Case study n°10 : From hazards in Senegal to migrants' integration in the City of Paris, Impact Chain model

The case work led to the development of two correlated impact chains. The first impact chain (“risk sender”) models the components of the decision to migrate for rural Senegalese, accounting for hazard occurrence as well as the exposure and vulnerability. The outcome of the individual arbitrage is migration (internal or international), or immobility (willing or trapped). The second impact chain (“risk receiver”) considers the integration process for international migrants, accounting for the exposure and vulnerability of Paris in multiple dimensions (economic, social, cultural, linguistic, residential)

Investigating the Climate-Related Risk of Forest Fires for Mediterranean Islands’ Blue Economy

The Mediterranean islands’ blue economy and, more specifically, the tourism sector, largely regulate Europe’s gross product. Climate change threatens the ecological, societal, and economic sustainability of the islands in many ways, with increasing wildfires making up one of the most critical components of the climate change impacts on tourism. Here, we aim to identify and assess forest fire vulnerability and risk due to climate change for seven Mediterranean islands through the application of the “impact chain” conceptual framework. The backbone of this approach requires the integration of quantitative and qualitative data according to the three main risk components sensu the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), i.e., hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, with a structured participatory approach involving stakeholders and experts. Our results illustrate the islands with high potential for improvement in terms of adapting capacity and, by indicating the contribution of the different risk components, highlight the main environmental and socio-economic elements that affect the islands’ vulnerability and risk under climate change. The approach’s potentials and constraints are discussed, suggesting that the method can be handily used to point out the priorities that must be addressed by mitigation and adaptation policies and measures at the island level

L’adaptation au changement climatique en région wallonne

Les changements climatiques sont à présent une certitude au niveau mondial. Le 4 ème rapport du GIEC, publié en 2007, met en évidence l’origine et les responsabilités humaines liées à ce phénomène. Toutes les parties du globe sont susceptibles d’être affectées. Il n’y a pas un domaine ni un secteur d’activité qui n’en ressentira pas les effets d’où le besoin d’une nécessaire adaptation. Dès 2006, la Commission Européenne s’est engagée vers la problématique de l’adaptation au changement climatique. Tout d’abord au travers d’une consultation autour du livre vert « Adaptation au changement climatique en Europe : les possibilités d’action de l’Union Européenne » puis à l’aide d’un livre blanc « Adaptation au changement climatique: vers un cadre d’action européen ». Si la Commission Européenne y étudie la possibilité de rendre obligatoire les stratégies d’adaptation, plusieurs pays européens ont déjà réalisé la leur : la Finlande, le Royaume-Uni, la France… La Belgique via la Commission Nationale Climat a adopté sa « Stratégie Nationale Climat» fin 2010 avec l’objectif de pouvoir proposer un plan d’action opérationnel pour 2012. Ce plan d’action résultera de la fusion des plans d’actions des trois régions et du fédéral : la région flamande a réalisé une étude pour initier le processus de développement de son plan d’adaptation en 2010, la région Wallonne a emboité le pas par la présente étude et la région de Bruxelles Capitale ainsi que le Fédéral ont l’intention de suivre la même démarche en 2011. Cette étude a conduit à dresser un bilan exhaustif – caractérisation, vulnérabilités actuelles, vulnérabilités futures – de la région Wallonne suivant sept thématiques : l’agriculture, l’eau, les infrastructures/l’aménagement du territoire, la santé, l’énergie, la biodiversité et la forêt. Une consultation élargie d’experts de la région Wallonne a permis de dégager les principales mesures à mettre en œuvre afin d’adapter la région Wallonne au changement climatique. Le chapitre 1 « L’adaptation au changement climatique dans les régions européennes » dresse un état des lieux des stratégies d’adaptation aux changements climatiques mises en œuvre en Europe en vue d’en tirer des enseignements pour cette étude. Le chapitre 2 « Les avenirs climatiques de la région Wallonne » rend compte des projections climatiques spécifiquement mises en œuvre dans le cadre de cette étude et qui ont servi de support à la détermination des vulnérabilités futures de la région Wallonne. Le chapitre 3 « La vulnérabilité de la Wallonie aux changements climatiques » explore suivant sept thèmes – l’agriculture, l’eau, les infrastructures/l’aménagement du territoire, la santé, l’énergie, la biodiversité et la forêt – la région Wallonne dans le but de décrire ses vulnérabilités actuelles et futures mais aussi en mettant en avant une hiérarchisation temporelle et sectorielle des impacts. Le chapitre 4 « L’adaptation de la région Wallonne aux changements climatiques » définit les principes directeurs suivis pour les choix d’adaptation au changement climatique ainsi que les orientations proposées par thématiques. Le chapitre 5 « Vers un plan d’actions » présente les mesures par thématique avec les premiers éléments d’un dispositif de suivi évaluation. Enfin, les annexes rassemblent, d’une part, des documents opérationnels – les fiches thématiques complètes, le plan d’actions, la note d’orientation stratégique et l’analyse transversale – et des documents supports – cartes et base de données de projections climatiques, benchmark.Climate change is now globally accepted. The 4th IPCC report, published in 2007, clearly indicates that this phenomenon is mostly the result of human activity. All parts of the globe are potentially at risk. There are no activity sectors that will be left untouched. Adaptation is therefore necessary. Since 2006, the European Commission has been looking at the climate change adaptation issue. It first held a consultation on the European Commission Green Paper “adapting to climate change in Europe - options for EU action”. This led to the publication of the White Paper « Adapting to climate change: towards a European framework for action ». In this document, the EC puts forward the idea of a compulsory Adaptation Strategy at Member State level. Several EU countries have already done so: Finland, United Kingdom and France. Belgium, through the National Climate Commission, adopted its « National Climate Strategy » in late 2010. The objective is to recommend an operational action plan by 2012. This action plan will be the result of a merger between the action plans of the three regions and the federal governments. The Flemish region launched a study to start the development process of their action plan in 2010; the Walloon region has followed with this study and the Brussels region and the Federal should launch their studies during this year (2011). This study enabled to draw a complete review – characteristics, current vulnerabilities, future vulnerabilities - of the Walloon region on seven topics: Agriculture, water, infrastructure/ spatial planning, health, energy, biodiversity and forests. An enlarged experts’ consultation identified key measures to implement in order for Wallonia to adapt to climate change. Chapter 1, « climate change adaptation in European regions », is a stock-taking exercise of adaptation strategies found in Europe in order to draw relevant lessons for this study. Chapter 2: « the climate futures of Wallonia”, is an analysis of the climate projection specifically carried out for this study. Those projections were used to identify Wallonia’s vulnerabilities. Chapter 3 « Wallonia’s vulnerabilities to Climate change” explores the seven themes Agriculture, water, infrastructure/ spatial planning, health, energy, biodiversity and forests to describe the current and future risks and to put forward a time-dependent and sectoral hierarchy of impacts. Chapter 4 « Wallonia’s adaptation to climate change » states the core principles used to define the adaptation choices as well as the proposed guidelines for each theme. Chapter 5 « towards an action plan » presents the adaptation measures by theme along with the first elements of an evaluation procedure. Finally, the appendices contain the operational documents: the full thematic sheets, the action plan, the strategic guideline paper and the transversal analysis and the supporting documents: maps, climate projections database and the benchmarks

