Assessing the costs of adaptation to climate change: A critique of the UNFCCC estimates

A new report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London indicates that the real costs of climate change adaptation are likely to be two-to-three times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The report adds that costs will be even more when the full range of climate impacts on human activities is considered, and warns 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.
The UNFCCC has estimated annual global costs of adapting to climate change to be US$40-170 billion, or the cost of about three Olympic Games per year. The report's authors, however, warn that these estimates were produced too quickly and did not include key sectors such as energy, manufacturing, retailing, mining, tourism and ecosystems. Other sectors that the UNFCCC did include were only partially covered. The report calls for detailed case studies of what adaptation costs will be, and points out that the few that already exist suggest that costs will be considerable. It adds that the UNFCCC estimates do not include the cost of bearing 'residual damage' that will arise from situations where adaptation is not technically feasible or simply too expensive.
http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=11501IIED