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Managing unnatural disaster risk from climate extremes

Nature Climate Change volume 4, pages 235–237 (2014)Cite this article

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Truly understanding climate-related disaster risk, and the management of that risk, can inform effective action on climate adaptation and the loss and damage mechanism, the main vehicle under the UN Climate Convention for dealing with climate-related effects, including residual impacts after adaptation.

Despite a dramatic start concurrent with the massive destruction wrought by typhoon Haiyan on the Philippines, the 19th Conference of the Parties to the UN Climate Convention has been considered as another one with little impact. Literally in the last minute, however, it saw the establishment of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. The exact form of this vehicle, which is scheduled for further development, is still largely unclear and will be heavily debated over the coming three years. As the first of a number of functions, it is to focus on “Enhancing knowledge and understanding of comprehensive risk management approaches...”1.

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Figure 1
Figure 2: Calculating fiscal stress from climate-related risk.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support provided through the research projects ENHANCE (Enhancing risk management partnerships for catastrophic natural disasters in Europe) and IMPACT2C (Quantifying projected impacts under 2 °C warming), funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme — Grant agreement numbers 308438 and 282746.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361, Laxenburg, Austria

    Reinhard Mechler, Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler & Keith Williges

  2. University of Economics and Business, Vienna, A-1020, Austria

    Reinhard Mechler

  3. Deltares, Delft, N-2600, Netherlands

    Laurens M. Bouwer

  4. Institute for Environmental Studies, Amsterdam, N-1081, Netherlands

    Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts

  5. London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, WC2A 2AE, UK

    Swenja Surminski

Authors
  1. Reinhard Mechler
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  2. Laurens M. Bouwer
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  4. Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler
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  5. Jeroen C. J. H. Aerts
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  6. Swenja Surminski
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  7. Keith Williges
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Correspondence to Reinhard Mechler.

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Mechler, R., Bouwer, L., Linnerooth-Bayer, J. et al. Managing unnatural disaster risk from climate extremes. Nature Clim Change 4, 235–237 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2137

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