Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Multi-sectoral vulnerability and risks
6 Multi-sectoral vulnerability and risks
The degree to which regions, sectors, population
groups and infrastructure in Europe are affected by a
changing climate is determined by a complex interplay
between climatic and non-climatic factors, as well as by
multiple interdependencies and feedback loops across
climate-sensitive sectors. The objective of this chapter
is to synthesise available information on climate change
vulnerabilities and risks in Europe from an integrated
perspective. Note that the terms 'vulnerability' and 'risk'
are used differently by various scientific communities,
practitioners and decision-makers. This requires that
care be taken in interpreting and comparing results
from different (quantitative) studies using these terms.
For a more detailed discussion, see Section 1.4.
'Integration' in this chapter refers, first, to the
assessment of vulnerabilities and risks arising from the
interaction between changing physical characteristics
of the climate system and evolving characteristics
of socio‐economic systems; such studies have been
becoming increasingly common. Second, integration
refers to the assessment of climate change impacts
on different sectors and systems with a consistent
methodology. Third, integration refers to the assessment
of the effects that climate change impacts on one
sector have on other sectors. Within this framing, the
chapter is structured based on different geographical
scales: pan‐European, European cross‐border regions,
European macro‐regions and urban regions. This
structure enables regional differences or commonalities
with respect to climate‐related risks and vulnerabilities
to be identified that are not captured explicitly in other
chapters of the report.
Section 6.1 summarises the available information
on scenarios for selected non-climatic (in particular
socio‐economic) factors that are relevant for
determining current and future climate change
vulnerabilities and risks across Europe. These
scenarios complement the global scenarios presented
in Section 1.2. Section 6.2 synthesises information
from various Europe-wide climate change impact,
vulnerability and risk assessments that are consistent
in approach and methodology across multiple
sectors or systems. This allows for the identification
of geographic regions of compound risk in Europe —
'hotspots' — that might be regarded as particularly
susceptible to a changing climate. Note that Section 4.5
presents estimates of climate-related changes in
ecosystems services, but the results presented here
(i.e. in Chapter 6) also consider the coping capacity
of socio‐economic sectors. Section 6.3 provides an
assessment of the economic impacts of climate change
across multiple sectors and the wider economy.
Section 6.4 provides an overview of cross-border
(spill‐over) effects of climate change, i.e. climate change
impacts occurring outside the European territory
that could affect Europe. Section 6.5 summarises
climate change risks and vulnerabilities in selected
transnational macro-regions that have similar
biogeographical characteristics. Finally, Section 6.6
summarises vulnerabilities that are particular to urban
regions.
The information presented in this chapter is relevant for
European adaptation policy for various reasons, such as
its integrative perspective combining both climatic and
non-climatic factors and different sectors and systems,
and the fact that it considers multiple geographical
scales. However, the content is not suitable to be
presented as EEA indicators for various reasons, such
as the limited availability of observed data, uncertainty
about the continuity of project‐specific information,
information being presented as relative (unitless)
values and the availability of information for certain
geographical regions only.
Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016 | An indicator-based report
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