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Project title

Just resilience and adaptation in Ireland: sectors and regions

Primary Funding Agency

Environmental Protection Agency

Co-Funding Organisation(s)

Department of Transport

Lead Organisation

Economic and Social Research Institute

Lead Applicant

n/a

Project Abstract

Climate adaptation must prioritise those who are jointly (1) most negatively affected by climate shocks and (2) most vulnerable/least resilient. This project will provide four primary contributions. First, it will identify what constitutes an equitable and 'just' prioritisation of climate adaptation and resilience in an Irish context. Adaptation policy should prioritise populations who are vulnerable to both a high risk of climate impacts and socioeconomic deprivation. WP 1.1. will explore the ways in which Irish policy should prioritise those most vulnerable. This will draw on theories of social, economic and political science to consider the various ways policy may wish to incorporate the welfare of the vulnerable in a just climate adaptation policy. Utilitarian, rawlisan, weighted-utility and inequality-averse approaches to identifying the social policy decision will be among those potentially considered. Second, this project will identify socioeconomic groups most affected and who should be targetted in an equitable and just climate adaptation strategy. This proposal presents an integration of Spatial Microsimulation (SM) with climate impact modelling to quantify welfare impacts of climate change-related extreme weather events for Irish regions. Spatially-referenced, individual-level data is unavailable in Ireland. SM is a method to generate these distributions from census small area data and survey microdata. This allows for a spatially-referenced distribution of vulnerable populations to be identified at the small area level (c.20 km2). Combined with spatially disaggregated climate-impact data, the co-incidence of regions with high risk of climate impact and high degrees of socioeconomic vulnerability may be identified and just transition policy simulations may be implemented. Third, this project will identify what economic sectors are most affected by climate shocks and what policies may ensure a just transition among economic sectors. Climate change impacts will result in considerable impacts across production sectors. Besides these direct impacts of climate change, production sectors are also significantly impacted by climate policies, such as carbon taxation and renewable subsidies. In this work package we examine the affects of several key impacts on production sectors in combination with the impacts of the current Climate Action Plan (2019) policies. To do this we apply an Irish energy CGE model, namely I3E. This model allows us to simultaneously examine both the climate change and climate policy impacts for production sectors. The I3E model includes more than 40 distinct production sectors in the Irish economy. Furthermore, as the model has a detailed description of the interconnectedness of production sectors, we can identify secondary impacts on production sector through spillovers. This workpackage will also simulate a just transition policy intervention. Finally, this project will provide guidance for policy on how to incorporate Nature-based Approaches (NbA) in adaptation decision-making. This WP will take the form of a literature review, collating a list of potential NbA suitable for Ireland with a discussion of the relative costs and benefits (environmental, social and economic). Guidance for policy when it comes to incorporation in decision-making will be offered. This WP will identify the policy, capacity and governance conditions that enable NbA to be successfully implemented

Grant Approved

�94,358

Research Hub

Climate research

Research Theme

Being prepared for Ireland�s future climate.

Start Date

31/03/2022

Initial Projected Completion Date

30/03/2023