Climate change adaptation

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Adapting to climate change involves infrastructural, institutional, behavioral and nature-based approaches. Examples shown here from top left are mangrove planting and habitat conservation, building seawalls to protect against sea level rise, selective breeding for drought-resistant crops, and building green roofs to reduce urban heat island effects.

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.[

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.

Definition

The IPCC defines climate change adaptation in this way:

  • "In human systems, as the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects in order to moderate harm or take advantage of beneficial opportunities."[7]: 5 
  • "In natural systems, adaptation is the process of adjustment to actual climate and its effects; human intervention may facilitate this."[7]: 5 

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]

Understanding the need

Research on climate change adaptation has been ongoing since the 1990s. The number and variety of subtopics has greatly increased since then. Adaptation has become an established policy area in the 2010s and since the Paris Agreement, and an important topic for policy research.[8]: 167 [10]

Climate change impacts research

Scientific research into climate change adaptation generally starts with analyses of the likely effects of climate change on people, ecosystems, and the environment. These impacts cover its effects on lives, livelihoods, health and well-being, ecosystems and species, economic, social and cultural assets, and infrastructure.[11] : 2235  Impacts may include changed agricultural yields, increased floods, and droughts or coral reef bleaching. Analysis of such impacts is an important step in understanding current and future adaptation needs and options.[citation needed]

As of 2022, the level of warming is 1.2°C (2.2°F) above levels before the industrial revolution. It is on track to increase to 2.5 to 2.9°C (4.5 to 5.2°F) by the end of the century.[12] This is causing a variety of secondary effects.[citation needed]

ecosystems and human societies. Changes in the climate system include an overall warming trend, more extreme weather and rising sea levels. These in turn impact nature and wildlife, as well as human settlements and societies.[13] The effects of human-caused climate change are broad and far-reaching. This is especially so if there is no significant climate action. Experts sometimes describe the projected and observed negative impacts of climate change as the climate crisis.

Many negative effects of climate change involve changes in extremes or the way conditions vary rather than changes in average conditions.[14] For example, the average sea level in a port might not be as important as the height of water during a storm surge. That is because a storm surge can cause flooding. The average rainfall in an area might not be as important as how frequent and severe droughts and extreme precipitation events become.[15]

Disaster risks, response and preparedness

Climate change contributes to disaster risk. So experts sometimes see climate change adaptation as one of many processes within disaster risk reduction.[16] In turn, disaster risk reduction is part of the broader consideration of sustainable development. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction have similar goals (to reduce potential impacts of hazards and increase the resilience of people at risk). They use similar concepts and are informed by similar sources and studies.[17]

Disasters are often triggered by natural hazards. A natural event such as a fire or flood is not of itself a disaster: it's only when it affects people or is caused by them that is counts as a disaster. It is argued that natural disasters are always linked to human action or inaction or rooted in anthropogenic processes. Disasters, economic loss, and the underlying vulnerabilities that drive risk are increasing. Global risks like climate change are having major impacts everywhere.[18] Scientists forecast climate change will increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and disasters. So adaptation may include measures to increase preparedness and relevant disaster response capacities.[citation needed]

Aims

For humans, adaptation aims to moderate or avoid harm, and to exploit opportunities. For natural systems, humans may intervene to help adjustment.[1]

Policy aims

The

carbon neutrality ("net zero") and adaptation are necessary.[20]

The Global Goal on Adaptation was also established under the Paris Agreement. The specific targets and indicators for the Global Goal are in development as of 2023. It will support the long-term adaptation goals of the governments that are parties to the agreement. It also aims to fund support for the most vulnerable countries’ adaptation needs in the context of the 1.5/2°C goal. It has three core components. These are reducing vulnerability to climate change, enhancing adaptive capacity, and strengthening resilience.[21]

Reduce risk factors: vulnerability and exposure

Adaptation can help decrease

hazards, vulnerability, and exposure. It is not possible to directly reduce hazards. This is because hazards are affected by current and future changes in climate. Instead, adaptation addresses the risks of climate impacts that arise from the way climate-related hazards interact with the exposure and vulnerability of human and ecological systems.[8]: 145–146  Exposure refers to the presence of people, livelihoods, ecosystems and other assets in places that could suffer negative effects.[1] It is possible to reduce exposure by retreating from areas with high climate risks, such as floodplains. Improving systems for early warnings and evacuations are other ways to reduce exposure.[22]: 88  The IPCC defines climate change vulnerability as "the propensity or predisposition to be adversely affected" by climate change.[1] It can apply to humans but also to natural systems. Human and ecosystem vulnerability are interdependent.[7]: 12  According to the IPCC, climate change vulnerability encompasses a variety of concepts and elements, including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.[7]: 5  Sensitivity to climate change could be reduced by for example increasing the storage capacity of a reservoir, or planting crops that are more resistant to climate variability.[23] It is also possible to reduce vulnerability in towns and cities with green garden spaces. These can reduce heat stress and food insecurity for low-income neighbourhoods.[24]
: 800 

