World Bank: Economics of Impacts of Climate Change (EACC) in Ethiopia

Gabrielle Kissinger

Session: Economic impact of climate risk National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and agriculture: A learning workshop

CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)13 - 14 November 2013, Warsaw, Poland

Overview of World Bank EACC*

• Seven country case studies as part of global study on adaptation costs

• Based on national data, disaggregated to more local and sector levels

• Compare a no-climate change baseline (counterfactual) that reflects existing development plans with climate change scenarios.

* World Bank (2010). Ethiopia - Economics of adaptation to climate change. Vol. 1. World Bank, Washington D.C. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/ en/2010/01/16279299/economics-adaptation-climate-change-ethiopia

Ethiopia EACC

• Baseline: ambitious investment program in dams, hydropower development, irrigation, water management, and road building

• Economy-wide impacts of climate change: Computable general equilibrium (CGE) model.

Ethiopia EACC• Results: GDP losses are significant but diverse

across scenarios, highlighting the high degree of vulnerability of Ethiopian agriculture and infrastructure to future climate shocks

Ethiopia EACC

• Agriculture

Ethiopia EACC

Agric: Changes in crop yields given increasing municipal and industrial and irrigation demands

Ethiopia EACC

Ethiopia EACC

Inter-sectoral analysis (agriculture, roads and hydropower) under climate change scenarios: • Agriculture at greater risk than hydropower. • If priority given to hydropower, up to a

billion cubic meters of water might be taken away from irrigated agriculture, causing a 30–40% yield drop across 250,000 hectares that would be forced to revert to rainfed conditions.

Key findings: Adaptation investments reduce, but do not completely eliminate,

economic losses under adaptation scenarios; that gains in economic well-being can be achieved at relatively low cost; and that adaptation lowers income variability.

The economic benefits of the adaptation strategy are significantly larger than the project-level costs of implementing it, resulting in benefit/cost ratios ranging from 5 to over 13.

Adaptation restores the variability of agriculture GDP growth close to the baseline scenario.

Due to the uncertainty of the future climate, a risk-based investment planning approach is recommended and robust decision-making principles are needed to minimise the “regrets” of climate-sensitive decisions (for instance, building costly dams may not be necessary under ‘wet’ climate change scenarios, but improved transport infrastructure is a sound investment under all scenarios).