Assessing the Economic Impacts of Climate Change

Abstract

The present research describes a climate change integrated impact assessment exercise, whose economic evaluation is based on a CGE approach and modeling effort. Estimates indicate that a temperature increase of 1.92°C compared to pre-industrial levels in 2050 (consistent with the A1B IPCC SRES scenario) could lead to global GDP losses of approximately 0.5% compared to a hypothetical scenario where no climate change is assumed to occur. Northern Europe is expected to slightly benefit ( 0.18%), while Southern and Eastern Europe are expected to suffer from the climate change scenario under analysis (-0.15% and -0.21% respectively). Most vulnerable countries are the less developed regions, such as South Asia, South-East Asia, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Keywords: computable general equilibrium modeling, impact assessment, climate change

JEL Classification: C68, Q51, Q54