Look beyond "cost-benefit" analysis in adaptation

IRIN: You can put a price tag on the cost of building a dyke to protect people from sea-level rise brought on by climate change, but not on how they will benefit from it, say the co-authors of a new paper calling on countries not to restrict themselves to cost-benefit analysis.

Co-authors Rachel Berger, a climate change policy advisor to Practical Action, an international development charity, and Muyeye Chambwera, a researcher at the UK-based International Institute for Environment Development, said they were prompted to write their paper because countries were in danger of focusing exclusively on the cost-benefit analysis approach.

…"Most climate change adaptation cost reports produced recently have used the cost-benefit analysis tool," Chambwera noted. What set their alarm bells ringing was the agenda of a recent workshop organized by the Nairobi Work Programme (NWP) on how to use cost-benefit methods for adaptation planning at country and community levels.

…"The problem is that in our society the language with the most weight is that of money, so there will always be pressure to reduce the complexity of decision-making to tallying up the costs and benefits in some oversimplified currency metric."

Roberts, who has produced key research on the role of foreign aid in addressing climate justice issues, commented: "The key to me is that for each adaptation action, or non-action, different people reap the benefits from those who bear the costs. For this reason, cost-benefit analysis is indeed nearly useless at the local or even national level."…

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