Search Climate Insights Directory

The policy brief evaluates the vulnerability and institutional capacities of three Latin American coastal communities—Teacapan (Mexico), Bayahibe (Dominican Republic), and Brava de Almada (Brazil)—to respond to extreme rainfall events. While legal frameworks and actor networks are generally sufficient, the study finds that citizen participation mechanisms are consistently weak across the sites. The report highlights specific deficiencies: Brava de Almada lacks inter-institutional communication and popular participation in contingency plans; Teacapan suffers from fragile local response actions despite a robust regional civil protection system; and Bayahibe is partially ignored by central government-led initiatives. The document recommends improving two-way communication between local and central authorities, increasing social risk perception, and updating risk management tools like vulnerability maps.

The report analyzes the flood and heat risks in Durán, Ecuador, finding that 60% of the canton faces medium to very high flood risk. It identifies a strong correlation between informal settlements, low socioeconomic status, and high vulnerability. The study recommends a master plan for storm drainage, the restoration of mangroves to mitigate tidal effects, and the implementation of urban green structures to increase resilience.

The Bekwai Municipal Assembly identifies rainfall variability, forest fires, water scarcity, windstorms, and flooding as its main climate hazards. The document assesses vulnerabilities across five key sectors, noting that services, trade, and finance have the lowest vulnerability score (-0.23), while agriculture and water, health, and sanitation are highlighted as areas of greater concern. Proposed adaptation measures include implementing smart agriculture, modern irrigation, crop insurance, and enhancing climate education.

The Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly identifies coastal erosion, flash floods, windstorms, erratic rainfall, droughts, and heat waves as its main climate hazards. Key sensitive sectors include agriculture, forestry, infrastructure, tourism, and water/health. Proposed adaptation measures focus on coastal protection, enforcing building codes and mining laws, nature-based solutions like mangrove planting, and improving early warning systems and irrigation.

The Master Plan for the Pampa Huari River Basin (PDC-PH) provides a comprehensive strategy to address water scarcity, pollution from mining and urban waste, and land degradation in a semi-arid region of Potosí, Bolivia. Developed under the Bolivia WATCH program using a Robust Decision Making (RDM) framework, the plan integrates water supply (WASH) with basin-wide hydrology. Key findings highlight critical water quality issues, with several rivers classified as 'Class E' (unsuitable for human consumption) due to mining and urban sewage. The plan prioritizes three micro-basins—Kari Kari, Santa Lucia, and Villacollo—for environmental restoration and proposes five strategic lines focusing on ecosystem protection, sustainable water and sanitation, efficient agricultural irrigation, mining impact mitigation, and inter-institutional governance.

Nigeria's Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) establishes a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2060. The strategy analyzes four decarbonization scenarios—Business As Usual (BAU), Current Policy Scenario (CPS), Gas Economy Scenario (GES), and Renewable Energy Scenario (RES)—concluding that the RES, supported by international aid (RES+), offers the most promising balance of low emissions and economic growth. The report details sectoral mitigation measures for power, AFOLU, industry, transport, and waste, alongside a comprehensive adaptation framework to protect the economy, particularly the agriculture sector, from climate-induced GDP losses. Implementation relies on policy, financial, and technological innovations, including carbon pricing and the establishment of a National Climate Change Fund.

Albania's revised NDC aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20.9% by 2030 compared to a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. The plan expands its scope to include all IPCC sectors, with significant mitigation efforts focused on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and sustainable forest management. The document also provides a comprehensive vulnerability assessment and prioritized adaptation measures for the Albanian coast and the AFOLU sector, emphasizing the need for climate-proofing infrastructure and enhancing ecosystem resilience.

The report investigates the May 2022 extreme rainfall event in Eastern Northeast Brazil, which caused 133 deaths and displaced over 25,000 people. Observational analysis indicates that 7-day and 15-day rainfall events of this magnitude are exceptionally rare in the current climate, with return periods of approximately 1-in-500 and 1-in-1000 years, respectively. While climate models exhibited systematic errors in precipitation magnitudes for this specific event, the authors conclude that human-caused climate change is at least partially responsible for increasing the likelihood and intensity of such rainfall. The study further highlights that structural vulnerabilities, including unplanned urbanisation in low-income neighbourhoods and an infrastructure deficit, significantly exacerbated the disaster's impact.

