Infrastructure and climate change: Impacts and adaptations for South Africa

This paper presents the results of the current study on the impact of climate change on the road and building infrastructure within South Africa. The approach builds upon previous work associated with the UNU-WIDER Development under Climate Change effort emphasizing the impact of climate change on roads. The paper illustrates how climate change effects on both road and building structures can be evaluated with the application of a new analysis system - the infrastructure planning support system. The results of the study indicate that the national level climate change cost impact in South Africa will vary between US$141.0 million average annual costs in the median climate scenario under an adaptation policy, and US$210.0 million average annual costs under a no adaptation scenario. Similarly, the costs will vary between US$457.0 million average annual costs in the maximum climate scenario under an adaptation policy scenario, and US$522.0 million average annual costs under a no adaptation scenario. The paper presents these costs at a provincial impact level through the potential impacts of 54 climate scenarios. Decadal costs are detailed through 2100

Toward evaluating the effect of climate change on investments in the water resources sector: insights from the forecast and analysis of hydrological indicators in developing countries

The World Bank has recently developed a method to evaluate the effects of climate change on six hydrological indicators across 8951 basins of the world. The indicators are designed for decision-makers and stakeholders to consider climate risk when planning water resources and related infrastructure investments. Analysis of these hydrological indicators shows that, on average, mean annual runoff will decline in southern Europe; most of Africa; and in southern North America and most of Central and South America. Mean reference crop water deficit, on the other hand, combines temperature and precipitation and is anticipated to increase in nearly all locations globally due to rising global temperatures, with the most dramatic increases projected to occur in southern Europe, southeastern Asia, and parts of South America. These results suggest overall guidance on which regions to focus water infrastructure solutions that could address future runoff flow uncertainty. Most important, we find that uncertainty in projections of mean annual runoff and high runoff events is higher in poorer countries, and increases over time. Uncertainty increases over time for all income categories, but basins in the lower and lower-middle income categories are forecast to experience dramatically higher increases in uncertainty relative to those in the upper-middle and upper income categories. The enhanced understanding of the uncertainty of climate projections for the water sector that this work provides strongly support the adoption of rigorous approaches to infrastructure design under uncertainty, as well as design that incorporates a high degree of flexibility, in response to both risk of damage and opportunity to exploit water supply 'windfalls' that might result, but would require smart infrastructure investments to manage to the greatest benefit

Partial costs of global climate change adaptation for the supply of raw industrial and municipal water: a methodology and application

Despite growing recognition of the importance of climate change adaptation, few global estimates of the costs involved are available for the water supply sector. We present a methodology for estimating partial global and regional adaptation costs for raw industrial and domestic water supply, for a limited number of adaptation strategies, and apply the method using results of two climate models. In this paper, adaptation costs are defined as those for providing enough raw water to meet future industrial and municipal water demand, based on country-level demand projections to 2050. We first estimate costs for a baseline scenario excluding climate change, and then additional climate change adaptation costs. Increased demand is assumed to be met through a combination of increased reservoir yield and alternative backstop measures. Under such controversial measures, we project global adaptation costs of $12 bn p.a., with 83-90$73 bn p.a.), which supports the notion of mainstreaming climate change adaptation into broader policy aims. The method provides a tool for estimating broad costs at the global and regional scale; such information is of key importance in international negotiations. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd

The value of wildlife-viewing tourism as an incentive for conservation of biodiversity in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

The Okavango Delta is a large wetland safari destination in north-western Botswana. Given that future threats to its water supply may affect the biodiversity of this ecosystem, it was important to elicit a value of the Delta from the tourism sector and assess how biodiversity influences that value. This paper presents a valuation of visitors' preferences for the preservation of the Okavango Delta in 2001 and 2002 using contingent valuation (CV) and travel cost (TC) approaches. The results showed that the quality of wildlife viewing was significantly correlated with willingness-to-pay (WTP) for preservation and suggested that impaired biodiversity would negatively affect the value of this ecosystem. The combined CV and TC values totalled US$285/visitor/annum. Extrapolated to the annual pool of visitors to the Delta in 2002, this translates to US$23 million, a large reservoir of funds from the tourism sector that could be used for preservation.

Water Consumption Footprint and Land Requirements of Large-Scale Alternative Diesel and Jet Fuel Production

Middle distillate (MD) transportation fuels, including diesel and jet fuel, make up almost 30% of liquid fuel consumption in the United States. Alternative drop-in MD and biodiesel could potentially reduce dependence on crude oil and the greenhouse gas intensity of transportation. However, the water and land resource requirements of these novel fuel production technologies must be better understood. This analysis quantifies the lifecycle green and blue water consumption footprints of producing: MD from conventional crude oil; Fischer–Tropsch MD from natural gas and coal; fermentation and advanced fermentation MD from biomass; and hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids MD and biodiesel from oilseed crops, throughout the contiguous United States. We find that FT MD and alternative MD derived from rainfed biomass have lifecycle blue water consumption footprints of 1.6 to 20.1 L_water/L_MD, comparable to conventional MD, which ranges between 4.1 and 7.4 L_water/L_MD. Alternative MD derived from irrigated biomass has a lifecycle blue water consumption footprint potentially several orders of magnitude larger, between 2.7 and 22 600 L_water/L_MD. Alternative MD derived from biomass has a lifecycle green water consumption footprint between 1.1 and 19 200 L_water/L_MD. Results are disaggregated to characterize the relationship between geo-spatial location and lifecycle water consumption footprint. We also quantify the trade-offs between blue water consumption footprint and areal MD productivity, which ranges from 490 to 4200 L_MD/ha, under assumptions of rainfed and irrigated biomass cultivation. Finally, we show that if biomass cultivation for alternative MD is irrigated, the ratio of the increase in areal MD productivity to the increase in blue water consumption footprint is a function of geo-spatial location and feedstock-to-fuel production pathway

Adaptation and mitigation as complementary tools for reducing the risk of climate impacts

Adaptation, Climate change impacts, Climate change risks, Flood control, Intolerable changes, Mitigation, Risk management,