Costs of adapting to climate change significantly underestimated

Costs of adapting to climate change significantly underestimated. Researchers say UN climate negotiations should aim for substantially more funding %0A " Download a copy of the IIED and Grantham Institute for Climate Change publication 'Assessing the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change' here - Press release issued by the International Institute for Environment and Development For Immediate release - Thursday 27 August 2009 Scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will warn today that the UN negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts. The real costs of adaptation are likely to be 2-3 times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), say Professor Martin Parry and colleagues in a new reviewed study published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. The study adds that costs will be even more when the full range of climate impacts on human activities is considered. The new report claims that the cost of adapting to coastal flooding could be three times greater than predicted Professor Parry and colleagues warn that this underestimate of the cost of adaptation threatens to weaken the outcome of UNFCCC negotiations, which are due to culminate in Copenhagen in December with a global deal aimed at tackling climate change.