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Titel |
Climate impacts on human livelihoods: where uncertainty matters in projections of water availability |
VerfasserIn |
T. K. Lissner, D. E. Reusser, J. Schewe, T. Lakes, J. P. Kropp |
Medientyp |
Artikel
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Sprache |
Englisch
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ISSN |
2190-4979
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Digitales Dokument |
URL |
Erschienen |
In: Earth System Dynamics ; 5, no. 2 ; Nr. 5, no. 2 (2014-10-22), S.355-373 |
Datensatznummer |
250115370
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Publikation (Nr.) |
copernicus.org/esd-5-355-2014.pdf |
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Zusammenfassung |
Climate change will have adverse impacts on many different sectors of
society, with manifold consequences for human livelihoods and well-being.
However, a systematic method to quantify human well-being and livelihoods
across sectors is so far unavailable, making it difficult to determine the
extent of such impacts. Climate impact analyses are often limited to
individual sectors (e.g. food or water) and employ sector-specific
target measures, while systematic linkages to general livelihood conditions
remain unexplored. Further, recent multi-model assessments have shown that
uncertainties in projections of climate impacts deriving from climate and
impact models, as well as greenhouse gas scenarios, are substantial, posing an
additional challenge in linking climate impacts with livelihood conditions.
This article first presents a methodology to consistently measure what is referred to here as AHEAD (Adequate
Human livelihood conditions for wEll-being And Development). Based on
a trans-disciplinary sample of concepts addressing human well-being and
livelihoods, the approach measures the adequacy of conditions of 16 elements.
We implement the method at global scale, using results from the
Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP) to show how
changes in water availability affect the fulfilment of AHEAD at national
resolution. In addition, AHEAD allows for the uncertainty of climate and impact model projections to be identified and differentiated. We show how the approach
can help to put the substantial inter-model spread into the context of
country-specific livelihood conditions by differentiating where the
uncertainty about water scarcity is relevant with regard to livelihood
conditions – and where it is not. The results indicate that livelihood conditions are compromised by water scarcity in 34 countries. However, more often,
AHEAD fulfilment is limited through other elements. The analysis shows that the water-specific uncertainty ranges of the model output are outside relevant thresholds for AHEAD for 65 out of 111 countries, and therefore do not
contribute to the overall uncertainty about climate change impacts on
livelihoods. In 46 of the countries in the analysis, water-specific
uncertainty is relevant to AHEAD. The AHEAD method presented here, together
with first results, forms an important step towards making scientific results
more applicable for policy decisions. |
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