 Thanks very much and thanks in particular to the Institute for inviting me to come to Dublin for the first time ever, I should say. I hope to be back many times. I'm going to run you through the IPCC Working Group II contribution to the fifth assessment report. I'll perhaps redone it for some of you. First explain a bit about how the IPCC works and how it arrives at these kind of conclusions that it presents and that you read about in the media. Focus in on some of the key conclusions and then talk about the relevance it has to the adaptation to climate change. So that's the target of confronting the climate adaptation challenge. So for those of you who are not quite familiar with the IPCC, or just as a refresher, I thought I'd just show this diagram which is actually from the third assessment report back in 2001 that shows the decision space on climate change and climate policy. And it's quite nice to map the three working groups of IPCC on it, conveniently called Working Group I, Working Group II and Working Group III. Working Group I is the working group that deals with the science of climate change, natural science of climate change that looks at to what extent are humans increasing emissions, is that leading to climate change, what can we expect in the future and so on. So that's the clear mandate of Working Group I. Working Group II that I represent and I'll be talking about is this big block that deals with a given climate change. What are the impacts, the vulnerabilities to climate change and to what extent can we adapt to those impacts and vulnerabilities? And then mitigation, which is the other policy response, has its own Working Group, Work Group III that looks at to what extent reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gases can reduce the human interference with the climate system. So the three working groups worked for the past four years or so to assess the state of science on these issues of climate change, impact, vulnerability, adaptation and mitigation. And they all had their week-long session where countries come together with scientists to agree on the summary for policymakers. Some people argue it should actually be called the summary by policymakers because policymakers have a strong say in what is actually being said here. But it's based very much on the individual chapters, the underlying reports. The quality of this picture isn't very good, but this is the copy that came out of the week-long deliberations on Working Group II in Japan at the end of March 2014 where government representatives and authors were locked up in this building not only during the day but also during the night, I should add, in order to achieve consensus about the findings that were going to be in that summary. And the word consensus here is important because the IMPCC operates by consensus. The consensus that is sometimes referred to is the consensus between governments about the findings that the researchers, the authors, have presented. Now, so what happened inside that building? This is a picture of the room where in the front several authors are seated and you can see they're all looking at a stage where this gentleman together with his colleague, the two co-chairs of Working Group II, were leading the deliberations. And because this was the opening session there was quite a bit of media interest as well, but the rest of the week was off limits to media. It was only between the government representatives and the authors to discuss a draft that had already been prepared by the authors and the governments go through that literally line by line. So here's a picture, some of you might know the lead author there in the middle, Richard Tol. Together with his colleague, Dr. Aaron from the US, every author team, CLA, is asked to sit there in the front and respond to questions that governments might have on the text that refers to their particular chapter. So you see their project, there's not separate pictures, actually behind them there's a big screen where you see a paragraph with lots of track changes and highlighting and so on. That's the level of detail by which governments go through that summary line by line. And it's really a discussion between the governments. It's one government, here you see Norway looking a bit pensive at what is there on the screen and Belize are also wondering if that's really clear enough and if that's the message they would like to take home to their government. India is here working on some text proposals and New Zealand have a suggestion on how to frame or state a certain finding in slightly different words. And this goes on until all countries agree about that particular sentence and then we go on to the next sentence. It's a very careful process. This process took very long, not because it was so controversial but because countries are particularly careful about how certain things are framed because they need to be able to explain that to their governments but also they realize how important this is for making decisions under the climate negotiations in UNFCCC. So then the co-chairs would take stock of the various suggestions. Sometimes they have to consult with the authors to see if the suggestion is actually consistent with the chapters and the chapters are not up for discussion here. And if they are then in agreement, we go on to the next question. Good, so just by means of process because I think there is quite a bit of... If you just rely on the media on how the IPCCC process works I think it's easy to get sort of a misperception of how that process works and how that consensus is being achieved. So the summary will appear in the full report of Working Group 2 which actually consists of two volumes. This is going to be more than 3,000 pages. It's probably more close to 4,000 pages, a few kilos of book. And that's also why it's so important to have that summary because nobody is going to read 4,000 pages, right? Now about Working Group 2. The three working groups of IPCCC have always existed since the IPCCC was set up in 1988. It was set up in 1988 to do one report that would inform the negotiations