PROGRAMME OF RESEARCH ON CLIMATE CHANGE
VULNERABILITY, IMPACTS AND ADAPTATION(PROVIA)
THE PROVIA HEADLINE RESEARCH PRIORITIES LIST
A request for expert and public comment
One of PROVIA’s core activities is development of a prioritized international agenda for
research on VIA (vulnerability, impacts and adaptation). A draft of the headlines of these
priority research topics is given below, and your comment on this list is invited.
Please send your suggestions for additional topics, comments on the specific topics,
and any general comments to crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov. (by May 15)
Overview
The list is based on a survey of key VIAknowledge gaps that need to be addressed to
improve our response to the challenge of climate change.
The list was developed for PROVIA by Columbia University under the leadership of Drs
Cynthia Rosenzweig and Radley Horton.It will be revised and published in 2012, and
then shared with governments and international agencies. A short description of the
method of prioritization is given at the end of the headline listing.
Expanding on the headings
The priority research topicsare give in heading form here, but willultimately be
accompanied by two short paragraphs describing the reason for its importance and the
actions needed. A single example (in this case, the first of headline topics) is given
below.
Formulate effective monitoring systems and indicators, from impacts and cost standpoints, for tracking
gradual changes and the crossing of thresholds related to the climate, ecological, and socio-economic
systems.
The IPCC 2007 Assessment revealed conclusively that some climate changes are occurring now and that
these are having a measurable effect on ecosystems and hydrology on all continents. This means that we
can start to measure the onset of impacts (eg their timing, location and magnitude) by actual observation.
This offers much more robust ways to test different forms of adaptation to these impacts, to evaluate which
adaptations are most cost effective.
Several complementary activities are needed: Monitoring at the regional and local level, where climate
changes are having an attributable effect on hydrology, on biology and on human systems such as
agriculture and health; developing indicators which can be readily monitored, and establishing recording
systems of these; analyzing whether there may be thresholds of impact in some places and systems, and the
rate at which these are being approached.
THE PROVIA HEADLINE RESEARCH PRIORITIES LIST
Section A. Information Needed to Support a Broad Range of
PolicymakerActivities
This section describes vulnerability, impacts and adaptation (VIA) research topics that
are likely to support policymakers engaged in decision-making on a broad range of
climate change and VIA issues. The section focuses on identifying the problem,
advancing vulnerability reduction and adaptation solutions, providing improved costbenefit estimates, and enhancing communication and stakeholder/public participation.
A.1 Identifying the Problem
These topics provide need-to-know information for risk management that articulates the
scope of the policy challenge and points policymakers towards the greatest
vulnerabilities.
1. Formulate effective monitoring systems and indicators, from impacts and cost
standpoints, for tracking gradual changes and the crossing of thresholds related to the
climate, ecological, and socio-economic systems.
2. Develop a robust framework to define, measure, and map vulnerability and the most
vulnerable groups (based on gender, age, poverty, and other factors), sectors, and
placesin order to determine where adaptation is most needed.
3. Improve understanding of risks and uncertainties related to extreme events (including
low-probability, high-impact events), non-linear impacts, and tipping points.
A.2 Advancing Vulnerability Reduction and Adaptation Solutions
These topics focus on how to successfully develop and implement solutions to VIA policy
challenges.
4. Identify economic, financial, political, legal, institutional, psychological, and cultural
factors that support, or act as barriers to, vulnerability reduction and adaptation.
5. Develop and prioritize specific vulnerability reduction and adaptation solutions to be
initiated now in support of adaptive actions over the short and long term.
6. Research mechanisms for integrating vulnerability reduction and adaptation into
existing planning frameworks and budget cycles.
A.3 Providing Improved Cost-Benefit Estimates
These topics elucidate best practices in the use of cost-benefit analysis to support policy
decisions.
7. Research integrated approaches to climate change responses that maximize adaptation,
mitigation, and sustainable development benefits while minimizingcosts.
8. Develop effective and innovative approaches to measure the monetary and nonmonetary costs and benefits of short- and long-term adaptations, and to compare these
costs and benefits across sectors, regions, and timeframes.
9. Improve methods to derive robust estimates of the value of ecosystem services.
A.4 Enhancing Communication and Stakeholder/Public Participation
These topics articulate the role of communication and public participation throughout
civil society in reducing vulnerability and supporting adaptation.
