Program

A list of papers by workshop session is available here.

An alphabetical list with abstract by first author is available here.

To download papers, see here.

Unless otherwise specified, all sessions will take place in the Conference Hotel, Quality Hotel Augustin, Kongens gate 26, 7011 Trondheim, in the centre of town.

Monday 21 June:

0800–0900 Registration at the conference hotel

The morning session will take place at the Trondheim katedralskole, Munkegata 8

0900–0915 Formal opening by Professor Steinar Supphellen, President of the Royal Society

0915–1200 Plenary Session A: Climate change – The physical and social effects

The objective of this first plenary session will be to establish the scientific basis for climate change by providing an up-to-date report on scientific findings. The major emphasis will be on the physical effects of climate change, but with particular reference to those effects that are likely to have social consequences, such as droughts, floods, and sea-level rise.

Chair: Nils Petter Gleditsch, NTNU & CSCW/PRIO
Speakers:
Professor Martin Claussen, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) and Professor of Meteorology at the University of Hamburg:

Climate Change - the known knowns and the known unknowns
Recent reports in the media have prompted questions concerning the validity of statements made by the IPCC. It seems that the (proper) citation of so-called “grey”, i.e. not peer-reviewed, papers which in turn contained errors in some cases discredited the entire work of IPCC. Here I review the state of climate research by briefly re-assessing our current knowledge, and limits of our knowledge, of past and present climate change. Furthermore I critically assess the concept of forecast and scenario which often are assumed to have the same meaning. Finally, I discuss the so-called 2-degree limit which was a critical issue in the Copenhagen UN conference. I argue that in some cases, presumably even in the Copenhagen Accord, the difference between scientific and normative statements has become blurred.

Professor Robert J. Nicholls, School of Engineering, University of Southampton, Co-author of ‘Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II:

Climate Change, Sea-Level Rise, and Coastal Migration
Human-induced climate change will lead to global sea-level rise via thermal expansion and the melting of land-based ice. The future rise is highly uncertain, but could in the worst case amount to 2-m rise by 2100. In addition, many coastal areas are subsiding and this exacerbates the climate change effect. Sea-level rise can have a range of impacts on coastal areas including (1) increased storm damage, flooding and submergence, (2) increased erosion, (3) ecosystem changes such as coastal wetland loss and change, and (4) surface and groundwater salinisation. This talk will explore these potential impacts of sea-level rise at a global scale across a range of impacts, a range of sea-level rise scenarios, and a range of adaptation options. The sea-level rise scenarios will include consideration of the AR4 IPCC Report range as well as the high impact low probability tail to the distribution of sea-level rise above these scenarios. This has been considered in the Thames Estuary 2100 Project by the H++ scenario, which explores this range of possible change using the limited information that is available. The potential impacts are large with one estimate being that 146 million people and about US $ 1 trillion dollars of GDP are within 1 m of sea-level rise, based on current exposure and sea level. Under a scenario of no adaptation, all these assets are threatened and large forced population movements are possible. However, the economic analysis of impacts and adaptation suggests that protection will be economic in many cases and hence the actual impacts may be much lower than the potential impacts. The likelihood of success and failure of adaptation will be considered. In conclusion, it will be argued that the promotion of both climate mitigation and coastal adaptation is required, as collectively they are the best strategy to avoid the worst impacts of sea-level rise.

Professor Debarati Guha-Sapir, Director of WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Université catholique de Louvain, School of Public Health, Editor and Publisher of the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT):

Climate Change and Disasters
Natural disasters have figured prominently in the news this year. Devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and most recently, in China have killed and destroyed livelihood of many. The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland has also had a major economic effect on several countries. In addition to geophysical events of this sort, the numbers of floods and cyclones have been on the increase in the last decade. Landslides, droughts and other calamities occur regularly, mostly affecting poorer countries. There is a lively debate on whether there is a real increase in natural disasters and if so, what could be the causes of these increases – climate change being one important candidate. The lecture will present statistics and trends in natural disasters and discuss the probable causes and responses to mitigate their effects.

