FUND is an integrated assessment model originally set-up to study the role of international capital transfers in climate policy. The model is now often used to perform cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses of greenhouse gas emission reduction policies. It is therefore most suitable for analysing the social and economic impacts of the various response measures, with a particular focus on equity, both between countries and between socio-economic groups.
Particular relevance
FUND is relevant in analysing the socio-economic impacts of climate change mitigation policies, with particular focus on estimating the 'costs' of these policies. This makes the model particularly useful when looking at international equity issues.
Coverage
World
Model applications
The Double Trade-off between Adaptation and Mitigation for Sea Level Rise: An Application of FUND - This paper studies the economic effects of adaptation and mitigation on the impacts of sea level rise. FUND was used to generate scenarios of climate change and sea level rise. In ( http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/tol/RM2373.pdf).
Discounting and the Social Cost of Carbon: A Closer Look at Uncertainty- This paper examines the economic impacts of employing a declining discount rate on the social cost of carbon (the marginal social damage from a ton of emitted carbon). Six declining discounting schemes are implemented in the FUND 2.8 integrated assessment model ( http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/models-data/fund/espmargcost.pdf).
Emission Abatement versus Development as Strategies to Reduce Vulnerability to Climate Change: An Application of FUND - Using FUND the author analyses whether poorer countries are generally believed to be more vulnerable to climate change than richer countries because poorer countries are more exposed and have less adaptive capacity. ( http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/working-papers/develop.pdf).
Organization's main area of research
Multi-disciplinary research and education on human-induced environmental change that is either global in nature or pervasive across the world.
Other projects / reseach
ATLANTIS - The project investigates the implications of a 5-6 metres sea level rise, due to a collapse of the West-Antarctic Ice Sheet, on the Rhone Delta, the Netherlands, and the Thames Estuary. This is one of the first studies to assess the societal consequences of impacts and adaptation to “imaginable worst case” climate change scenarios (http://www.fnu.zmaw.de/ATLANTIS.5701.0.html?&L=3).
CCTAME - The project concentrates on assessing the impacts of agricultural, climate, energy, forestry and other associated land-use policies considering the resulting feed-backs on the climate system in the European Union(http://www.cctame.eu/).