Climate Change Assessment.pdf

Best Practices for Consideration of the Effects of Climate Change in Project-Level Environmental Assessments (2017) outlines 11 best practices to address climate change in environmental assessments (EAs). The best practices are categorized into scoping, assessing effects, mitigating effects, methodologies and uncertainties, and follow-up.

Key best practices include:
1. Identifying environmental and project components affected by climate change.
2. Conducting preliminary vulnerability assessments to determine the level of detail for further assessments.
3. Examining the impact of climate change on the need or justification for the project.
4. Projecting future baseline conditions for environmental components affected by climate change.
5. Assessing project effects relative to redefined baseline conditions with climate change.
6. Evaluating the impact of climate change on vulnerable project components.
7. Identifying and evaluating options to modify the project and reduce effects worsened by climate change.
8. Assessing options to reduce project vulnerability to climate change.
9. Explaining and justifying methodologies used to consider future climate conditions.
10. Describing uncertainties and degree of confidence in results.
11. Providing a monitoring and management plan to reduce effects.

These best practices aim to ensure that EAs consider the implications of climate change on proposed projects and provide decision-makers with the necessary information to address these implications during project planning.