Issue Title: Policy sciences for sustainable development Planned adaptation to climate change denotes actions undertaken to reduce the risks and capitalize on the opportunities associated with global ...climate change. This paper summarizes current thinking about planned adaptation. It starts with an explanation of key adaptation concepts, a description of the diversity of adaptation contexts, and a discussion of key prerequisites for effective adaptation. On the basis of this introduction, major approaches to climate impact and adaptation assessment and their evolution are reviewed. Finally, principles for adaptation assessment are derived from decision-analytical considerations and from the experience with past adaptation assessments.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
de Bruin et al. (Clim Change, 2009) report on an expert assessment aimed at prioritizing adaptation options in several climate-sensitive sectors of the Netherlands. Their results show that even in a ...country with high economic, institutional and technical capacity, it is not currently feasible to prioritize national-level adaptation options based on social cost-benefit analysis because of methodological difficulties and insufficient quantitative data. Multi-criteria analysis based on qualitative indicators can help prioritizing adaptation options but the analysis detected strong conflicts between priority and feasibility criteria. The specific results of the ranking exercise should be treated with caution due to weaknesses in the selection of adaptation options and the definition of evaluation criteria. The authors assert that their methods can be transferred to other regions but substantial modifications are likely required in developing countries with large current climate risks, fewer economic resources, and substantial social inequalities.
There is substantial need to improve the outcome of patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The clinical trial reported here investigated a new approach of up-front allogeneic ...hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), provided a median of 40 days (range 22-74) after diagnosis, in twenty-six consecutive patients with newly-diagnosed high-risk AML characterized by poor-risk cytogenetics (n = 19) or inadequate blast clearance by induction chemotherapy (IC, n = 7). The median age was 49 years (range 17-68). During IC-induced aplasia after the 1st (n = 11) or 2nd (n = 15) cycle, patients received allogeneic peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) from related (n = 11) or unrelated (n = 15) donors following a fludarabine-based reduced-intensity regimen. Seventeen patients were not in remission before HSCT with a median marrow blast count of 34% (range 6-70). All patients achieved rapid engraftment and went into remission with complete myeloid and lymphatic chimerism. Grades II to IV acute GvHD occurred in 14 (56%) and extensive chronic GvHD was documented in 8 (35%) patients. The probability of disease-free survival was 61% with only three patients relapsing 5, 6 and 7 months after transplantation, respectively. Up-front allogeneic HSCT as part of primary induction therapy seems to be an effective strategy in high-risk AML patients and warrants further investigation.
One of the main arguments brought forward in favour of the continued use of simple climate-economy models is their transparency, which should enable researchers to easily interpret the simulation ...results and adapt the model to their specific research interests. We investigate the degree to which this claim is supported in the case of the DICE model but most of our findings are relevant for other welfare-optimizing climate-economy models as well. Specifically, this paper reviews the handling of time discounting in social welfare functions, the combination of different social welfare functions in an analysis, the calibration of uncertain climate parameters, the representation of uncertainty about future climate change, and the evolution of carbon abatement costs over time. We find that each of these aspects has been treated inconsistently in the past, and that these inconsistencies can strongly affect the results of several previous studies. We discuss the methodological questions raised by some of these problems and make specific recommendations how to avoid the problems identified here in future analyses.
This paper describes the development and first results of the “Community Integrated Assessment System” (CIAS), a unique multi-institutional modular and flexible integrated assessment system for ...modelling climate change. Key to this development is the supporting software infrastructure, SoftIAM. Through it, CIAS is distributed between the communities of institutions which has each contributed modules to the CIAS system. At the heart of SoftIAM is the Bespoke Framework Generator (BFG) which enables flexibility in the assembly and composition of individual modules from a pool to form coupled models within CIAS, and flexibility in their deployment onto the available software and hardware resources. Such flexibility greatly enhances modellers' ability to re-configure the CIAS coupled models to answer different questions, thus tracking evolving policy needs. It also allows rigorous testing of the robustness of IA modelling results to the use of different component modules representing the same processes (for example, the economy). Such processes are often modelled in very different ways, using different paradigms, at the participating institutions. An illustrative application to the study of the relationship between the economy and the earth's climate system is provided.
▶ Countries most vulnerable for climate change are generally least responsible for it. ▶ The inequity is most pronounced for climate impacts on food security and human health. ▶ International ...adaptation funding should be informed by sector-specific criteria.
