Climate change exacerbates the intensity of weather-related disasters. The unprecedented severity of storms, floods, wildfires and droughts in recent years is due in large part to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on weather variables. Understanding how temperature and precipitation changes affect climate risks is essential for assessing adaptation needs and deciding on appropriate action. This requires traditional hazard models to integrate temperature and precipitation trends from climate models to depict the future likelihood of occurrence of extreme events.
Climate adaptation and resilience
Progress towards net-zero emissions must go hand in hand with efforts to build the resilience of people, economies and ecosystems to the mounting impacts of climate change. The OECD supports governments as they face the challenging task of taking action today to reduce vulnerability and exposure to future climate impacts whose exact occurrence and intensity are uncertain.
Key messages
National adaptation policies should act as a compass to guide government, business, households and others in their respective roles and responsibilities in building climate resilience of communities, ecosystems and economic value chains. For national strategies or plans to result in progress on the ground, regulatory, institutional, fiscal and economic policy conditions need to be brought in line with climate adaptation goals. Measuring progress in implementing national adaptation policies, using a comprehensive set of indicators, is critical to understanding how adaptation actions contribute to strengthening climate resilience and whether they do so effectively.
Successfully building resilience to climate change requires co-operation across levels of government and different environmental and economic activities. Communities need to adjust their behaviour to the impacts of climate change; ecosystems need to be protected from harmful and lasting damages and economic activities need to be safeguarded through investments in climate resilience. This will require action in everything from city and infrastructure planning to farming and water supply.
As climate change increases pressures on land and water, the agricultural sector needs to better prepare for, absorb and recover from climate risks and other natural hazards. The OECD supports countries in developing policies that enhance the ability of agriculture to adapt to climate change, while also contributing to other environmental goals.
Context
Extreme climate events are causing ever-increasing economic damages globally
With record global temperatures reaching around 1.4°C above pre-industrial averages in 2023, the world is experiencing more severe heatwaves and floods, longer lasting droughts as well as expanded wildfire seasons and continuously rising sea levels.
The economic damage caused by the impacts of climate variability and extreme events has doubled globally over the last 20 years to reach an average of USD 200 billion a year since 2015. This increasing cost appears to be mainly driven by storms, however this figure may largely underestimate and underreport the economic repercussions of slow-onset events, such as droughts. While their damage to physical assets may be lower, their consequences in terms of productivity loss are estimated to be several magnitudes above economic costs of sudden-onset events such as storms.
OECD countries are taking action to adapt to a changing climate
Over the past 20 years, all OECD countries have developed at least one National Adaptation Strategy (NAS), National Adaptation Plan (NAP) or framework document. More than half the countries, namely 60%, have already updated their adaptation plans at least once. By providing a roadmap and prioritising adaptation measures, these national policy documents are critical for building countries’ resilience to climate impacts. These documents also have an important function in promoting a cross‑government and a whole‑of‑society engagement in climate change adaptation.
The more economic assets are at stake, the higher the costs per extreme weather event
Countries around the world have been confronted with significant and mounting social, environmental and economic impacts from extreme weather events. The higher the concentration of capital and economic activities, the higher the absolute damages recorded per disaster event. On average, for the period 2000‑2022, the cost of climatic events was three times higher in OECD countries than in non‑OECD countries.
