Climate change impacts in the Mediterranean: the economic assessment of the CIRCE project
20.10.2011
20.10.2011
12:00 - 13:30
One of the aims of the CIRCE FP6 project (http://www.circeproject.eu/) is to assess the socio-economic impacts of climate change on the Mediterranean region.
The A1B IPCC SRES scenario is chosen as reference for all the research teams participating to CIRCE. Consistently with that scenario, a set of impact-specific studies have been performed estimating effects on tourism attractiveness (Hamilton, 2010), energy demand (Bosello and De Cian, 2009) and land loss driven by sea-level rise (Vafeidis, 2009). Finally, the results of those studies have been used as inputs to the ICES CGE model.
In 2050, jointly considered, these impacts can induce a loss of the 1% of GDP in the Mediterranean area as a whole. Particularly adversely affected are Cyprus, Albania and Serbia. It also emerges that Northern-Mediterranean are clearly less vulnerable than the Southern-Mediterranean countries. Among the former the average loss in 2050 is the 0.5% of GDP, while among the latter this more than doubles.
In terms of impact types, tourism and sea-level rise are the most threatening, while GDP impacts induced by demand re-composition of energy use is less of an issue and often positive.
Climate change impacts trigger many indirect effects. Energy prices decline compared to the baseline. Industry and services’ prices remain roughly constant. Agricultural prices, affected by the decrease in available productive land, increase especially after 2025 when sea-level rise becomes more appreciable. This impacts terms of trade and international competitiveness.
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This seminar has been jointly organized by FEEM and IEFE, Bocconi University.