Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Multi-sectoral vulnerability and risks
6.4 Europe's vulnerability to climate change impacts outside Europe
Key messages
• Several recent studies have suggested that climate change will have much stronger negative impacts on the global
economy than previously assumed, with poor countries being disproportionally affected.
• In a highly interconnected and globalised world, Europe is susceptible to spill-over effects from climate change impacts
occurring outside the European territory through various pathways. Past extreme events, such as the Russian heat wave
in 2010, have had negative economic consequences for Europe (here understood as the EEA member and cooperating
countries).
• Six major pathways have been identified from the available literature: trade of agricultural commodities, trade of
non‐agricultural commodities, infrastructure and transport, geopolitics and security risks, human migration, and finance.
Many of these pathways affect the value chains of European products, which are increasingly complex.
• The strongest evidence for Europe's sensitivity to cross-border impacts exists for economic effects through climate‐caused
global price volatilities; for transportation networks such as ports; and for changes in the Arctic environment, such as new
shipping routes. The Mediterranean area has been identified as the most vulnerable to shocks in the flow of agricultural
commodities, while small, open and highly developed European economies are regarded as particularly vulnerable to
shocks in the flow of non-agricultural commodities.
• An increasing body of recent literature suggests that unprecedented climatic changes in North African regions, such as
the Sahel and Maghreb, as well as in the Middle East will increase the strategic importance of these regions for Europe,
with respect both to potential climate-induced human migration flows and to geopolitical and security considerations.
• European vulnerability to cross-border effects is expected to increase in the coming decades, although quantitative
projections are not yet available.
6.4.1 Introduction
Europe is part of a highly interconnected world that is
bound together through multiple systems (EEA, 2015).
International trade, travel, telecommunications and
other aspects of globalisation increase the likelihood
that climate change impacts have consequences
beyond the regions or nations in which they occur.
Such cross-border effects of climate change (sometimes
also referred to as indirect effects, trans‐boundary
effects or spill-over effects) are highly relevant for
European adaptation policy, as they may significantly
influence climate change vulnerability of and risks
to regions, sectors and people. The effects are, for
example, felt in the increasingly complex value and
supply chains of European products, which are often
linked to distant geographical areas. For instance, a
recent assessment suggests that many countries in
Africa, South Asia, South East Asia and Latin America
might be disproportionally affected by losses in
economic production, in particular under high global
warming assumptions (RCP8.5). The overall global
economic losses are estimated to be much larger than
in previous assessments, and this would unavoidably
lead to repercussions in Europe (Burke et al., 2015).
Several recent studies of the climate–economy
relationship using panel methods have also suggested
that climate change will have a substantially stronger
negative effect on economic productivity than assumed
by most economic models, and that poor countries will
be much more affected than rich countries (Dell et al.,
2012, 2014).
This section explores the available information base
on how, and to what extent, cross-border impacts of
climate change have (or are projected to have) potential
implications in Europe. The combined effects from
climatic and non-climatic changes, as illustrated for
Europe in Sections 6.2 and 6.3, may have strong impacts
in other world regions, with repercussions for Europe.
In some cases, a single extreme climate event may be
significant enough to cause a chain of reactions through
impact pathways, which eventually lead to consequences
in Europe, such as the (temporary) disruption of global
supply chains due to damaged transport infrastructure.
In other cases, gradual climate change or prolonged
periods of extreme weather might trigger spill-over
effects in Europe.
With respect to the geographical occurrence of
the original climate change impacts, two groups of
cross‐border effects can be distinguished:
288 Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016 | An indicator-based report