Transboundary Climate Risk

The policy brief contends that climate risks are often 'borderless' and that treating adaptation as a local problem hinders global ambition. It advocates for a shared terminology and a transboundary framing of risk—recognizing how impacts in one country create risks in others via trade, migration, and ecosystems—to better utilize the Paris Agreement's mechanisms, such as the global stocktake and National Adaptation Plans, for collective resilience.

• The authors argue that adaptation is currently undervalued in international negotiations because it is viewed as a local problem, which limits the ambition for a global adaptation agenda.
• Climate risk is described as 'borderless' because impacts in one nation can create risks in others through four primary pathways: global trade, migration, shared ecosystems, and financial systems.
• The document highlights a lack of shared language to describe transboundary climate risk, recommending that the IPCC lead the development of consistent terminology to allow for better synthesis of evidence.
• While transboundary risk assessments have primarily been conducted by developed countries in Europe, indicator-based studies suggest that many developing countries are also highly exposed.
• The authors suggest that the global stocktake under the Paris Agreement should move beyond aggregating national contributions to specifically track and assess transboundary climate risks and regional responses.
• Current international adaptation finance is deemed insufficient, and the authors argue that a shift in framing is needed to view adaptation as a shared global investment rather than a political transfer from rich to poor countries.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2018). Transboundary Climate Risk. https://www.sei.org/publications/transboundary-climate-risk

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Transboundary Climate Risk. 2018. https://www.sei.org/publications/transboundary-climate-risk.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Transboundary Climate Risk |date=18 April 2018 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/transboundary-climate-risk |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2018transboundary, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Transboundary Climate Risk}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2018}, month = apr, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/transboundary-climate-risk}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }