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 would expect for Russia. Russia has some significant areas of vulnerability, but it also stands to see some beneficial impacts from climate change. It has a well-educated populace, an economy that has some diversification but not a great deal, and a socioeconomic picture in which there is a small middle class, a small cluster of people with great wealth, and many who have only limited means.

Figure 8 shows projected adaptive capacity growth over time for the 10-country sample. Projections are made for two scenarios; rates of growth are based on the IPCC’s A1 scenario in its Special Report on Emissions Scenarios.cxvi VRIM simulates two different hypothetical development tracks out to the year 2065 (well beyond the timescale of the present study) with intermediate results at 15-year time steps. These alternative development tracks are not intended to be predictive; they are scenarios.

Both scenarios feature moderate population growth and a tendency toward convergence in affluence (with market-based solutions, rapid technological progress, and improving human welfare). The scenarios used in this study differ in the rate of economic growth, one modeling high-and-fast economic growth, the other delayed growth.

Over time, a low-growth scenario widens the gap among the 10 countries—and the high-growth scenario widens the gap even more (Figure 8). In both scenarios, China's high economic growth (indicated by GDP per capita), favorable dependency ratio, and literacy rate allow that country to overtake Russia by 2050. In both scenarios, the strengths and weaknesses of current Russian adaptive capacity persist, with slow economic growth being a notable weakness.

Looking forward, Russia’s ability to cope with climate change impacts to 2030 and beyond will obviously depend on both the nature and extent of the impacts and the extent to which Russia’s adaptive capacities develop over time. This in turn depends on the nature and extent of Russia’s socioeconomic and sociopolitical development over the coming years.

In the delayed-growth scenario, Russia’s position is much less influenced by wealth accumulation (adaptive capacity) and much more heavily influenced by water availability, the production of cereal grains, and the use of fertilizer (included in impacts/sensitivity rather than in adaptive capacity). In this scenario, Russia’s adaptive capacity still improves over time, but its progress, like that of other countries, is much more modest than in the high-growth scenario.

The high-growth scenario could, in the case of Russia, be consistent with robust early-period revenues from hydrocarbons and other commodity production, leading to significant wealth accumulation in the country and, over time, greater economic diversification of the sort that has been advocated in the last year by President Dmitriy Medvedev. (The elements and implications of this high-growth scenario are outwardly consistent with the track that Russia appeared to be on until the collapse of energy prices in the past six months.) In this scenario, Russia’s adaptive capacity grows significantly over time, with Russia ending the period second only to China.