While it is generally asserted that those countries who have contributed least to anthropogenic climate change are most vulnerable to its adverse impacts some recently developed indices of vulnerability to climate change come to a different conclusion. Confirmation or rejection of this assertion is complicated by the lack of an agreed metric for measuring countries’ vulnerability to climate change and by conflicting interpretations of vulnerability. This paper presents a comprehensive semi-quantitative analysis of the disparity between countries’ responsibility for climate change, their capability to act and assist, and their vulnerability to climate change for four climate-sensitive sectors based on a broad range of disaggregated vulnerability indicators. This analysis finds a double inequity between responsibility and capability on the one hand and the vulnerability of food security, human health, and coastal populations on the other. This double inequity is robust across alternative indicator choices and interpretations of vulnerability. The main cause for the higher vulnerability of poor nations who have generally contributed little to climate change is their lower adaptive capacity. In addition, the biophysical sensitivity and socio-economic exposure of poor nations to climate impacts on food security and human health generally exceeds that of wealthier nations. No definite statement can be made on the inequity associated with climate impacts on water supply due to large uncertainties about future changes in regional water availability and to conflicting indicators of current water scarcity. The robust double inequity between responsibility and vulnerability for most climate-sensitive sectors strengthens the moral case for financial and technical assistance from those countries most responsible for climate change to those countries most vulnerable to its adverse impacts. However, the complex and geographically heterogeneous patterns of vulnerability factors for different climate-sensitive sectors suggest that the allocation of international adaptation funds to developing countries should be guided by sector-specific or hazard-specific criteria despite repeated requests from participants in international climate negotiations to develop a generic index of countries’ vulnerability to climate change.
The term ‘vulnerability’ is used in many different ways by various scholarly communities. The resulting disagreement about the appropriate definition of vulnerability is a frequent cause for ...misunderstanding in interdisciplinary research on climate change and a challenge for attempts to develop formal models of vulnerability. Earlier attempts at reconciling the various conceptualizations of vulnerability were, at best, partly successful. This paper presents a generally applicable conceptual framework of vulnerability that combines a nomenclature of vulnerable situations and a terminology of vulnerability concepts based on the distinction of four fundamental groups of vulnerability factors. This conceptual framework is applied to characterize the vulnerability concepts employed by the main schools of vulnerability research and to review earlier attempts at classifying vulnerability concepts. None of these one-dimensional classification schemes reflects the diversity of vulnerability concepts identified in this review. The wide range of policy responses available to address the risks from global climate change suggests that climate impact, vulnerability, and adaptation assessments will continue to apply a variety of vulnerability concepts. The framework presented here provides the much-needed conceptual clarity and facilitates bridging the various approaches to researching vulnerability to climate change.
Ten patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML), chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) relapsing early (< 1 year, n = 8) or late (> or = 1 year, n = 2) after ...allogeneic transplantation were treated with cytoreductive chemotherapy followed by unmanipulated peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) from related (n = 3) and unrelated donors (n = 7). In order to enhance the graft-versus-leukemia effect, patients received no graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) was given at a dose of 60 micrograms/m2 after transplant. Acute GVHD grade I-IV was seen in all patients. Eight out of ten patients achieved complete remission: one out of two patients with AML and late relapse is in good condition with limited chronic GVHD more than 1 year after the second PBSCT. The other patient died on day +171 after the second PBSCT from cerebral aspergillosis. One patient with blastic phase CML achieved molecular remission but died +330 days after the second PBSCT because of intracranial bleeding. Of the remaining five patients, three died of infectious complications on days +36, +70, and +27, one patient died with extramedullary relapse on day +35, and one from multi-organ failure in association with acute GVHD on day +32 after the second PBSCT. Two out of ten showed progressive disease and died on days +30 and +90, respectively. Although several patients achieved complete remission, the high risk of GVHD and treatment-related mortality should be kept in mind, especially when a second transplant is considered during a period of less than 12 months after the first procedure. Monitoring of minimal residual disease might predict relapse thus preventing high doses of cytotoxic drugs for reconditioning. The potential of GM-CSF to enhance the graft-versus-leukemia reactivity after cytoreductive therapy for allogeneic transplantation warrants further investigation.
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