This is particularly true in the case of probabilistic event attribution (PEA) science, a new and rapidly evolving field that assesses whether changes in the probabilities of extreme events are attributable to GHG emissions. If the potential applications of PEA are to be considered responsibly, dialogue between scientists and policy makers is fundamental.

Two key questions are considered here through a literature review and key stakeholder interviews with representatives from the science and policy sectors underpinning L&D. These provided the opportunity for in-depth insights into stakeholders’ views on firstly, how much is known and understood about PEA by those associated with the L&D debate? Secondly, how might PEA inform L&D and wider climate policy? Results show debate within the climate science community, and limited understanding among other stakeholders, around the sense in which extreme events can be attributed to climate change. However, stakeholders do identify and discuss potential uses for PEA in the WIM and wider policy, but it remains difficult to explore precise applications given the ambiguity surrounding L&D. This implies a need for stakeholders to develop greater understandings of alternative conceptions of L&D and the role of science, and also identify how PEA can best be used to support policy, and address associated challenges.

Policy relevance

The WIM was established to address the negative impacts of climate change, but whether attribution evidence will be required to link impacts to climate change is yet to be determined, and also controversial. Stakeholders show little awareness of PEA and agreement on its role, which raises important questions for policy. Dialogue between policymakers, practitioners and scientists could help to build a broader understanding of PEA, to determine whether it is relevant, and facilitate both its development and WIM high level decision-making processes.

Keywords:

• adaptation
• climate policy
• event attribution
• loss and damage
• probabilities
• UNFCCC

Acknowledgements

We thank the many interviewees for their time and for providing comments that helped crystallize some of the ideas presented here. Thanks are also extended to the Resilience Research Lab for their comments on an earlier version of this paper and to five anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. This paper forms part of Hannah Parker's PhD studies under the ‘Attributing impacts of external climate drivers on extreme weather in Africa (ACE-Africa)' project. Detailed project information is available on the AfClix web portal (http://www.afclix.org).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at 10.1080/14693062.2015.1124750.

Notes

1 Throughout this article ‘climate change’ is used as per the UNFCCC definition to mean that which is caused by human activity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) under Grant NE/K005472/1.