Ecosystem-based adaptation is one way to reduce vulnerability to climate hazards. For instance, mangroves can dampen storm energy. So they can help prevent flooding. In this way, protection of the mangrove ecosystem can be a form of adaptation. Insurance and livelihood diversification increase resilience and decrease vulnerability. Other ways to decrease vulnerability include strengthening social protection and building infrastructure more resistant to hazards.[22]

Increase adaptive capacity

Adaptive capacity in the context of climate change covers human, natural, or managed systems. It looks at how they respond to both climate

variability and extremes. It covers the ability of a system to adjust to climate change to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with consequences.[1] Adaptive capacity is not the same as adaptation itself.[25] Adaptive capacity is the ability to reduce the likelihood of negative impacts of climate-related hazards.[26] It does this through the ability to design and implement effective adaptation strategies, or to react to evolving hazards and stresses. Societies that can respond to change quickly and successfully have a high adaptive capacity.[27] Conversely, high adaptive capacity does not necessarily lead to successful adaptation action. It does not necessarily succeed in goals of equity and enhancing well-being.[8]: 164  For example, adaptive capacity in Western Europe is generally considered to be high. Experts have documented the risks of warmer winters increasing the range of livestock diseases. But many parts of Europe were still badly affected by outbreaks of bluetongue virus in livestock in 2007.[28]

In general, adaptation capacity differs between high and low-income countries.[29] By some indices such as ND-GAIN, high-income countries tend to have higher adaptive capacity. However, there is strong variation within countries.[8]: 164 

The determinants of adaptive capacity include:[30]: 895–897 

  • Economic resources: Wealthier nations are better able to bear the costs of adaptation to climate change than poorer ones.
  • Technology: Lack of technology can impede adaptation.
  • Information and skills: Information and trained personnel are necessary to assess and implement successful adaptation options.
  • Social infrastructure
  • Institutions: Nations with well-developed social institutions are likely to have greater adaptive capacity than those with less effective institutions. These are typically developing nations and economies in transition.
  • Equity: Some believe that adaptive capacity is greater where there are government institutions and arrangements in place that allow equitable access to resources.

Adaptive capacity is closely linked to social and economic development.

natural hazards that they have not previously experienced.[citation needed
]

Measures to promote sustainable development often overlap with those for adaptive capacity. Both types of activity can reduce climate risk while also yielding development benefits.[32] These activities can include: Improving access to resources, reducing poverty, lowering inequities of resources and wealth among groups, improving education and information, improving infrastructure, improving institutional capacity and efficiency, and promoting local indigenous practices, knowledge, and experiences.[30]: 899 

Strengthening resilience

The IPCC considers climate resilience to be “the capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance”. It includes the abilities to reorganise and learn.[7]: 7  This definition is similar to that of climate change adaptation. However resilience involves a more systematic approach to absorbing change. It involves using those changes to become more efficient. The idea is that people can intervene to reorganise the system when disturbance creates an opportunity to do so.[8]: 174  They could guide the reorganisation in more desirable directions such as social or development goals.[33]

Implemented adaptation most often builds upon resilience as a way of bouncing back to recover after a disturbance. Experts consider it to be incremental rather than transformational.[8]: 130, 134  On the other hand, climate resilience-focused projects can be activities to promote and support transformational adaptation. This is because transformational adaptation is connected with implementation at scale and ideally at the system-level.[8]: 72 [34]: 26 

Strengthening resilience is therefore important for maintaining a capacity for transformation. Transformations, and the processes of transition, cover the major systems and sectors at scale. These are energy, land and ecosystems, urban and infrastructure, and industrial and societal.[8]: 125  Transformations may fail if they do not integrate social justice, consider power differences and political inclusion, and if they do not deliver improvements in incomes and wellbeing for everyone.[8]: 171 

Climate resilient development is a closely related area of work and research topic that has recently emerged. It describes situations in which adaptation, mitigation and development solutions are pursued together. It is able to benefit from synergies from among the actions and reduce trade-offs.[8]: 172 

Co-benefits with mitigation

Strategies to limit climate change are complementary to efforts to adapt to it.[8]: 128  Limiting warming, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and removing them from the atmosphere, is also known as climate change mitigation.[citation needed]

There are some synergies or co-benefits between adaptation and mitigation. Synergies include the benefits of public transport for both mitigation and adaptation. Public transport has lower greenhouse gas emissions per kilometer travelled than cars. A good public transport network also increases resilience in case of disasters. This is because evacuation and emergency access becomes easier. Reduced air pollution from public transport improves health. This in turn may lead to improved economic resilience, as healthy workers perform better.[35]

Options by type of action

There are many adaptation responses. We sometimes call them adaptation measures, strategies or solutions. They help manage impacts and risks to people and nature.

Current adaptation focuses on near-term climate risks. It also focuses on particular sectors, such as water and agriculture, and on regions, such as Africa and Asia.[7] It is important to close gaps between adaptation that is carried out and the needs relative to today's climate in order to reduce risks to a tolerable level. However, future adaptation must also anticipate future climate change risks. Some options may become less effective or entirely unfeasible as global warming increases.

Adaptation responses fall into four categories that all directly aim to reduce risks and exploit opportunities:[2]: 2428 

  1. Infrastructural and technological adaptation (including engineering, built environment, and high-tech solutions);
  2. Institutional adaptation (economic organizations, laws and regulation, government policies and programmes);
  3. Behavioural and cultural (individual and household strategies as well as social and community approaches);
  4. Nature-based solutions (including ecosystem-based adaptation options).

We can also group options is in three categories:

1. Structural and physical adaptation (including engineering and built environment, technological, ecosystem-based, services);

2. Social adaptation (educational, informational, behavioural);

3. Institutional adaptation (economic organizations, laws and regulation, government policies and programmes).[9]: 845 

Other ways to distinguish types of adaptation are anticipatory versus reactive, autonomous versus planned and incremental versus transformational.[8]: 134 

  • Incremental adaptation actions aim to maintain the essence and integrity of a system. Transformative actions change the fundamental attributes of a system in response to climate change and its impacts.[1]
  • Autonomous adaptation is adaptation responds to experienced climate and its effects. It does not involve explicit planning and does not specifically focus on addressing climate change.[1] Planned adaptation can be reactive or anticipatory. Anticipatory adaptation is undertaken before impacts are apparent. Relying on autonomous adaptation to climate change can result in substantial costs. It is possible to avoid many of these costs with planned adaptation.[30]: 904 

Infrastructural and technological options

Wetland restoration in Australia
Checking contours in Monterey County strawberry fields, United States
Terraces, conservation tillage and conservation buffers save soil and improve water quality on this farm in Woodbury County in northwest Iowa, United States.

Built environment

Built environment options include installing or upgrading infrastructure to protect against flooding, sea level rise, heatwaves and extreme heat. They also include infrastructure to respond to changed rainfall patterns in agriculture. This could be infrastructure for irrigation. These are explained further in the section below "by type of climate change impact".[citation needed]

Early warning systems

Because of changes in extreme weather and sea level rise, due to climate change, the UN has recommended early warning systems as key elements of climate change adaptation and climate risk management.[36] Flooding, cyclones and other rapidly changing weather events can make communities in coastal areas, along floodzones and reliant on agriculture very vulnerable to extreme events.[36] To this end the UN is running a partnership titled "Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems" to aid high risk countries with neglected warning systems in developing them.[36]

European countries have also seen early warning systems help communities adapt to drought, heat waves, disease, fire, and other related effects of climate change.[37] Similarly the WHO recommends early warning systems to prevent increases in heatwave related morbidity and disease outbreaks.[38]

Climate services

Climate Information Services (CIS) (or climate services) entail the dissemination of climate data in a way that aids people and organizations in making decisions. CIS helps its users foresee and control the hazards associated with a changing and unpredictable climate.[39] It encompasses a knowledge loop that includes targeted user communities' access to, interpretation of, communication of, and use of pertinent, accurate, and trustworthy climate information, as well as their feedback on that use. Climate information services involve the timely production, translation and delivery of useful climate data, information and knowledge.[40]

Climate services are systems to deliver the best available climate information to end-users in the most usable and accessible formats. They aim to support climate change adaptation, mitigation and risk management decisions. There is a vast range of practices and products for interpreting, analyzing, and communicating climate data. They often combine different sources and different types of knowledge.[41][42] They aim to fulfil a well-specified need. These climate services mark a shift from supply-driven information products that result from scientific research. Instead they are demand-driven and take greater account of users’ needs and decision-making. To do so they require different types of user–producer engagement, depending on what the service aims to deliver.[43][44] This type of collaboration is called co-design.

Institutional options

Launching the Coastal City Adaptation Project in Quelimane, Mozambique
Coastal City Adaptation Project, in Quelimane city, Mozambique. It will improve Quelimane's preparation for events like floods, erosion, sea level rise and other weather and climate related events.