Professor Wolfgang Lutz, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis/Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences/Vienna University of Economics and Business/ Oxford University

Climate Change, International Migration and Adaptive Capacity
The talk will start by discussing likely future population trends in different parts of the world that will be most affected by climate change. It will focus on the differential vulnerability of people not only by place of residence – as is usually done – but also by age, gender, level of education and other individual properties that are related to vulnerability and also to the capacity to successfully cope with climate change. It will then give particular attention to one important coping strategy, namely international migration, which brings a global development and security dimension into the discussion of adaptation. Although little can be said on scientific grounds about the likely future extent of environmentally-induced migration and the direction of migratory flows, we will discuss alternative scenarios and also focus on enabling factors – such as education – that enhance the adaptive capacity for staying in the affected region (e.g., by moving from agriculture to the industry or service sector) or, if migration is the coping strategy, to successfully integrate into the new society of destination.

1200–1315 Lunch (at the hotel)

1315–1515 Workshop session 1

All the workshops will be organized around 4–5 paper presentations and a discussant on a theme within the broad theme presented in the morning plenary. Parallel sessions will be introduced as necessary.

1515–1545 Coffee break

1545–1745 Workshop session 2

1830–1930 Guided tour of Nidaros Cathedral (www.nidarosdomen.no/nidarosdomen/)

1930 Conference dinner in the Archbishop’s residence, Herresalen  (www.nidarosdomen.no/erkebispegarden/)

 

Tuesday 22 June:

0900–1000 Plenary Session B1: The economic effects of climate change

This session will debate the negative and positive effects of climate change as well as policies designed to respond to climate change. A key issue at this session will be how to calculate the present value of future changes in human livelihoods due to climate change and to compare these with the costs of prevention, mitigation, and adaptation. The question of future energy sources and energy prices is also closely linked to the question of climate change.

Chair: Ragnar Torvik, NTNU
Speakers:

Kjell Arne Brekke, Professor of Economics, University of Oslo

Discounting the future – the major controversy in the economics of climate change
The main benefits from reduced emissions of CO₂ are in the future - the far future - and have to be balanced against immediate costs. In the debate about the economics of climate change, the main issue has been the choice of the discount rate. William Nordhaus, a pioneer in the modelling of the economic effects of climate change, has criticized the Stern Review for using an excessively low discount rate. Some argue that discounting is unethical, others that no discounting is unethical. Some also argue that the market provides options for transfers to future generations that are better than extensive abatement. There has also been some confusion about what exactly is meant by the discount rate. I will survey the discussion and add some of my own perspectives, which generally favour a low rate.

1000–1200 Workshop session 3

1200–1315 Lunch

1315–1515 Workshop session 4

1515–1545 Coffee break

1545–1645 Plenary session B2

Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford :

Implications of Climate Change for Africa
Even if carbon emissions rapidly cease to rise, due to the long lags between emissions and warming, for the next 50 years Africa's climate is likely to deteriorate. Of course, Africa is a massive area and so the adverse effects will not be uniform. But in general, on average in the semi-arid areas will become drier, and temperatures will rise. Around these averages, both temperatures and rainfall will become more volatile, implying more severe peaks. It is important for Africa that it does not simply follow the agenda set by other regions: for Africa, adaptation is far more important than mitigation. The key adaptation steps are opposed by the environmental groups most passionate about climate change. Within agriculture, GMOs are important to speed up the development of more climate-resilient varieties, yet Africa has banned them. Further, since agriculture is the most vulnerable sector, the key implication of climate change is that Africa should accelerate industrialization and urbanization.

1645–1700 coffee break

1700–1900 Workshop session 5

1900 Dinner (individual arrangements)

Wednesday 23 June:

0900–1200 Plenary session C: Climate change and armed conflict
This session will deal with the implications of climate change for violent armed conflict of different kinds (interstate war, civil war, non-state group conflict, genocide and politicide). It will examine scenarios for increased scarcity conflict, but also how the influence of resource abundance on conflict (an important part of ‘the resource curse’) can be exacerbated by climate change. The justification of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to Al Gore and the IPCC argued that climate change may result in ‘increased danger of violent conflict and wars, within and between states’. So far, the evidence here is very limited, but the publicity given to the Peace Prize will probably help to stimulate more research in this area in the years to come.

Chair: Geoffrey Dabelko, Director, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson Center
Speakers:

Dr Marshall B. Burke, Department of Economics, University of California Berkeley, lead author of article on Warming increases the risk of civil war in Africa (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 2009).