10. Analyze how to build capacity of local communities and institutions (including
government, educational and research organizations, media outlets, the private sector and
other practitioners) to communicate about climate change.
11. Determine how communication between the VIA science and the policy and practice
communities can be more effective.
12. Advance the sharing and improved understanding of lessons learned from developing
country experiences as well as local and traditional knowledge in support of adaptation
and strategic action (e.g., determining efficient routes for channeling adaptation funding
to the most vulnerable).
Section B: Specific Topics for Sectoral and Regional Analysis
This section identifies specific topics for decision-makers and actors to consider while
advancing research in an integrated, place-based way. The categories are natural
resources, human well-being and services, and critical geographical areas.
B.1 Natural Resources
These topics describe key VIA issues related to food security, water resources, and
ecosystems.
13. Understand how food systems, including production, processing, distribution, and
access may be impacted by climate change and extreme events.
14. Build greater knowledge about water use/demand, water availability and quality, and
water law and governance/allocation under changing climate conditions.
15. Study how ecosystems and existing management approaches will be affected by
interactions between climate change effects and other ecosystem stressors including air
pollution, overfishing, wildfire, loss of biodiversity, invasive species, and disturbance
regimes.
B.2 Human Well-being and Services
Human Well-being and Services includes human security, conflict, social cohesion,
migration, and energy issues.
16. Investigate how climate change modifies human security and the risk of conflict
through changes in: resource scarcity, likelihood of migration, state capacity, and
frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
17. Conduct research to identify the factors that amplify and dampen climate impacts
(e.g., collective action, governance, price shocks, population movements, and conflict).
18. Determine how climate change will influence energy production, distribution,
demand and consumption, including renewables like hydropower, wind, solar, and bioenergy.
B.3 Critical Geographical Areas
Examples of critical geographical areas include, but are not limited to, coasts, urban
areas, small-islands, mountain regions and the cryosphere, and oceans.
19. Increase understanding of natural processes and VIA in the most vulnerable coastal
areas, which include mega deltas, coastal wetlands, islands, coral reefs, and coastal cities.
20. Investigate how urban planning, design, and governance can optimize adaptation,
mitigation, and sustainable development potential.
21. Focus studies on issues facing small islands, including the impacts of sea level rise on
groundwater and fisheries, potential for increased frequency and intensity of storms,
potential for water scarcity and flooding, options for migration, and vulnerability to
invasive species.
22. Explore key open ocean topics in need of further research including ocean
acidification, the carbon cycle of the ocean, changes in the base of the marine food chain,
and the potential for regional deoxygenation.
23. Advance understanding of VIA issues facing mountain regions and the cryosphere
(e.g., glacier retreat, changes in streamflow and runoff, the loss of unique ecosystems, the
loss of livelihoods, and the emergence of new regional development opportunities).
Section C: Emerging Topics
This section describes cutting-edge research priorities that were identified through
feedback from the policymaker and expert communities. In general, their ‘newness’
means that they have not been covered extensively in the literature, and their importance
may not be widely recognized at present.
24. Advance understanding of the challenges of implementing adaptation (e.g.,
coordinating activities across agencies and other entities, promoting self-protective
behavior, limiting corruption, and encouraging technological innovation and diffusion).
25. Explore the potential for, and VIA implications of, transformative change and
transformative learning in social-ecological systems.
26. Investigate the impacts of geoengineering on VIA.
27. Improve understanding of legal challenges related to climate change and the role of
law, legal tools, and legal principles in promoting or preventing adaptation.
28. Apply a systems approach to the food-water-energy-security nexus (and other
systems) that for example considers cross-sectoral and transboundary impacts and
adaptation tradeoffs (e.g., potential conflicts between water use in agriculture and for
energy generation).
29. Explore the range of different shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) associated
with each Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP), i.e., each scenario set containing
emissions, concentration, and land-use trajectories; research participatory processes that
enable stakeholders to explore mitigation and adaptation decisions, including the use of
global and regional scenarios.
30. Conduct integrated impact model intercomparisons to improve system understanding,
characterize uncertainty, and test adaptation strategies.
31. Advance decision theory research, including who makes decisions and how they are
made in different institutional, political, legal, historical, and cultural contexts.
32. Characterize the relationship between, risk perception, climate knowledge, and
behavior.