Institutional responses include zoning regulations, new building codes, new insurance schemes, and coordination mechanisms.[45]

Policies are important tools to integrate issues of climate change adaptation.[46] At the national level, adaptation strategies appear in National Adaptation Plans (NAPS) and National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA). They also occur in national climate change policies and strategies.[47] These are at different levels of development in different countries and in cities. This is discussed further in the section below on "implementation".

Cities, states, and provinces often have considerable responsibility in land use planning, public health, and disaster management. Institutional adaptation actions occur more frequently in cities than in other sectors.[2]: 2434  Some have begun to adapt to threats intensified by climate change, such as flooding, bushfires, heatwaves, and rising sea levels.[48][49][50]

Building codes

Managing the codes or regulations that buildings must conform to is important for keeping people healthy and comfortable during extremes of hot and cold and protecting them from floods.[51]: 953–954  There are many ways to do this. They include increasing the insulation values, adding solar shading, increasing natural ventilation or passive cooling, codes for green roofs to reduce urban heat island effects or requiring waterfront properties to have higher foundations.[51]: 953–954  Land use zoning controls are central to investment in urban development. They can reduce risks to areas threatened by floods and landslides.[51]: 942–943 

Insurance

Insurance spreads the financial impact of flooding and other extreme weather events.[52] There is an increasing availability of such options.[53]: 814  For example, index-based insurance is a new product which triggers payment when weather indices such as precipitation or temperature cross a threshold. It aims to help customers such as farmers deal with production risks. Access to reinsurance may make cities more resilient.[54] Where there are failures in the private insurance market, the public sector can subsidize premiums.[55] One study identified key equity issues for policy considerations:[55]

  • Transferring risk to the public purse does not reduce overall risk;
  • Governments can spread the cost of losses across time rather than space;
  • Governments can force home-owners in low-risk areas to cross-subsidize the insurance premiums of those in high-risk areas;
  • Cross-subsidization is increasingly difficult for private sector insurers operating in a competitive market;
  • Governments can tax people to pay for tomorrow's disaster.

Government-subsidized insurance, such as the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, comes under criticism for providing a perverse incentive to develop properties in hazardous areas. This increases overall risk.[56] Insurance can also undermine other efforts such as property level protection and resilience to increase adaptation.[57] Appropriate land-use policies can counter this behavioural effect. These policies limit new construction where there are current or future climate risks. They also encourage the adoption of resilient building codes to mitigate potential damages.[58]

Coordination mechanisms

Coordination helps achieve goals shared by a range of people or organizations. Examples are information-sharing or joint implementation of adaptation options. Coordination helps use resources effectively. It avoids duplication, promotes consistency across government, and makes it easier for all people and organizations involved to understand the work.[59]: 5  In the food production sector, adaptation projects financed through the UNFCCC often include coordination between national governments and administrations at the state, provincial or city level. There are fewer examples of coordination between community-level and national government.[60]

Behavioural and cultural options

Individuals and households play a central role in adaptation. There are many examples particularly in the global south. Behavioural adaptation is a change in the strategies, practices and actions that help to reduce risk. These can include protecting homes from flooding, protecting crops from drought, and adopting different income-earning activities. Behavioural change is the most common form of adaptation.[2]: 2433 

Change in diets and food waste

Food waste spoilage increases with exposure to higher temperatures and humidity. It also increases with extreme events such as flooding and contamination.[24]: 787  This can happen at different points in the food supply chain. Thus it can be a risk to food security and nutrition. Adaptation measures can review the production, processing and other handling practices of suppliers. Examples include further sorting to separate damaged products, drying the product for better storage or improved packaging.[24]: 787  Other behaviour change options for retailers and consumers include accepting fruit and vegetables that appear less than perfect, redistributing food surpluses, and lowering prices on nearly expired food.[61]

Dietary change options in regions with excess consumption of calories include replacing meat and dairy foods with a higher share of plant-based foods. This has both mitigation and adaptation benefits. Plant-based options have much lower energy and water requirements. Adaptation options can investigate the dietary patterns that are better suited to the regional, socioeconomic and cultural context. Social-cultural norms strongly affect preferences for foods. Policies such as subsidies, taxes, and marketing can also support dietary choices that help adaptation.[24]: 799 

Change in livelihood strategies

Agriculture offers many opportunities for adaptation. These include changing planting times, or changing to crops and livestock that are better adapted to climate conditions and presence of pests. Other examples are breeding more resilient crops and selecting genetically modified crops.[24]: 787  All these aim to improve food security and nutrition.

Migration and managed retreat