ADDRESSING AND COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS UNCERTAINTIES IN PROJECT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENTS

While climate change has become an important concern at both regional and global levels, its inherent uncertainties have often been cited as the main reason for delaying many actions to mitigate its potential impacts. Reviews of environmental assessments (EAs) have shown that impacts from climate change have been inadequately addressed within them and that the corresponding uncertainties have been addressed even more poorly. This paper describes several basic approaches for addressing and analysing climate change within the EAs of individual projects with a focus on its uncertainties. Subsequently, the paper describes how the results from this analysis can be effectively and comprehensively communicated to the EA's disparate set of technical and non-technical decision-makers and stakeholders. Based upon this overall approach, the paper proposes a general set of guidelines that enables proponents to incorporate climate change and its uncertainties into project EAs.