Climate change adaptation
Climate change adaptation is the process of adjusting to the effects of climate change. These can be both current or expected impacts.[1] Adaptation aims to moderate or avoid harm for people, and is usually done alongside climate change mitigation. It also aims to exploit opportunities. Humans may also intervene to help adjustment for natural systems.[1] There are many adaptation strategies or options. They can help manage impacts and risks to people and nature. The four types of adaptation actions are infrastructural, institutional, behavioural and nature-based options.[2]: Figure 16.5
The need for adaptation varies from place to place. It depends on the risk to human or ecological systems. Adaptation is particularly important in developing countries because they are most vulnerable to climate change,[3] bearing the brunt of its effects.[4][5] Adaptation needs are high for food, water and other sectors important for economic output, jobs and incomes.
Adaptation planning is important to help countries manage climate risks. Plans, policies or strategies are in place in more than 70% of countries.[6] Other levels of government like cities and provinces also use adaptation planning. So do economic sectors. Donor countries can give money to developing countries to help develop national adaptation plans. This is important to help them implement more adaptation. The adaptation carried out so far is not enough to manage risks at current levels of climate change.[7]: 20 [8] : 130 And adaptation must also anticipate future risks of climate change. The costs of climate change adaptation are likely to cost billions of dollars a year for the coming decades. In many cases, the cost will be less than the damage that it avoids.
The IPCC defines climate change adaptation in this way:
Adaptation actions can be incremental or transformative. Incremental actions are actions that aim to maintain the essence and integrity of a system. Transformative actions are actions that change the fundamental attributes of a system in response to climate change and its impacts.[9]
Challenges[edit]
Differing time scales[edit]
Adaptation can occur in anticipation of change or be a response to those changes.[142] For example, artificial snow-making in the European Alps responds to current climate trends. The construction of the Confederation Bridge in Canada at a higher elevation takes into account the effect of future sea-level rise on ship clearance under the bridge.[143]
Effective adaptive policy can be difficult to implement because policymakers are rewarded more for enacting short-term change, rather than long-term planning.[144] Since the impacts of climate change are generally not seen in the short term, policymakers have less incentive to act. Furthermore, climate change is occurring on a global scale. This requires a global framework for adapting to and combating climate change.[145] The vast majority of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies are being implemented on a more local scale. This is because different regions must adapt differently. National and global policies are often more challenging to enact.[146]
Maladaptation[edit]
Much adaptation takes place in relation to short-term climate variability. But this may cause maladaptation to longer-term climate trends. The expansion of irrigation in Egypt into the Western Sinai desert after a period of higher river flows is maladaptation given the longer-term projections of drying in the region.[147] Adaptations at one scale can have impacts at another by reducing the adaptive capacity of other people or organizations. This is often the case when broad assessments of the costs and benefits of adaptation are examined at smaller scales. An adaptation may benefit some people, but have a negative effect on others.[142] Development interventions to increase adaptive capacity have tended not to result in increased power or agency for local people.[148] Agency is a central factor in all other aspects of adaptive capacity and so planners need to pay more attention to this factor.
Limits to adaptation[edit]
People have always adapted to climate change. Some community coping strategies already exist. Examples include changing sowing times or adopting new water-saving techniques.[147] Traditional knowledge and coping strategies must be maintained and strengthened. If not there is a risk of weakening adaptive capacity as local knowledge of the environment is lost. Strengthening these local techniques and building upon them also makes the adoption of adaptation strategies more likely. This is because it creates more community ownership and involvement in the process.[143] In many cases this will not be enough to adapt to new conditions. These may be outside the range of those previously experienced, and new techniques will be necessary.[26]
The incremental adaptations become insufficient as the vulnerabilities and risks of climate change increase. This creates a need for transformational adaptations which are much larger and costlier.[149] Current development efforts increasingly focus on community-based climate change adaptation. They seek to enhance local knowledge, participation and ownership of adaptation strategies.[150]
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report in 2022 put considerable emphasis on adaptation limits.[7]: 26 It makes a distinction between soft and hard adaptation limits. The report stated that some human and natural systems already reached "soft adaptation limits" including human systems in Australia, Small Islands, America, Africa and Europe and some natural systems reach even the "hard adaptation limits" like part of corals, wetland, rainforests, ecosystems in polar and mountain regions. If the temperature rise will reach 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) additional ecosystems and human systems will reach hard adaptation limits, including regions depending on glaciers and snow water and small islands. At 2 °C (3.6 °F) temperature rise, soft limits will be reached by many staple crops in many areas while at 3 °C (5.4 °F) hard limits will be reached by parts of Europe.[7]: 26
Incentivizing private investment in adaptation[edit]
Climate change adaptation is a much more complex investment area than mitigation. This is mainly because of the lack of a well-defined income stream or business case with an attractive return on investment on projects. There are several specific challenges for private investment:[151][152]
History[edit]
When climate change first became prominent on the international political agenda in the early 1990s, talk of adaptation was considered an unwelcome distraction from the need to reach agreement on effective measures for mitigation – which has mainly meant reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases. A few voices had spoken out in favour of adaptation even in the late 20th and early 21st century.[168] In 2009 and 2010, adaptation began to receive more attention during international climate negotiations. This was after limited progress at the Copenhagen Summit had made it clear that achieving international consensus for emission reductions would be more challenging than had been hoped. In 2009, the rich nations of the world committed to providing a total of $100 billion per year to help developing nations fund their climate adaptation projects. This commitment was underscored at the 2010 Cancún Summit , and again at the 2015 Paris Conference. The promise was not fulfilled, but the amount of funding provided by the rich nations for adaptations did increase over the 2010 – 2020 period.[169][170][171]
Climate change adaptation has tended to be more of a focus for local authorities, while national and international politics has tended to focus on mitigation. There have been exceptions – in countries that feel especially exposed to the effects of climate change, sometimes the focus has been more on adaptation even at national level.[172]