33. Investigate how effective different types of governance, collaborative frameworks,
and networks are at supporting partnerships and multi-stakeholder approaches in support
of VIA.
Summary of Prioritization Process
Theprioritization process has included three parts:separate and concurrent expert and
policymakerpathways (I and II below), and synthesis (III) of priorities across the expert and
policymaker pathways.
Expert Priorities for Policy-Relevant Research
Based on a survey of the existing literature, a gap analysis comprised of 172 research priorities on
vulnerabilities, impacts and adaptation (VIA) to climate change was developed. The gap analysis
was based on a broad range of sources including the IPCC Working Group II Third Report
(TAR), Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), and Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Outline; peerreviewed articles; books; reports; white papers; and conference, workshop, and meeting
proceedings, presentations and notes.
PROVIA’s Interim Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) served as a Foresight Panel for initial
Research Prioritization during and in advance of an SSC meeting in Geneva in June 2011. In
advance of the 1.5-day Foresight Panel meeting, the SSC agreed on a preliminary list of research
priorities associated with climate change. During the meeting The Foresight Panel continued the
process of identifying research gaps and added additional emerging themes. Initial criteria for
prioritization included: (1) salience for policymakers and decision-makers tasked with short- and
long-term management and implementation mandates; (2) potential for advances in understanding
at reasonable cost and time; and (3) extent to which the topic represents an emerging theme that
has historically been neglected or is not currently addressed by other initiatives. The Panel
applied these criteria to modify the agenda’s overall frame, remove or rephrase poorly formulated
topics, and add a few new topics. Based on the SSC feedback, a new version was circulated to
the SSC for their review. Based on the results of the Foresight Panel Meeting, a draft report
articulating the priority scientific research questions was prepared in August 2011. This report
was sent out to VIA researchers for further review. Furthermore, each SSC member was asked to
identify the 30 highest priority topics (SSC members were not asked to further prioritize within
their top 30 priority topics). By compiling the SSC selections--and incorporating additional SSC
member suggestions and findings from new literature--a newly framed list of 54 priority research
topics was generated for the electronic survey of experts described below and the initial
interactions with policymakers described thereafter.
In order to expand the range of expert perspectives beyond those of PROVIA’s Scientific
Steering Committee (SSC), an electronic survey of experts was conducted with assistance from
UNEP. The survey contained the aforementioned 54 priority research topics that the SSC had
previously reviewed, edited, and helped to frame. The survey was emailed to a broad set of
experts compiled by UNEP. The 124 respondents were asked to score each topic on a scale of 1
(not important) to 10 (very important). In addition, feedback was requested on: 1) suggestions for
additional priority research topics 2) the specific 54 topics (such as framing/organization, scope
and coverage of topics, etc.), and 3) other comments.
Policymaker Priorities
A research prioritization process with policymakers and practitioners was developed in parallel
with the expert community process outlined above. Policymakers meetings were organized and
held in Washington, D.C. (October 28, 2011) and London (November 2, 2011). Each meeting
had at least 15 policymaker participants representing developed and developing countries.
The policymaker meetings yielded extensive feedback on the research agenda. One major
outcome was the suggestion that the three major sections presented (‘Cross-Cutting Research’;
‘Making VIA research more Rigorous, Robust and Applications Driven: Methods and Tools’;
and, ‘New Architecture for Regional and Sectoral Analysis’) be reconfigured as two practicallyfocused sections that would support decision-making (‘Information Needed to Support a Broad
Range of Policymaker Activities’ and ‘Specific Topics for Sectoral and Regional Analysis’).
Based on policymaker feedback, several topics were rewritten for clarity and brevity, and some
were combined.
Integration of the Expert and Policymaker Pathways
The 54 topics presented to the policymakers at the Washington D.C. and London meetings were
sorted based on the number of high priority scores each topic received combined across the two
meetings. The electronic survey of experts results were also sorted based on the number of ‘most
important’ selections received. The rankings of the policymaker and expert processes were then
added together to produce a combined list of highest priority topics across the expert and
policymaker pathways.
The 54 topics were than mapped into the organizational frame developed after the second
policymaker meeting. An additional section was also added (‘Emerging Topics’),that contains 10
of the most salient topics not yet covered extensively in the literature, that were proposed during
the policymaker meetings and in the comments section of the expert survey.