on the climate treaty that was agreed in 1992. So they come up with the report in 1990, which is called... I don't even think it was called the first assessment report. It was just called Climate Change 1990. It then became the first assessment report because countries wanted the IPCCC to continue doing these kind of assessments on a periodic basis. Always through these three working groups. And Working Group 2 was always about the impact. Issues of vulnerability and adaptation really only appeared later even though that was perhaps part of the title. Adaptation wasn't so much on vogue in the early 90s. It was seen as politically incorrect because prevention is better than cure and if you do research on adaptation or if you even talk about adaptation you are distracting from the need for mitigation and therefore adaptation wasn't a very vibrant research field at the time. It is now. Developing countries insisted because they felt that they were the first ones that needed to adapt, the first ones that would face the impact that in the third assessment report there was going to be a chapter specifically on adaptation and there was one in the fourth assessment report as well. In the fourth assessment report there was also a chapter that linked adaptation with mitigation. The fifth assessment report, the one that just came out has four chapters on adaptation and each of the other chapters that deals with impacts on the sector or the regional basis also talks quite a bit about adaptation. There is much more research available for the IPCCC to assess now. And it is taking the word vulnerability much more seriously. Vulnerability means to what extent are people actually going to be affected and the differences by which people are affected. It means a focus on people. Previous reports of working group two were very much dominated by natural scientists just like working group one. Working group two this time around involves many more social scientists and I'll come back to that in a minute. But what that means in terms of presenting the science for example is in previous reports as an example the IPCCC would look at the impacts of climate change on agriculture which means food production. So scenarios of climate change and temperature and CO2 and rainfall would feed into agricultural models and the result of that would be presented as a percentage increase in crop or a decrease in crop. That is still part of the assessment but it has now also included the human dimension. So it is no longer talking about the impacts of climate change on food production it's talking about the impacts of climate change and food security. So that's one of the ways in which the IPCCC is not only trying to capture a larger and more relevant field of research but also responding to needs of decision makers and country policy makers. Very briefly about what the working group two report then covers. There are 30 chapters in total. Two parts A and B and the first part is about the global and sexual aspects. There are two chapters that sort of set the scene one that looks at what the working group one contribution to the fifth assessment report talks about and also what previous reports have said about impacts and one that presents a decision making context within which these results can be read and I'll come back to that. That's quite different from previous reports it talks about the risks of climate change rather than just the impacts. Then there are several chapters that deal with natural management system like water, coasts and so on. Three that deal with human settlement industry and infrastructure human health well-being and security then those four chapters of adaptation that I talked about and then three chapters that try to aggregate this into a chapter on key vulnerabilities on attribution and so on and on security. No, that was the other one. Then part B is a series of chapters that really look at this by region. The IPCC cannot zoom into individual countries but it does identify nine different regions including open oceans plus a chapter on regional context. So for Ireland obviously the chapter on Europe is relevant. I actually did a word count in the Europe chapter I think Ireland's mentioned twice. But still there are 30 chapters in total in fact also about Ireland there was not a single IPCC author this time around from Ireland. I'm not quite sure if there was a reason for that but to compare in Sweden we had in working group two we had six lead authors two of whom were coordinating lead authors but perhaps we can get some insights later. There were 309 authors and review editors from 70 countries involved in this 3000 page report. 37% of those were from developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Almost a third were female and I think very interesting more than 60% of the authors were actually new to the IPCC so they weren't like me involved in previous IPCC reports. They brought in new ideas, new perspectives and many of those were social scientists. So back to that summary and what does it actually say? The first message and I think that's a really important one at the beginning to sort of set the scene as to why we can be much more confident about finding some impacts of vulnerability than previously is that there is a substantially larger knowledge base in the literature, in the scientific literature than there was in the fourth assessment report let alone before that. So they say that increased literature has facilitated comprehensive assessment across a broader set of topics and sectors with expanded coverage of human systems, adaptation and the ocean. So a lot more literature, a lot more work for us as the authors of course to read all that and then to also emphasize some of the new findings that have emerged in the literature over the past six, seven years. This is a diagram it's actually the first diagram in the summary to frame as I said the discussion in one of risk is actually very similar to a diagram that was in the special report on the IPCC in between the fourth and the fifth one on climate extremes, disasters and adaptation where this