CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CASCADES (CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies)

Berichtszeitraum: 2021-03-01 bis 2022-02-28

Recent events such as the COVID-19 crisis and also the war on Ukraine have shown that Europe is strongly linked to the rest of the world via trade, supply and value chains, business operations, financial investments, as well as security and development policy. However, while climate change impacts in Europe are relatively well-studied and most European countries are aware of climate risks within their national territories, there is a lack of understanding about how interacting, cross-sectoral climate change impacts occurring beyond Europe, as well as the economic and social responses to these impacts, might cascade into Europe. Moreover, it remains unclear how such cascading risks from outside Europe will interact with major existing and future internal and external challenges facing European societies, such as water and energy security, socio-political tensions, rising inequality, conflicts and changing security threats.

The main objective of CASCADES is, within four years, to analyse the trade, political and financial channels through which climate change impacts outside Europe might cascade into Europe, significantly altering Europe’s risk exposure, over the short, medium and long-term; and to support the design of a coherent European policy framework to address these risks.
To do this, CASCADES builds on the climate change impact simulations available from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) to inform a wide range of well-established models simulating changing trade patterns and supply chains, physical risks for climate adaptation to extreme events and environmental impacts on agricultural production and global agricultural commodity markets. We combine the results from these models with tailored sectoral and multi-sector network modelling, qualitative policy analysis, strategic simulations (policy exercises), and serious games and co-produce knowledge together with key actors within and outside of Europe.

CASCADES continues to progress very well and is on track to reach the goals set. The challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic were met with engagement and creative solutions from the entire consortium. Research methods had to be changed and travel plans and project meetings had to be adjusted, however the changes have not led to long delays. Physical stakeholder meetings such as the first and second Core Stakeholder Workshop took place online and empirical research in non-EU regions has been re-designed to adapt to the new reality. The consortium has also, in close interaction with the Science Officer, strived to adjust the scientific content of CASCADES to contribute knowledge to the recovery from COVID-19. This has resulted in a joint policy brief and scientific publication with the RECEIPT project. The comprehensive conceptual and scenario framework (see figure 1) developed in WP2 and published as a scientific paper sets a solid basis for the research on global trade, supply and value chain (WP3), foreign policy, security and development (WP4), and business and finance (WP5). The framework has been applied/presented by the CASCADES consortium as well as in several joint activities with RECEIPT. The Core Stakeholder Workshops were - thanks to the creation of a tailor-made ‘virtual conference centre’ platform - very successful. Work packages 3, 4 and 5 organised thematic workshops, expert interviews and other stakeholder interactions, integrating the conceptual framework into their research and continuously staying in touch with experts in the field through a series of events. The consortium is committed to deliver coherent policy recommendations and the framework established in WP6 will help ensure this policy coherence across the thematic fields of the project.

CASCADES is progressing well on all fronts. The project is particularly keen on engaging a broad set of stakeholders (f.e. focused on trade, supply chains, finance and international business operations) and contributes to a whole system understanding of the relevant stakeholders. The project will improve stakeholder knowledge of their intervention points (i.e. policies and management strategies that may help them steer the future system development in the right direction) by integrating research and policy activities on development and security issues, as well as define trade choke points and develop impact assessment tools for the financial and insurance sector. Reports from WP4 were shared on the Disaster Risk Reduction Platform of the UNDRR and the report on “Foreign Policy Implications of Climate Change in Focus Regions of European External Action” (Detges A., Foong A. (2022)) fed into a confidential report to the UN Special Coordinator for development in the Sahel and has been the basis for a briefing of the Crisis Early Warning and Analysis Unit at the German Federal Foreign Office.
The climate stress test developed in WP5 will be used by companies and financial investors to evaluate their exposure to climate-related risks internationally. A COP26 virtual side event on “Macrofinancial Relevance of Cascading Climate Risks: Insights for Investors and Financial Supervisors” involved representatives from the European Central Bank (ECB), Amundi, an IPCC lead author and the World Bank (WB)
CASCADES aims to link findings to timely, societally meaningful global events that influence Europeans’ lives and domestic politics, such as the extreme weather events, impacts of Covid19 or the war on Ukraine, to reach media, social media and citizen organisations. CASCADES has produced video explainers, comment pieces, blogs, podcasts, and provided communication and dissemination support for key moments. During ECCA21, which was co-organised by CASCADES, we released a range of social media outputs across the consortium, including videos outlining the CASCADES conceptual framework and a promotional campaign around our strategic simulation exercise. Over the two weeks of the COP26, Chatham House hosted a virtual ‘Climate Risk and Security Pavilion’, in which CASCADES played a major role, showcasing the innovative work taking place and bringing together a range of experts to discuss the challenges in grappling with cascading climate risks. Five CASCADES events were hosted spanning the different workstreams. The pavilion saw nearly 2000 unique users from 120 countries across the world.
CASCADES has had a major impact on the international research community by pioneering and developing new methods and inter-disciplinary analysis. Amongst others, 23 peer reviewed journal articles and 12 policy briefs have already been produced by CASCADES partners and were published in high ranking journals such as Science, PNAS and Nature Climate Change. Several publications were cited in the IPCC AR6 WG2 report and generated knowledge on cross-border and cross-sectoral climate impacts which propagate through trade, political and financial channels and have the potential to alter Europe’s risk exposure. These cross-border impacts are much less covered in the literature than direct climate impacts, a knowledge gap recognised by the IPCC.
CASCADES contributed work on cross-sectoral exposure to climatic hazards at different levels of warming, as well as innovative research quantifying climate impacts on ice roads in permafrost areas.

Figure 1: An Introduction to cascading climate impacts. Source: Hildén et.al. (2020)

Figure 2: Simplified example of impact and response transmission pathways. Source: West et.al.(2021)

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CASCADES (CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies)

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