Editor’s choice
Editor’s choice
The Covid-19 pandemic has shown how hard it is to manage a global crisis. The impacts are not simple and confined to one sphere of life or one geographical region. The climate crisis is similar: its impacts and our responses to them have the potential to disrupt societies at multiple scales. What can we learn from the pandemic to help us tackle climate change?
In our interconnected world, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have cascaded out into cross-border and long-term impacts across almost every aspect of our lives. Similarly, climate change impacts, and inadequate or poorly conceived responses to them, have the potential to disrupt societies at multiple scales, via networks of trade, finance, mobility and communication, and to impact hardest on the most vulnerable. However, these complex systems can also be used to our advantage to facilitate resilience if managed effectively.
This review aims to distil lessons related to the transboundary management of systemic risks from the COVID-19 experience, to inform climate change policy and resilience building. Evidence from diverse fields is synthesized to illustrate the nature of systemic risks and our evolving understanding of resilience. We describe research methods that aim to capture systemic complexity to inform better management practices and increase resilience to crises.
Finally, we recommend specific, practical actions for improving transboundary climate risk management and resilience building. These include mapping the direct, cross-border and cross-sectoral impacts of potential climate extremes, adopting adaptive risk management strategies that embrace heterogenous decision-making and uncertainty, and taking a broader approach to resilience which elevates human wellbeing, including societal and ecological resilience.
Project / CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies – an EU H2020 project assessing the interconnected impacts of climate change.
Project / CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies – an EU H2020 project assessing the interconnected impacts of climate change.
Journal article / A large-scale literature and data review to explore the potential climate impact transmission pathways between the EU and other world regions.
Other publication / The challenge the EU faces in taking into account cross-border and cascading climate impacts in its climate adaptation strategy and external relations.