Think global-act local: the challenge of producing actionable knowledge on transboundary climate risks at the sub-national level of governance.

A growing number of countries are putting transboundary climate risks on their national adaptation policy agenda. The designation of subnational governments as key actors in climate change adaptation policy appears to be appropriate when the risks associated with climate change are defined as “local.” In this study we have investigated whether local authorities can plausibly play an equally central role when it comes to transboundary climate risks. Three cases have been studied: Paris in France and the topic of migration and integration, Klepp in Norway and the topic of agriculture and livestock production, and the river harbors in the Upper Rhine region of France and the topic of freight transportation and river regulation. Even if the sub-national actors involved in the three cases showed strong interest in analyzing and addressing transboundary climate risks, it remains an open question whether such authorities can and should play an equally central role in addressing transboundary climate risks as they do in the case of local climate risks. On the other hand, assigning responsibility for managing transboundary climate risks exclusively to national authorities may increase the risk of conflicts between measures to reduce local climate risks (frequently developed and implemented by sub-national authorities) and transboundary climate risks. The authors of this paper therefore advocate a strong partnership between the different levels of governance, and between public and private-sector stakeholders, in adaptation to transboundary climate risk. It is therefore crucial that national governments explicitly account for transboundary climate risks in their national adaptation agendas and, as part of their process in determining “ownership” of such risks, decide on the role sub-national authorities should play. This choice will also affect the role of local authorities in managing local climate risks due to the interlinkages between them

Pan-European meteorological and snow indicators of climate change impact on ski tourism

