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Enhancing Community Resilience: Addressing Compound and Cascading Climate Shocks

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28 Aug, 2024

This post was originally published on Climate Links

Enhancing Community Resilience: Addressing Compound and Cascading Climate Shocks
jschoshinski
Mon, 08/26/2024 – 13:11

As climate change accelerates, communities around the world are increasingly vulnerable to both interrelated and simultaneous, seemingly unrelated, risks. Unlike isolated weather events, compound and cascading shocks—where multiple risks interact or one event triggers subsequent crises—pose a growing threat. Complex risk necessitates a shift in how development actors approach international development and climate resilience programs and policies, particularly by integrating comprehensive risk frameworks that account for interdependencies in critical systems.

Understanding Compound and Cascading Shocks

Compound and cascading shocks are distinct yet interconnected concepts. Compound shocks occur when multiple risks, such as extreme weather events, economic disruptions, or pandemics, coincide or interact, amplifying their collective impact. A recent example is the global food security crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate-induced droughts and floods in key agricultural regions. This combination of factors created a “perfect storm” that severely disrupted food supplies and pushed millions into hunger.

Cascading shocks, on the other hand, are triggered when one initial event causes a series of subsequent crises, typically across interconnected systems. The 2020-2022 California drought is one example: historical drought led to a variety of cascading shocks, including declines in agricultural production, wildfires and deteriorating air quality, and a strain on energy supply. These shocks had their own set of impacts—both individually and in combination—including $3 billion in crop revenue losses, health emergencies and increased healthcare costs, biodiversity loss and increased greenhouse gas emissions, and higher energy costs.

Policy and Planning Recommendations

To the extent that development actors are integrating climate risk into their work, we tend to assess the potential impacts of risk by looking at one hazard and sector at a time. Given the growing frequency and severity of these interconnected risks, development actors—including government policymakers, donors, and implementers—must adopt a comprehensive approach to integrating risk into international development and resilience programs and policies, meaning we must consider the possibilities of compound and cascading risk. 

These concerns are not unique to the Global South. The U.S. Government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), particularly Chapter 17 on “Climate Effects on US International Interests,” highlights the increasing importance of accounting for system interdependency in risk management. This involves recognizing how different systems—such as energy, water, food, and health—are interconnected, even across borders and hemispheres, and how a failure in one area can cascade into others. 

To effectively manage these risks, development actors should prioritize the following actions:

  1. Adopt Comprehensive Risk Frameworks: Incorporate strategies that account for the interaction of multiple risks, ensuring that resilience-strengthening efforts robustly address interconnected systems and risks. Tools such as scenario planning, stress testing, and systems mapping can help to ensure programs and policies are developed with a focus on resilience to complex risk.
  2. Strengthen Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Encourage collaboration across sectors and disciplines to address the multifaceted nature of compound and cascading shocks. 
  3. Incorporate Adaptive Management: Develop and implement adaptive management processes, allowing actors to respond quickly to unexpected interactions and impacts.

Opportunities to Address These Shocks

Recognizing and addressing compound and cascading risk is essential for enhancing community resilience. As such, National Adaptation Plans and Nationally Determined Contributions are key opportunities to focus on resilience to complex risk. USAID’s Comprehensive Action for Climate Change Initiative (CACCI) is well-positioned to strengthen risk management by helping countries use comprehensive risk frameworks while designing their climate policies and taking climate action. For example, CACCI is supporting the African Union in implementing its Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan. This support includes enhancing coordination between regional economic communities and Member States in monitoring and evaluating progress on addressing transboundary and complex climate risks. 

Government policymakers, donors, and implementers can also follow the actions above to strengthen resilience to complex risk in other programs and policies. Together, we can create more robust and resilient systems and communities despite the increasingly complex challenges posed by climate change.

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In June, I had the privilege of attending the 2025 E-Waste World, Battery Recycling, Metal Recycling, and ITAD & Circular Electronics Conference & Expo events in Frankfurt, Germany.

Speaking in the ITAD & Circular Electronics track on a panel with global Circular Economy leaders from Foxway Group, ERI and HP, we explored the evolving role of IT asset disposition (ITAD) and opportunities in the circular electronics economy.

