Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CASCADES (CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies)
Reporting period: 2021-03-01 to 2022-02-28
The main objective of CASCADES is, within four years, to analyse the trade, political and financial channels through which climate change impacts outside Europe might cascade into Europe, significantly altering Europe’s risk exposure, over the short, medium and long-term; and to support the design of a coherent European policy framework to address these risks.
To do this, CASCADES builds on the climate change impact simulations available from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) to inform a wide range of well-established models simulating changing trade patterns and supply chains, physical risks for climate adaptation to extreme events and environmental impacts on agricultural production and global agricultural commodity markets. We combine the results from these models with tailored sectoral and multi-sector network modelling, qualitative policy analysis, strategic simulations (policy exercises), and serious games and co-produce knowledge together with key actors within and outside of Europe.
The climate stress test developed in WP5 will be used by companies and financial investors to evaluate their exposure to climate-related risks internationally. A COP26 virtual side event on “Macrofinancial Relevance of Cascading Climate Risks: Insights for Investors and Financial Supervisors” involved representatives from the European Central Bank (ECB), Amundi, an IPCC lead author and the World Bank (WB)
CASCADES aims to link findings to timely, societally meaningful global events that influence Europeans’ lives and domestic politics, such as the extreme weather events, impacts of Covid19 or the war on Ukraine, to reach media, social media and citizen organisations. CASCADES has produced video explainers, comment pieces, blogs, podcasts, and provided communication and dissemination support for key moments. During ECCA21, which was co-organised by CASCADES, we released a range of social media outputs across the consortium, including videos outlining the CASCADES conceptual framework and a promotional campaign around our strategic simulation exercise. Over the two weeks of the COP26, Chatham House hosted a virtual ‘Climate Risk and Security Pavilion’, in which CASCADES played a major role, showcasing the innovative work taking place and bringing together a range of experts to discuss the challenges in grappling with cascading climate risks. Five CASCADES events were hosted spanning the different workstreams. The pavilion saw nearly 2000 unique users from 120 countries across the world.
CASCADES has had a major impact on the international research community by pioneering and developing new methods and inter-disciplinary analysis. Amongst others, 23 peer reviewed journal articles and 12 policy briefs have already been produced by CASCADES partners and were published in high ranking journals such as Science, PNAS and Nature Climate Change. Several publications were cited in the IPCC AR6 WG2 report and generated knowledge on cross-border and cross-sectoral climate impacts which propagate through trade, political and financial channels and have the potential to alter Europe’s risk exposure. These cross-border impacts are much less covered in the literature than direct climate impacts, a knowledge gap recognised by the IPCC.
CASCADES contributed work on cross-sectoral exposure to climatic hazards at different levels of warming, as well as innovative research quantifying climate impacts on ice roads in permafrost areas.