notion of risk and how it links to impacts is really quite central. So risk being a function of hazards, exposure to those hazards and vulnerability to those hazards that determines the risk and the materialization of that risk creates those impacts and those impacts are the results of climate. I think actually the arrows from impacts are the wrong way around I have no idea why they are the way they are but these impacts are a function of climate both natural climate variability and climate change as well as several socio-economic processes. Exposure is higher in those areas where more people choose to live in the coast for example or in some countries where people have no other choice but to live in highly exposed areas like flood plains. That all combines into risk it provides a context that creates the risk it also creates a context for decision making for risk management. Three sections in the summary for policymakers it doesn't just summarize the 30 chapters that would be perhaps a little bit too repetitive but it combines that into three sections one on observations, observations of impacts observed vulnerability and also observed adaptation within that broader context then a section on future risks as well as opportunities for adaptation and a section on managing those risks and building resilience and as you can see I'll go through some of the headline conclusions there there was quite a bit more confidence in the first section then to the second section the third one on managing future risks because there is very little empirical research that allows us to talk with confidence about what good risk management procedures and practices would be and we can perhaps discuss that afterwards. This is in a way an important new finding compared to the fourth assessment report the fourth assessment report was the first time that the IPCC stated that impacts are being observed in natural systems now it demonstrated that impacts are being observed both in natural and human systems around the world and they are attributed to climate change many terrestrial freshwater and marine species have shifted geographic ranges so these are examples of the ecosystem impacts but for example in human systems there are observed changes in crop yields that can be attributed to climate change and this is an interesting one because often agriculture is seen as an example of where climate change might actually be a good thing first of all because more CO2 leads to better plant growth but also because in higher latitudes including Sweden where I work higher temperatures might actually mean more productive land and more productivity more crops taking everything together the IPCC has come to the conclusion with high confidence it says that negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts and of course the underlying chapter on food security provides much more detail in that differences in vulnerability and exposure arise from non-climatic factors use it as some jargon here but this statement is basically saying that it's not only climate change that matters it's not only climate change that determines whether or not people are vulnerable and at risk it's also to do with people's development status equality entitlements, institutions that are functioning and so on this is a map of the world that shows in different colours the observed impacts in blue in physical systems in green in biological systems and in red in human and managed systems and this also demonstrates at that first point that impacts are being seen around the world in not only in physical and biological systems in human and managed systems as well I don't have time now to go into this in detail but it does show that climate change really is no longer an issue of the future something that we need to be concerned about because in the future we might have some impacts the relatively benign warming that we've seen over the past 100 years or so of 0.8 degrees we already are seeing impacts around the world so what do we know about adaptation and what observations on adaptation do we have first of all yes we know from not only experience also from the academic literature that increasingly adaptation is being considered as part of planning, national planning but also sectoral planning and at more local scales but yeah that's exactly governments that are planning but I should say responding is still relatively limited where is this I need to go back yes adaptation is becoming embedded but with more limited implementation of responses so we're still sort of stuck in the planning phase we understand that impacts are important that risks are such that we need to be prepared for them and documents are being prepared to see how we could incorporate those and how we can plan for adaptation but the implementation is still relatively limited and what makes it complicated is the fact that adaptation isn't the only thing that matters it isn't the only thing that is needed as far as policymakers are concerned and there is uncertainty was about the impacts some impacts are more certain than others level rise at least the direction of the sign is clear we look at changes in rainfall patterns there may well be seasonal differences some models suggest an increase in some parts of the world others a decrease in other parts of the world and there may be other uncertainties around that and of course there are also limits to adaptation and we can talk more about that in a minute it also makes the point not only here but in other parts of the report as well that the effectiveness of adaptation very much depends on the extent to which mitigation happens or does not happen if mitigation in other words reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not effective over the next few decades and the likelihood that adaptation is no longer able to reduce impacts to a reasonable level increases these are maps from the working group 1 report on the science of climate change where on the left you see a very optimistic scenario of greenhouse gas emissions over this century and temperature increase as a result of that and on the right