Temperature and precipitation effects on civil war
Despite considerable speculation around the potential effects of climate change on armed conflict, little quantitative evidence exists linking the two. Here we provide strong evidence of potential negative effects, with a focus on Africa. Warm years in the recent past are strongly linked to increases in African civil war, and when combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response of war to temperature suggests as much as a 50% increase in incidence of civil war by 2030. Armed conflict is much more responsive to temperature than to precipitation in our data, consistent with a growing body of work showing strong negative effects of hotter temperature on various economic outcomes.

Professor Nils Petter Gleditsch, Centre for the Study of Civil War, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) & Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology:

Climate Change – Reversing the Trend towards a More Peaceful World?
The number of on-going armed conflicts has been reduced since the end of the Cold War and the severity of war – as measured by the annual number of battle deaths – has been on a declining trend since World War II. A good case can be made that we are moving towards a less violent world. Can climate change reverse this trend? A number of statements by politicians and representatives of NGOs argue that this is so, but there is little peer-reviewed evidence in favor of this view. The IPCC third and fourth assessment reports deal only peripherally with armed conflict, based on marginal sources. Since the fourth assessment report in 2007 a new and more relevant literature has begun to emerge, but so far it does not provide any robust evidence that climate change is likely to become an important driver of conflict.

Dr. Karen M. Witsenburg, Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale in Germany:

Climate change and violence in African drylands 
African drylands are characterized by scarce environmental resources. Empirical evidence from Northern Kenya shows that when scarcities increase due to recurrent droughts, civil violence decreases. Case studies from the present and the past show that the number of violent deaths doubles in years of high rainfall. It can therefore be argued that climate change is likely to have effects on the incidence of conflict and the number of violent deaths, given the current socio-economic and political circumstances. However, the presence or the evolution of ’grabber friendly’ or ’redistributive’ natural resource management regimes may ultimately be of more explanatory power than climatic or geographical parameters.

1200–1315 Lunch

1315–1515 Workshop session 6

1515–1545 Coffee break

1545–1745 Workshop session 7

1830–2300 Boat trip from Ravnkloa and dinner at Munkholmen

Thursday 24 June:

0900–1100 Plenary session D: Climate change, uncertainty, and security

This session focuses on security in a wider sense of the word. It will review a wide range of consequences of climate change for human livelihoods, in particular with regard to health, the supply of food and freshwater, and the vulnerability of coastal regions and small islands. The emphasis will be on consequences that are sufficiently large and serious to be life-threatening and with a potential to start processes like mass migration that in turn may affect the security of neighboring regions and countries. The uncertainty involved in predictions of long-term changes is in itself part of the insecurity. The session will also examine the subjective insecurity in facing the future as revealed by attitude surveys.

Chair: Ola Listhaug, NTNU & CSCW/PRIO
Speakers:

Professor Richard S. J. Tol, Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin & University of Hamburg:

The Economic Impact of Climate Change
Estimates of the economic impact of climate change are rare, uncertain and controversial. The initial impacts of climate change are, on net, probably positive but unavoidable. Avoidable impacts are net negative. The known impacts of climate change over 100 years are equivalent to losing one, at most ten years of economic growth. Estimates of the social cost of carbon suggest that current EU policy is about right or too ambitious, while policy in the rest of the world is too lenient.

Professor Neil Adger, Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. Co-author of ‘Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II

Climate change adaptation, human security and well-being
Climate change affects economic and other dimensions of well-being. Over the coming decades it will likely transform natural landscapes, resources and the built environment that have been perceived by most people to be stable over their own experience and lifetimes. Much of the debate on the interplay between economic and other elements of well-being is framed around issues of human security. For these purposes, human security is a state whereby individuals and localities have the necessary resources to respond to threats to their human, environmental and social well-being and have the capacity and freedom to exercise their options. Hence this paper argues that the processes of adaptation and the fairness of both process and of outcome are integral to human security in the face of climate change. These lessons apply at scales from the individual to the state.

1100–1200 Workshop session 8a

1200–1315 Lunch

1315–1415 Workshop session 8b

1415–1430 Coffee break

1430–1615 Workshop session 9

1615–1630 Plenary session: Summing up

Departures