ICF International has more than 10 years of experience providing strategic advice and support for projects dealing with climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation to clients across the globe. Our clients include:
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- California Energy Commission
- African Development Bank
- UK Department for International Development
- UK Environment Agency
- U.S. Agency for International Development
- Other multinational and European companies
ICF’s network of professionals addressing these issues are located in the United States, United Kingdom, India, and Brazil.
Global climate change is expected to have pervasive and, in many cases, profound impacts on human populations, natural resources, and economic sectors. Since some of this warming is unavoidable, planning for the effects of climate change is needed to facilitate successful adaptation to these impacts, as well as to avoid exacerbating adverse impacts by undertaking maladaptative actions.
ICF’s adaptation expertise spans all sectors influenced by climate change, including:
- Agriculture
- Forestry
- Human health—including air quality, heat-related morbidity and mortality, vector-borne diseases, immune suppression, and red tides
- Coastal resources affected by sea level rise
- Recreation
- Sensitive ecosystems—both aquatic and terrestrial
- Water resources
Specific services include:
Although adaptive strategies are necessary to respond to and prepare for climate change impacts, climate change mitigation is the most effective means of slowing additional climate change. In addition to our impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation work, ICF has extensive experience with climate change mitigation at the both the public and private levels.
Selected Projects
Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.4. The Strategic Plan of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) calls for the preparation of 21 synthesis and assessment products (SAP) to support policymaking and adaptation decisions across the range of issues addressed by the CCSP. SAP 4.4 has two primary goals: 1) review available information about known or potential adaptation options for responding to climate variability and change, and (2) identify characteristics of ecosystems and adaptation responses that promote successful implementation and meet resource managers’ needs. Six resource areas were chosen in which to focus the investigations into management, climate response, and adaptation, corresponding to chapters in the SAP 4.4: National Forests, National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Estuaries, and Marine Protected Areas. ICF conducted background research and is coordinating the efforts of the EPA, expert lead authors, and expert stakeholders in this task. ICF organized two-day workshops for lead authors and expert stakeholders in each of the six areas to brainstorm and write sections of each chapter, and is currently providing technical assistance on the draft report.
Watershed Synthesis Report. ICF supported the production of a report summarizing and synthesizing the results of three watershed case studies. The synthesis compared and contrasted the case studies to learn more about the generalizability of results and insights across watersheds of different geographic scales and combinations of stressors, and about the case study assessment process itself. The three case study locations—the San Pedro River watershed, the Sacramento watershed, and watersheds in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area—represented diverse geographic regions and aquatic ecosystem types. The studies encompassed different land-use pressures, different future climate-induced changes, and different high-value ecosystem services. The report drew from the scientific journal articles and final reports produced by each of the case study teams as well as a mid-project expert meeting of case study team members and a series of interviews held with each of the case study teams at the conclusion of their projects.
Climate Sensitive Decision Assessment. ICF is providing ongoing support to EPA on this pilot study to inventory and analyze climate-sensitive decisions and develop a research design from which a future, national-scale decision assessment can be modeled. The goal of the national-scale assessment will be to provide the foundation data and analysis on which EPA can base an effective, long-term strategy for providing the right types of decision support to the right types of decision makers, and thereby increase resilience to climate change and variability. The focus of the pilot study is on water resource management decisions in the Chesapeake Bay area.
Place-Based Climate Change Impacts and the Role of Decision Support in Adaptive Response. In 1997, EPA initiated its support of place-based assessments of the potential impacts of climate variability and change in three multi-state studies: the Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Gulf Coast. Since those initial assessments, EPA has maintained its support for place-based work through a second phase of assessments designed to move from an assessment of impacts of climate change and variability to assessments focused on the provision of scientific information for decision makers considering adaptations to climate change. ICF supported EPA’s mid-term review of the second phase of these regional assessments and produced a synthesis report. The goal of the synthesis report, drafted jointly with EPA, was threefold: 1) to assess the progress thus far in the three Phase II assessments, 2) to examine similarities and differences across the three projects, and 3) to determine what lessons have been learned to date that may assist EPA in making plans for future place-based global change assessment efforts.
Review of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Neighborhood Design Guidance (LEED-ND). This project involves reviewing the recently proposed LEED-ND guidance to identify proposed actions credited in the LEED-ND scheme that also promote adaptation to climate change. ICF applied a series of screens to determine which of the LEED-ND prerequisites and credits would be affected by climate change and which could affect the ability of the credit to preserve or improve water quality or aquatic ecosystems. It was clear that implementing many of the credits are likely to result in adaptive benefits. ICF developed a set of case studies to demonstrate the climate adaptive benefits of implementing LEED-ND prerequisites and credits. ICF is now developing a brochure for planners and developers to communicate the findings from these case studies.
