Ecologic Institute researchers presented interim results of the project: CO-designing the Assessment of Climate Change Costs (COACCH) at the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference (ECCA) 2019 in Lisbon (Portugal). The presentations covered first experiences from the COACCH Co-Design process, as well as a recently prepared synthesis of Economic costs of climate change and adaptation in Europe.

Katriona McGlade presented an overview of the ongoing COACCH innovative co-design process to deliver research, with the aim of generating more useable knowledge for decision makers. Since January 2018, the team has worked to break down communication barriers and open up the research process to practitioners from the public sector, industry, business, researchers and civil society. The co-production method for COACCH was designed based on a review of the existing co-design and co-production literature, including previous evaluations. The literature review identified eight key success factors which are used to develop a four-stage co-creation process with a detailed protocol. The presentation at ECCA highlighted early conclusions and emerging insights from the first year and a half of this collaborative process, including evaluation feedback from stakeholders as well as the research team and lessons for future similar studies.

The synthesis of economic costs of climate change and adaptation in Europe was presented by Jenny Tröltzsch. The COACCH project reviewed and synthesized the latest knowledge on the economic costs of climate impacts and policy challenges in Europe, as well as the aggregate economic costs and benefits of adaptation. The analysis has covered 13 sectors. The most complete coverage is found for coastal zones and inland river flooding where comprehensive modeling approaches are already available. For agriculture, energy, forestry, fisheries, transport and tourism, there is some good coverage of cost estimates, but there are still some important gaps to be addressed. Biodiversity and ecosystems are areas with a very low coverage on economic assessment of climate change. Additionally, the synthesis shows higher economic costs, especially under higher warming scenarios, than previous studies. Further, there is a strong distributional pattern across European regions, with some areas facing particularly important economic effects. The synthesized results were used for the co-design and development of research questions with stakeholders for the COACCH project.

The COACCH project aims to produce an improved downscaled assessment of the risks and costs of climate change in Europe that can be of direct usability and respond to the different needs of end users from the research, business, investment, and the policy making community. To this end, COACCH brings Europe’s leading climate change impacts and economic modelling teams together with stakeholders to co-develop methods and analyses in an innovative research practice.