The economic impacts of climate change on the Member States of the European Union will be investigated using practical indicators. Sector specific information regarding energy, agriculture, insurance, tourism and health will be reviewed.
The European Environemnt Agency (EEA) has decided to prepare an European focused indicator based Climate change Impact assessment report which was published in late 2008. This report also includes economic indicators of climate change impacts. Some existing work is being undertaken looking at weather related economic losses and flood losses, and tourism/recreational effects. However, there is a need to expand the potential coverage of sectors with a particular focus on the economic sectors (e.g. energy, agriculture, insurance) as well as potential other important sectors (e.g. health), i.e. the other sectors presented and discussed in the EEA Technical Report 'Climate Change: the Cost of Inaction and the Cost of Adaptation'. In addition to this, major European focused projects, such as PESETA, and country level impact studies should be a major source for this particular task.
The project’s objectives are:
- to review the potential sectors that could be covered by economic indicators of climate change, and investigate and propose different indicators that could be included.
- to review the data available on these indicators in Europe, i.e. by expanding the existing review material in the Technical Report. Emphasis should be given both past trend analysis and projections.
- to assist EEA in the preparation of the chapter for the Impacts Report.
This project is the tenth specific agreement under the Framework Contract for European Economic Environmental Activities (3EA), carried out for the European Environment Agency by a consortium under the lead of Ecologic.