you see a more pessimistic scenario the IPCC does not attribute or attach any probabilities to these it has two more that are in between these two extremes but it shows quite nicely the differences and that even in the most optimistic scenario the projected temperature changed by the end of this century in the higher latitudes already exceeds 2 degrees and the impacts that we've seen so far are the result of a 0.8 degree so far the more pessimistic scenario shows projected temperature increase of 4 to even beyond 6 degrees by the end of the century so clearly any idea of the notion of limiting global mean temperature change to 2 degrees a 2 degree target is one that can only be seriously considered under the most optimistic circumstances the most optimistic in terms of climate feedbacks and sensitivity but also the most optimistic in terms of actually reduce greenhouse gases so then there are, based on that, there are 8 key messages about future risks it's a little bit smaller because I tried to put them here on 8 but I think these are perhaps the most important messages of working group 2 is what kind of risks can we expect and of course the extent to which those risks the level of their risk materializes depends on whether or not we are in a high emission low emission pathway first of all the IPCC identifies risk of death injury, ill health or disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones in small island developing states or other small islands due to storm such as coastal flooding and sea level rise there is risk of severe ill health and disrupted livelihoods for large urban populations due to inland flooding in some regions systemic risks due to extreme weather events leading to breakdown of construction networks and critical services in fact some argue this is already happening occasionally like the big floods in Bangkok in Thailand in 2011 which led to big disruptions in world trade for some companies that was really quite problematic or changes in food prices as a result of droughts in some parts of the world where some would argue that civil unrest in North Africa was partly the result of drought in Australia and Russia now the IPCC doesn't make that connection because there is no evidence for that but some would argue that there is some correlation at least risk of mortality and morbidity during periods of extreme heat particularly in urban populations and those working outdoors again we know from the heat wave in Europe in 2003 that the impact can indeed be very high we also know that these impacts can be reduced quite effectively through adaptation risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding and precipitation variability in extremes I mentioned that risk of loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient access to drinking and irrigation water again the access to water is not only a function of climate change I don't want to go in detail about discussions of privatisation of water and the fact that some people are not entitled to water even though there is water where they live that all makes them vulnerable as well risk of loss of marine and coastal ecosystems biodiversity and ecosystem goods functions and services they provide for coastal livelihoods particularly the tropics and the Arctic and then risk of loss of terrestrial inland water ecosystems so this in a way is summarising a large part of those 3000 pages the 8 key risks that climate change could create or is in the process of creating now this is a picture from the third assessment report 2001 when there was already some idea of trying to visualise this notion of risk and how these risks emerge globally as a function of possible temperature increase on the left so the picture on the left was from then working group one and shows for different emission scenarios the expected temperature, global mean temperature increase so you can see that somewhere from 1.5 to close to 6 degrees and those 5 bars here is called the burning embers the burning ember diagram because the hotter it gets from 0 to 6 degrees the redder they become these are 5 reasons for concern so they are risks to unique and threatened systems risks from extreme climate events, distribution of impacts aggregate impacts and risks from future large scale discontinuities at the time it was particularly the slowdown in the thermohaline circulation that people were concerned about and you can see that some of these risks are already starting to emerge even with today's climate and as it gets warmer the colour changes from yellow to red and the 2 degree target was in part based on this assessment or at least the ideas underpinning this assessment this time around so 13 years later a similar exercise has been done so on the left again working group one showing now for two scenarios the same ones that I showed the maps of the optimistic and the more pessimistic emission scenarios showing more or less the same temperature increase from a little bit less than 1 to over 6 the same 5 reasons for concern but one thing you can see here immediately it's like the Australian newspaper that last year had to add another colour on its weather maps to show that it's actually hotter than it's ever been the risks are higher primarily because there is a better understanding of how those risks emerge and what they are dependent on and because some of these risks are already beginning to become visible so particularly the unique and threatened systems where ecosystems are now already facing a much greater impact than 13 years ago and the distribution of impacts are showing higher risks now than they did 13 years ago at the same time with 13 years later these risks actually emerging after 13 years of not very effective mitigation efforts is also higher so increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe pervasive and irreversible impacts that's the summary of that diagram that I showed the overall risks of climate change impacts can be reduced by limiting the rate and magnitude of climate change a logical conclusion from that diagram that the lower you are in this diagram the less the risks