The presentation will highlight the need to adapt to climate change, in a few economic sectors, and emphasize the main difficulties to do so. It will also identify methodological approaches to integrate adaptation and risk management in a unified framework, and discuss the trade-offs and synergies that are likely to appear. In particular, it will discuss the role of the radical uncertainty on how local climates will change, and the new decision-making approaches that have been proposed to cope with it. As an illustration, it will focus on urban areas, where climate change adaptation creates major challenges.

Stéphane Hallegatte is an economist and lead climate change specialist with the World Bank, CIRED and Météo-France. He works on urban dynamics and climate change vulnerability, on natural disaster management and adaptation, and on green growth strategies. He is lead author of the IPCC Special Report on managing the risks of extreme events to advance climate change adaptation and of the AR5 chapter on the economics of adaptation.