We organized an expert workshop on Understanding the impacts of climate change and economic growth June 20-21 2016 at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany.
Background & Aims:
The improvement of the representation of climate change impacts in economic models, including integrated assessment models and CGEs, is one of the largest challenges in integrated assessment research right now. This gap became obvious once more in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report and needs to be addressed with regard to future climate policy assessments. Aggregate damage functions are a constant source of critique and by design miss important dynamics, for example effects on long-term economic growth. A new approach needs both, a sound conceptual basis and accompanying advances on the quantification of impacts in terms of relevant economic indicators.
With this workshop brought together leading experts from both the empirical and the economic modeling communities to address the following questions:
- What is the current status quo of research regarding growth impacts of climate change?
- What are shortcomings in conceptual understanding, empirical data and modeling tools?
- What achievements would constitute a break-through in this field in the next 3 years?
- How can the different scientific communities improve their interactions to move to the next level of understanding climate change and climate policy impacts on economic growth?
The workshop was intended to make an essential contribution to outline a research framework towards the next generation of economic climate damage estimates.
You can find the agenda here.
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for this workshop.
