Benefits of Climate Change Policies

What can be meaningfully conveyed to policymakers about the direct benefits of climate policy?  Direct benefits refers to avoided climate change impacts, in both monetary and physical terms, from climate change mitigation and adaptation action. This work area explores the nature and the magnitude of the avoided impacts benefits of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in different impact areas, such as coastal zones and infrastructure, agriculture and ecosystems. It addresses methodological issues for assessment and quantification of benefits and explores how to better quantify benefits across different scales, from global to more local.

Another type of benefit of climate change policies is known as ancillary or co-benefits (and costs) of climate change policies. For GHG mitigation policies, co-benefits can best be defined as effects that are additional to direct reductions of GHG and impacts of climate change and have estimated to be large, relative to the costs of mitigation (e.g. anywhere from 30% to over 100% of abatement costs). 

Papers & Publications:

• Costs of Inaction on Key Environmental Challenges (2008)
• OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030 (2008)
• Metrics for Assessing the Economic Benefits of Climate Change Policies in Agriculture (2007)
  C. Rosenzweig, F. Tubiello
  This report proposes a general framwework to develop metrics for the analysis of the benefits of climate policies on the agricultural sector.
  
• Metrics for Assessing the Economic Benefits of Climate Change Policies: Sea Level Rise (2006)
  R.J. Nichols, et al
  This report develops an approach to estimate consistent and comparable estimates of the impacts of sea-level rise in both monetary and non-monetary terms for timescales of up to 500 years.
  
• The Economic Benefits of Climate Change Policies (2006)
  G. Yohe & D. Tirpak
  
• The Benefits of Climate Change Policies: Analytical and Framework Issues (2004)
  Editors: J. Corfee-Morlot and S. Agrawala
  
• Ancillary Benefits and Costs of GHG Mitigation: Policy Conclusions (2000)
  
• Ancillary Benefits and Costs of GHG Mitigation (2000)

Related (non-OECD) publications:

• "Assessing Dangerous Climate Change Through an Update of the IPCC 'Reasons for Concern."
  published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• Guest editorial in Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions. Special Issue "The Benefits of Climate Policy" (2004), Volume 14, Number 3. Editors: J. Corfee-Morlot and S. Agrawala.
• Long-term goals and post-2012 commitments: Where do we go from here with climate policy? In Climate Policy 5 (2005) 251–272, Jan Corfee-Morlot et al, 2005.
  This study addresses Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by suggesting the use of long-term goals to guide decisions about the stringency and timing of future climate change commitments.

Meetings:

OECD participation in COP14 Poznan, 1-12 December 2008.

OECD Global Forum on Sustainable Development: The Economic Benefits of Climate Change Policies, Paris, 6-7 July 2006.
A global forum on sustainable development on the economic benefits of climate change policies was held at OECD headquarters in Paris in July 2006. Thirty-five renowned experts from around the globe participated in this forum, whose themes were methods, metrics, national/sectoral reports, risk management, input from "consumers", and provocative proposals to significantly advance the state of the art. All presentations, papers, agendas and list of particpants are available by clicking on the above  title.

Benefits of Climate Policy: Improving Information for Policy Makers, Summary Report, Paris, 12-13 December 2002
View the Agenda, documents and presentations

Benefits of climate policies are an important determinant of the level, type and timing of policies that governments will undertake to address climate change. This project aims to improve information for climate policy makers by outlining a conceptual framework to assess benefits (avoided impacts) at different levels of mitigation.

Ancillary Benefits and Costs of GHG Mitigation Policy Conclusions, Washington DC, 27-29 March 2000
View the Agenda, documents and presentations

Ancillary benefits and costs of greenhouse gas mitigation policies can best be defined as effects that are additional to direct reductions of GHG. In the case of climate change adaptation, ancillary benefits may refer to outcomes that reduce vulnerability in socio-economic or natural systems not related to climate change while also limiting vulnerability to the potential impacts of climate change.