“Strong Mitigation” Could Cut UK Climate Damage Costs by a Third – LSE

The total cost of damage caused by climate change to the UK is projected to increase from current levels – 1.1% of GDP – to 3.3% by 2050, according to a report from the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. Based on current policies, climate change damages are projected to reach 7.4% of GDP by 2100. The report examines nine key “impact channels”, from agriculture, livestock and fisheries, to drought, flooding and coastal impacts. Future impacts are expressed as “loss of socioeconomic welfare” and reported as equivalent loss to UK GDP. The report found that with “strong global mitigation action” impacts of climate change on the UK economy could be reduced from 7.4%, to 2.4% of GDP by 2100. It said the single greatest risk to the UK economy was “catastrophic disruption to the global economic system” worth 4.1% of GDP. On a sector basis, agriculture is expected to be most impacted by climate change, with loss of arable land halving its contribution to UK GDP by 2100. Economic drivers of net zero include that benefits of mitigation outweigh costs in the second half of the century, the report said.

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