Climate Vulnerability of Germany #Climate Change
The earth is getting hotter. Most scientists are sure this is mainly due to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. To give a wake-up-call to the humanity and to find out who is mainly affected the President of the Maldives founded the Climate Vulnerable Forum in 2009. It created the Climate Vulnerability Monitor which analyzes four main areas: health impact, weather disasters, habitat loss and economic stress. Germany is with US and Japan amongst the largest developed economies which will experience the largest economic stress in absolute terms.
Another indicator which calculates the vulnerability to climate change of a country is the Global Adaptation Index (GAIN). It takes also the preparedness of a country into account to be able to cope with the climate change challenges. The GAIN can help to prioritize investments to make the response more efficient.
Looking closer at the “Vulnerability (exposure to climate-related hazards, sensitivity to their impacts and the capacity to cope with those impacts)”, Germany’s exposure to significant climatic variations remained the same, the sensitivity decreased and its “current ability to increase resilience” increased sharply between 2007 and 2008 mainly due to an increase of the agricultural technological capacity.
The Readiness evaluates the speed and efficiency of adaptation, where Germany increased since 1997 until 2005 and remained on a high level since then. The GAIN ranks Germany as number 9 in terms of vulnerability and readiness and states that Germany may need little help to overcome adaptation challenges. Compared with the Climate Vulnerability Monitor the GAIN goes more in detail and gives the possibility to access the data.
The National Communication states possible effects of climate change which could have negative or positive regional impacts. According to both indicators and the national communication the country seems to be aware of these effects and has the capability to cope with the challenges.
Resources, last accessed 09.02.2012:
DARA and the Climate Vulnerability Forum (2010) Climate Vulnerability Monitor 2010, http://daraint.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/CVM_Complete-1-August-2011.pdf
Global Adaptation Institute (without year) Germany, http://index.gain.org/country/germany
United Nations (2010) Fifth National Report of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany, http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/deu_nc5_resubmit.pdf
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09 Feb 2012
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Marie Glück
IMSD /
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