Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Europe's Regions

Luckenkotter, J; Langeland, O; Langset, B; Tranos, E; Davoudi, S; Lindner, C

doi:10.1002/9781118474822.ch6

Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Europe's Regions

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Emmanouil Tranos, Professor Simin Davoudi

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Abstract

© 2013 by JohnWiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved. Climate change can potentially impact on a wide range of economic sectors and activities. This could be changes in profitability in agriculture or forestry, changes in tourism supply and demand patterns, loss of production due to flooding or the costs of rebuilding infrastructure after extreme weather events. Economic effects can, to a large extent, be thought of as second-order effects of other dimensions of sensitivity. A region that is physically sensitive to climate change will also be economically sensitive to it. For example, if a region's transport infrastructure is sensitive to flooding, this will have effects on its economy as well. In other words, a region's physical and social sensitivity to extreme weather events is usually highly correlated with its economic sensitivity to climate change. ESPON Climate's analysis is focused on those economic sectors that are directly affected by climate change, namely the agriculture, forestry, tourism and energy sectors. For each of these sectors the economic impacts were determined by linking particular indicators of climate change to the sector's importance in a regional economy. After a literature review the relevant indicators are defined, the results of a pan-European assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on the different sectors and regions are presented and discussed.