The event’s focus on advancing circular economy goals and reducing environmental impact delivered a series of insights and learnings. From this assembly of international expertise across 75+ countries, here are some points from the presentations that stood out for me:

1. Environmental impact of the digital economy

Digitalisation has a heavy material footprint in the production phase, and lifecycle thinking needs to guide every product decision. Consider that 81% of the energy a laptop uses in its lifetime is consumed during manufacture (1 tonne in manufacture is equal to 10,000 tonnes of CO2) and laptops are typically refreshed or replaced by companies every 3–4 years.

From 2018 to 2023, the average number of devices and connections per capita in the world increased by 50% (2.4 to 3.6). In North America (8.2 to 13.4) and Western Europe (5.6 to 9.4), this almost doubled. In 1960, only 10 periodic table elements were used to make phones. In 1990, 27 elements were used and now over 60 elements are used to build the smartphones that we have become so reliant on.

A key challenge is that low-carbon and digital technologies largely compete for the same minerals. Material resource extraction could increase 60% between 2020 and 2060, while demand for lithium, cobalt and graphite is expected to rise by 500% until 2050.

High growth in ICT demand and Internet requires more attention to the environmental footprint of the digital economy. Energy consumption of data centres is expected to more than double by 2026. The electronics industry accounts for over 4% of global GHG — and digitalisation-related waste is growing, with skewed impacts on developing countries.

E-waste is rising five times faster than recycling — 1 tonne of e-waste has a carbon footprint of 2 tonnes. Today’s solution? ‘Bury it or burn it.’ In terms of spent emissions, waste and the costs associated with end-of-life liabilities, PCBAs (printed circuit board assembly) cost us enormously — they generally achieve 3–5% recyclability (75% of CO2 in PCBAs is from components).

2. Regulating circularity in electronics

There is good momentum across jurisdictions in right-to-repair, design and labelling regulations; recycling targets; and voluntary frameworks on circularity and eco-design.

The EU is at the forefront. EU legislation is lifting the ICT aftermarket, providing new opportunities for IT asset disposition (ITAD) businesses. To get a sense, the global market for electronics recycling is estimated to grow from $37 billion to $108 billion (2022–2030). The value of refurbished electronics is estimated to increase from $85.9 billion to $262.2 billion (2022–2032). Strikingly, 40% of companies do not have a formal ITAD strategy in place.

Significantly, the EU is rethinking its Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) management targets, aligned with upcoming circularity and WEEE legislation, as part of efforts to foster the circular economy. A more robust and realistic circularity-driven approach to setting collection targets would better reflect various factors including long lifespans of electronic products and market fluctuations.

Australia and New Zealand lag the EU’s comprehensive e-waste mandated frameworks. The lack of a systematic approach results in environmental degradation and missed positioning opportunities for businesses in the circular economy. While Australia’s Senate inquiry into waste reduction and recycling recommended legislating a full circular economy framework — including for imported and local product design, financial incentives and regulatory enforcement, New Zealand remains the only OECD country without a national scheme to manage e-waste.

3. Extending product lifecycles

Along with data security and digital tools, reuse was a key theme in the ITAD & Circular Electronics track of the conference. The sustainable tech company that I lead, Greenbox, recognises that reuse is the simplest circular strategy. Devices that are still functional undergo refurbishment and are reintroduced into the market, reducing new production need and conserving valuable resources.

Conference presenters highlighted how repair over replacement is being legislated as a right in jurisdictions around the world. Resources are saved, costs are lowered, product life is extended, and people and organisations are empowered to support a greener future. It was pointed out that just 43% of countries have recycling policies, 17% of global waste is formally recycled, and less than 1% of global e-waste is formally repaired and reused.

Right to repair is a rising wave in the circular economy, and legislation is one way that civil society is pushing back on programmed obsolescence. Its global momentum continues at different speeds for different product categories — from the recent EU mandates to multiple US state bills (and some laws) through to repair and reuse steps in India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Commission has done a scoping study to identify product groups under the Ecodesign framework that would be most relevant for implementing an EU-wide product reparability scoring system.

Attending this event with the entire electronic waste recycling supply chain — from peers and partners to suppliers and customers — underscored the importance of sharing best practices to address the environmental challenges that increased hardware proliferation and complex related issues are having on the world.

Ross Thompson is Group CEO of sustainability, data management and technology asset lifecycle management market leader Greenbox. With facilities in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, Greenbox Group provides customers all over the world a carbon-neutral supply chain for IT equipment to reduce their carbon footprint by actively managing their environmental, social and governance obligations.

Image credit: iStock.com/Mustafa Ovec

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