CIESIN Thematic Guides

Assessing Policy Responses to Global Environmental Change


Appropriate policy options for responding to global climate change have emerged as a central point of discussion in the global environmental change debate. The extensive and rapidly expanding literature on policy implications includes reports from governmental, United Nations', and nongovernmental organizations, journal articles, and books.

The discussion of response to global climate change focuses on two broad types of strategies: adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation strategies underscore society's capacity to adjust to changing environmental conditions using a variety of technological and institutional adjustments. Mitigation strategies emphasize curtailing or eliminating emission of greenhouse gases. The National Academy of Sciences (1991) report Policy Implications of Greenhouse Warming surveys adaptation (Chapter 5) and mitigation (Chapter 6) concepts.

The U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) published two reports containing detailed assessments of mitigation and adaptation strategies. Changing by Degrees investigates options for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, the most troublesome anthropogenic greenhouse gas (OTA 1991). Preparing for an Uncertain Climate examines how managed natural resource systems--such as water, agriculture, and forests--might adapt to changing environmental conditions brought about by global warming (OTA 1993). The summary chapter for each of these reports is available here.

Another major policy document on climate change is the report of the Response Strategies Working Group (RSWG) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC was established in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization to assess scientific information about climate change and to formulate realistic response strategies. The Policymakers Summary outlines the RSWG's principal findings (1991). Although the report focuses mainly on mitigation options, adaptation strategies for natural resource management systems are also discussed.

In addition to government and United Nations reports, an extensive research literature assesses options for response to global warming. Much of this literature addresses the potential economic costs associated with different strategies. "Economic Approaches to Greenhouse Warming" provides a summary of Yale economist William Nordhaus' ideas (1991). Nordhaus, who has written widely on the global warming issue, questions the motivation for countries to pursue relatively costly measures for responding to global warming given current scientific uncertainty about the problem's magnitude and estimates that potential economic impacts may not be that high, particularly for developed economies.

Economist William Cline offers an opposing view, arguing that potential economic costs of unabated global warming could be very high. In the monograph Global Warming: The Economic Stakes, Cline (1992) assesses the potential cost of damages from global warming and the cost of efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions.