Page - 142 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

142 R.A. Jameset al. climate change (Hulme et al. 2011). Referring again to Fig. 5.9, it is clear that some countries and regions havemore data available than others, andwhilst this is not the only factor that determines confidence in attribution studies (Otto et al. 2013), the strengthof evidencewill continue tovarybetween regions, andbetween climate change impacts. The discussion about who is most deserving of funding raises ethical questionswhichcannotbeansweredbyscientists, andhighlights that incorporatingattributionscience intoasystemfordistributingfundingwouldnotbe straightforward. In thefinal sectionweexplore apotentially less controversial, and perhapsmorefundamentalwayinwhichthesciencecanbeusedinhelpingtodecide whichactionsmight address lossesanddamages. 5.4.4 AnalysingDriversofL&DtoInformPracticalActions toAvert,Minimise,andAddressLossesandDamages Rather than being used to help answer political and ethical questions aboutwho shouldpay,andwhoshouldreceivesupport(seechapterbyWallimann-Helmeretal. 2018),attributionsciencecouldinsteadhelptoanswerpracticalquestionsabouthow to spend themoney:How should risksbemanaged?What canbedone tominimise andaddresslossesanddamages?Whichactionscanbetakentohelppeopletorecover fromL&D? Inorder to prepare for changing risks, it is fundamental to understand their causes, including drivers of changes in hazard, as well as vulnerability and exposure.Anthropogenicclimatechangeis justonedriverofchanginghazard,buta fundamentaldriverwhichmustbeincorporatedintoriskanalysesinordertoidentify riskmanagement optionswhichwill bemost effective in a changing climate (see Mechler and Schinko 2016; chapter by Schinko et al. 2018). As demonstrated in Sect. 5.3, attribution science is focused on establishing causality and, alongside other climate change research, is an important element in a toolkit for climate risk management. From a climate riskmanagement perspective, the key is to be able to quantify current risks and how thesemay evolve in the future in a changing climate (and, more broadly, a changingworld). The importance of future climatemodel projec- tionsisfrequentlyhighlightedwithreferencetoadaptationplanning(e.g.Giorgietal. 2009)and,more recently,with reference toplanning toaddress lossesanddamages (Surminski andLopez 2015). It is also increasingly recognised that, to understand risk, climate projections should be combinedwith projections of future changes in exposureandvulnerability (Mechler andBouwer2015).Attribution sciencecanbe acomplementarysourceofevidence,which(a)provides importantadditional infor- mationabout changing risk in thepresenceof uncertainty, (b) offers an assessment of how risks are changing now (whilst future projectionsmight not be relevant for 30 years or more), and (c) helps to diagnose the causes of losses and damages, which couldbeuseful in prioritising actions to reduce risk.Theneed to assess sci- ence investigating the roleof climateandnon-climatedrivers in recenthigh-impact