Integrated Climate and Land Use Scenarios. ICF, along with Colorado State University, is assisting EPA in an analysis of projected land use implications of a series of scenarios. The purpose of this project is twofold: 1) to create seamless, well-documented land use scenarios for the contiguous United States based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) storylines, and (2) to create decision-focused land use change scenarios for three high-priority issues/areas where stakeholder end points may be sensitive to combinations of climate and land use change. The approach for this project includes two phases of research to address the two goals stated above. Both phases will be dependent on a transparent set of county-level population projections to be developed by ICF and integrated with the Spatially Explicit Regional Growth Model (SERGoM) maintained by Dr. David Theobold at Colorado State University. Once the population projections are developed, SERGoM will be used to analyze land-use patterns and to develop land-use maps. In the first phase of research, the population projections developed by ICF were fed into the SERGoM model to evaluate the outcomes of the SRES scenarios on land use. The result is a series of maps demonstrating the impacts of population changes on housing density over time. These results are presented in a draft report, due out for public review in July. The population projections and spatial allocation model are also available in a tool that is scheduled to undergo internal review during the summer of 2008. In the second phase, the ICF team will rely on a stakeholder facilitation process to identify and investigate specific decision-focused case studies in which climate and land use will combine to influence the outcome of important land use and environmental decisions.
Climate Change Adaptation in the Water Sector. ICF undertook for the UK Environment Agency a project looking at the potential costs to water utilities of adapting their infrastructure to be robust against climate change impacts. ICF reviewed the potential range of climate change impacts for water utilities and then developed assessments in the areas of enhanced sewage treatment to meet current water quality standards, and network enhancements to handle changes in the pattern and volume of rainfall-related drainage and infrastructure risks due to sea-level rise. ICF's report also set out decision-making frameworks and criteria for ensuring the identification of cost-effective adaptation measures.
Interim Assessment of the Impacts and Benefits of Avoiding or Adapting to Climate Change. For the U.S. EPA’s Interim Assessment of the Impacts and Benefits of Avoiding or Adapting to Climate Change, ICF assisted EPA in efforts to update its seminal assessment by: providing coordination across the chapters and diverse authors within and outside the government; synthesizing existing research, much of which was conducted with EPA funding; and developing new information assessing the economic impacts. ICF assisted in developing chapters covering the full range of sectors influenced by climate change, including agriculture, forestry, human health (i.e., air quality, heat-related morbidity and mortality, vector-borne diseases, and red tides), coastal resources affected by sea level rise, recreation (focusing on fishing), and water resources. As part of this work, which spanned four years, ICF surveyed literature, interviewed and synthesized information developed by principal investigators of EPA-sponsored research, and conducted supplemental analyses on specific topics of interest.
Investment Framework for the G8 Climate Change Initiative. ICF supported the African Development Bank (AfDB) and U.K. Department for International Development (UK DFID) in preparing an investment framework for the G8 Climate Change Initiative. ICF reviewed the Bank’s approach to addressing climate change in its investments and proposed new actions or initiatives that will enable the bank to improve its impact on climate change and provide related input to the investment framework. ICF provided a combination of data analysis and objective, fact-based, strategic analysis to support decision-making, benchmarking, and change management support to the AfDB. ICF helped the bank identify the main climate risks and needs in Africa and develop specific financial instruments to foster adaptation initiatives.
Integration of Physical Risks of Climate Change into Long-term Climate Strategy. ICF helped a European natural gas company assess its future carbon exposure under different carbon-constraint scenarios, from a financial and a reputation perspective, looking at a post-2020 time horizon. In addition to carbon policy issues, ICF evaluated potential physical climate change impacts on the company’s assets according to the different scenarios and estimated the resulting expected financial exposure. ICF also identified and analyzed a range of internal and external mitigation options and proposed selected measures and implementation planning aimed at lowering costs and risks and enhancing commercial opportunities.
Carbon Strategy for Hong Kong-based Conglomerate. ICF undertook an assessment of the value-at-stake under a changing business climate for one of the Asia’s largest business conglomerates that includes beverage, aviation, and waste management interests. ICF co-facilitated a two-day workshop of senior executives to help design a carbon strategy and action plan.
Valuation of Climate-Related Amenities in Property Markets. For the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development, ICF International developed an empirical model to quantify the relationship between specific climate attributes and property values, using the hedonic modeling framework. The purpose of this exercise was to better understand how climate change affects human behavior by quantifying how much people value climate amenities in their living decisions. ICF conducted an extensive literature review of the hedonic literature in general, and, hedonic models on climate amenities in particular. ICF also developed a national-level hedonic model using micro-level Census data, combined with other data sources. For climate attributes, ICF used detailed grid-based North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) climate model data that uses some of the most sophisticated climate modeling. The goal in this exercise was to develop a “baseline” for quantifying the impacts that climate amenities have on people’s location decisions. At a later stage, this framework can then be used for projecting the economic impacts of climate change using climate model predictions for how global warming can affect different regions in the United States.
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