Ski tourism plays a major socio-economic role in the snowy and mountainous areas of Europe such as the Alps, the Pyrenees, Nordic Europe, Eastern Europe, Anatolia, etc. Past and future climate change has an impact on the operating conditions of ski resorts, due to their reliance on natural snowfall and favorable conditions for snowmaking. However, there is currently a lack of assessment of past and future operating conditions of ski resorts at the pan-European scale in the context of climate change. The presented work aims at filling this gap, as part of the ”European Tourism” Sectoral Information System (SIS) of the Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S). The Mountain Tourism Meteorological and Snow Indicators (MTMSI) were co-designed with representatives of the ski tourism industry, including consulting companies. They were derived from statistically adjusted EURO-CORDEX climate projections (multiple GCM/RCM pairs for RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) using the UERRA 5.5 km resolution surface reanalysis as a reference, used as input to the snow cover model Crocus, with and without accounting for snow management (grooming, snowmaking). Results are generated for 100 m elevation bands for NUTS-3 geographical areas spanning all areas relevant to ski tourism in Europe. This article introduces the underpinning elements for the generation of this product, and illustrates results at the pan-European scale as well as for smaller scale case studies. A dedicated visualization app allows for easy navigation into the multiple dimensions of this dataset, thereby fulfilling the needs of a broad range of users

Research advancements for impact chain based climate risk and vulnerability assessments

International audienceAs the climate crisis continues to worsen, there is an increasing demand for scientific evidence from Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (CRVA). We present 12 methodological advancements to the Impact Chain-based CRVA (IC-based CRVA) framework, which combines participatory and data-driven approaches to identify and measure climate risks in complex socio-ecological systems. The advancements improve the framework along five axes, including the existing workflow, stakeholder engagement, uncertainty management, socio-economic scenario modeling, and transboundary climate risk examination. Eleven case studies were conducted and evaluated to produce these advancements. Our paper addresses two key research questions: (a) How can the IC-based CRVA framework be methodologically advanced to produce more accurate and insightful results? and (b) How effectively can the framework be applied in research and policy domains that it was not initially designed for? We propose methodological advancements to capture dynamics between risk factors, to resolve contradictory worldviews, and to maintain consistency between Impact Chains across policy scales. We suggest using scenario-planning techniques and integrating uncertainties via Probability Density Functions and Reverse Geometric Aggregation. Our research examines the applicability of IC-based CRVAs to address transboundary climate risks and integrating macro-economic models to reflect possible future socio-economic exposure. Our findings demonstrate that the modular structure of IC-based CRVA allows for the integration of various methodological advancements, and further advancements are possible to better assess complex climate risks and improve adaptation decision-making

Rare predicted loss-of-function variants of type I IFN immunity genes are associated with life-threatening COVID-19

BackgroundWe previously reported that impaired type I IFN activity, due to inborn errors of TLR3- and TLR7-dependent type I interferon (IFN) immunity or to autoantibodies against type I IFN, account for 15-20% of cases of life-threatening COVID-19 in unvaccinated patients. Therefore, the determinants of life-threatening COVID-19 remain to be identified in similar to 80% of cases.MethodsWe report here a genome-wide rare variant burden association analysis in 3269 unvaccinated patients with life-threatening COVID-19, and 1373 unvaccinated SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals without pneumonia. Among the 928 patients tested for autoantibodies against type I IFN, a quarter (234) were positive and were excluded.ResultsNo gene reached genome-wide significance. Under a recessive model, the most significant gene with at-risk variants was TLR7, with an OR of 27.68 (95%CI 1.5-528.7, P=1.1x10(-4)) for biochemically loss-of-function (bLOF) variants. We replicated the enrichment in rare predicted LOF (pLOF) variants at 13 influenza susceptibility loci involved in TLR3-dependent type I IFN immunity (OR=3.70[95%CI 1.3-8.2], P=2.1x10(-4)). This enrichment was further strengthened by (1) adding the recently reported TYK2 and TLR7 COVID-19 loci, particularly under a recessive model (OR=19.65[95%CI 2.1-2635.4], P=3.4x10(-3)), and (2) considering as pLOF branchpoint variants with potentially strong impacts on splicing among the 15 loci (OR=4.40[9%CI 2.3-8.4], P=7.7x10(-8)). Finally, the patients with pLOF/bLOF variants at these 15 loci were significantly younger (mean age [SD]=43.3 [20.3] years) than the other patients (56.0 [17.3] years; P=1.68x10(-5)).ConclusionsRare variants of TLR3- and TLR7-dependent type I IFN immunity genes can underlie life-threatening COVID-19, particularly with recessive inheritance, in patients under 60 years old