you will face then there are a number of other conclusions or findings about future risks that are with lower confidence not because well they are with lower confidence because the research on that is much more recent and this is where climate change is put in the broader context of other human priorities so on the issue of migration or displacement climate change over the 21st century is projected to increase displacement of people and that's medium evidence there is no quantitative statements here connected to that and in fact there are competing schools of thought who interpret the statistics differently climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in the form of civil war and intergroup violence by amplifying well documented drivers of these conflicts this does not say climate change causes war it says climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts in those places where there is already instability such as caused by poverty and economic shocks climate change on the critical infrastructure and territorial integrity of many states are expected to influence national security policies in fact just I think two weeks ago the U.S. group of U.S. Army generals issued a report looking exactly at this issue so this is also showing that climate change is moving from just being an environmental issue to perhaps also being an economic issue to being an issue of security and conflict but at the same time the conclusions are presented with much lower confidence at the earlier ones that I presented throughout the 21st century climate change are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security and prolong existing and create new poverty traps so this I think is a very important message for those who say well climate change isn't really a priority because there are all these other things like poverty and so on that we need to look at nobody I think in the IPCC and certainly not me is disagreeing with that statement yes poverty is a priority yes food security is a priority but ignoring climate change would make it more difficult to address those issues as well then about risk management and this is where we get to adaptation and to perhaps for some also a bit frustrating conclusions about adaptation despite the fact that there were four chapters on adaptation in the report and there was a lot more literature the IPCC hasn't really been able to sort of demonstrate say best practices or identify the factors that determine whether or not adaptation can be successful first and foremost because adaptation displays in context specific what might work in Ireland might not work in Sweden what might work in Holland might not work in Bangladesh a first step towards adaptation to future climate change is reducing your current vulnerability that sounds like obviously trivial at the same time there are plenty of plans being developed to prepare to adaptation in the future without actually looking if we are sufficiently well adapted to today's climate poor planning over emphasizing short-term outcomes or failing to sufficiently anticipate consequences can result in mal-adaptation in other words it could actually make you more vulnerable than you already are and that's also again a message not only to the policy makers and government but to those responsible for implementing and planning adaptation often at the lower level of government greater rates and magnitude of climate change in other words a high emission pathway increase the likelihood of exceeding adaptation limits and this refers to the chapter that I led about adaptation limits and I can say a lot more about that but I think I've sort of gone through my time so I'll just very quickly finish by asking then the questions what does that mean for adaptation policy and to some extent also adaptation planning the one thing to keep in mind is that the IPCC never set out to present a guideline or a recipe for adaptation the IPCC that's the mantra for the IPCC even in the beginning the IPCC should be policy relevant but not policy prescriptive it cannot tell countries what to do or how to solve certain problems and the presentation of impact to working group 2 is of course informative to adaptation planning in the same way that it can also motivate or justify action on mitigation given the predominantly local to national nature of climate adaptation are these IPCC assessments even relevant to adaptation policy no matter prescriptive but does the IPCC meet its objective of being policy relevant when it comes to adaptation policy at the global level adaptation policy isn't actually so much about what are best practices it should be perhaps it is often reduced to how much money is needed and where would that money come from and what the literature is only beginning to explore now and hopefully in a future report of the IPCC this will be considered is the need for people, for organizations for boundary partners to sit between the IPCC and those that it aims to address I think the IPCC particularly when it comes to mitigation has a direct connection to those governments who use that information to negotiate climate policy when it comes to providing information to those who are responsible for developing adaptation activities or even for planning them or developing policy for them I think there is a gap there and that gap is one of knowledge translation and knowledge brokerage and I expect there to be a growing market and some organizations are already jumping in that market for organizations, for consultants to inform those interested in developing adaptation plans this is partly to do with how to interpret climate information or climate services in such a way that it becomes actionable to adaptation but it's also about linking adaptation within the broader context of development whether that is in a developing or in a developed country so these are really questions that the IPCC hasn't been able to address not because it didn't want to but because adaptation is still years behind mitigation when it comes to understanding what works, what doesn't work and how we set priorities. Thanks very much