The report attributes the 2022 West African floods to a combination of anthropogenic climate change, which significantly increased the likelihood and intensity of rainfall in the Lake Chad and Lower Niger basins, and systemic vulnerabilities including poor water management, rapid unplanned urbanization, and socioeconomic instability. In the Lake Chad region, climate change made the seasonal rainfall event approximately 80 times more likely and 20% more intense. In the Lower Niger basin, the 7-day maximum rainfall event became about twice as likely and 5% more intense. The human toll was exacerbated by the release of the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon and the proximity of settlements to floodplains.

The report investigates the 2022 Pakistan floods, focusing on two event definitions: 60-day maximum rainfall in the Indus basin and 5-day maximum rainfall in Sindh and Balochistan. While observational trends suggest that a 1.2°C warmer climate increased 5-day rainfall intensity by about 75% and 60-day rainfall by 50%, the authors refrain from a precise quantitative attribution due to high rainfall variability and climate model limitations. However, models project that a further 0.8°C of warming (reaching 2°C above pre-industrial levels) will significantly increase the intensity and probability of short-duration extreme rainfall. The study also highlights that the disaster's scale was exacerbated by outdated river management, high poverty, and gender-based vulnerabilities.

The study concludes that human-induced climate change significantly increased the probability of the 2022 summer soil moisture droughts in both West-Central Europe and the Northern Hemisphere extratropics, primarily driven by a strong increase in high temperatures rather than precipitation deficits. For West-Central Europe, the likelihood of root-zone soil moisture drought increased by 3-4 times and surface soil moisture drought by 5-6 times. In the Northern Hemisphere extratropics, the increase was more pronounced, with the likelihood of root-zone drought increasing by at least 20 times and surface drought by at least 5 times. These conditions led to severe impacts on agriculture, energy production, and water infrastructure, compounded by socio-economic stressors such as the conflict in Ukraine.

The report examines the 2022 food crisis in the Central Sahel, which followed an erratic 2021 rainy season characterized by delayed onset and short duration. Using three observational datasets and multiple climate models, the study finds that it is impossible to significantly link these specific monsoon characteristics to anthropogenic climate change due to large uncertainties and discrepancies. Instead, the crisis is attributed to chronic vulnerabilities, including extreme poverty, armed conflict, political instability, and global economic shocks such as the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study concludes that anthropogenic climate change made the record-breaking early season heat in northern Argentina and Paraguay approximately 60 times more likely. The analysis focused on the 7-day average of daily maximum temperatures, finding that the 2022 event was an exceptional occurrence that would have been unlikely without human-induced warming. The report also highlights the region's high vulnerability due to urban heat island effects, informal settlements lacking electricity, and the timing of the heatwave before populations had acclimated to summer temperatures.

The study finds that while the 2022 drought in Central South America was primarily driven by natural variability and La Niña conditions, human-induced climate change exacerbated the event by increasing temperatures, which reduced water availability through higher evapotranspiration. The drought caused severe agricultural losses in Argentina, including a projected 25-50% decrease in soy yields and a significant drop in wheat production, while limiting potable water access for over 75,000 people in Uruguay.

The study concludes that greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions contributed to the increased intensity and probability of heavy rainfall during the 2022 tropical storm events in Madagascar, Mozambique, and Malawi. While Tropical Storm Ana was a rare 1-in-50-year event for Mozambique and Malawi, Cyclone Batsirai was a more common 1-in-2-year event for Madagascar. The humanitarian impact was severely amplified by compound factors, including preceding floods, existing droughts in southern Madagascar, and high socio-economic vulnerability. Despite accurate forecasting by regional meteorological centers, infrastructure damage and a lack of trust in warnings hindered effective responses.

The document identifies that while Asian elephants possess some resilience due to habitat and dietary diversity, they are vulnerable to climate change due to sensitivity to high temperatures, water requirements, and low adaptive capacity caused by habitat fragmentation and slow reproduction. It argues that conservation priorities must focus on securing fresh water, maintaining connected habitats, and mitigating human-elephant conflict exacerbated by climate stressors.

The document identifies the giant panda's low reproductive rate, dependence on bamboo, and human encroachment as primary vulnerabilities to climate change, suggesting habitat connectivity and the restoration of heat-adapted bamboo as conservation priorities.