Adapting to Climate Change

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 12:42:23 +0700

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Adaptation can be defined as ‘the ability to respond and adjust to actual or potential impacts and changes in climate whether it is to moderate their harm or to take advantage of their positives’. There are many ways in which communities and nations can take action to adapt to changes in the climate – from the technological (e.g. flood-proofing houses) to the behavioural (e.g. reducing water use). Negotiations around adaptation to climate change also have to account the rising levels of 'distress migration' where people are pushed into leaving their homes due to the environmental pressures as a result of changes in climate.

Despite our best efforts to prevent changes in our climate, in the medium term at least, climatic variations are irreversible. Our past industrial activity and the inability of atmospheric systems to simply ‘reset’, assures this. We will all have to adapt, both to longer term processes (such as rising sea levels and decertification) and also to the increasing prevalence of catastrophic whether phenomena such as cyclones.

Evidence indicates that those least able to adapt to changes in climate will be those who are most vulnerable. Vulnerability can come from shocks (for example war, natural disasters) and trends (e.g. environmental degradation, worsening political or trade systems). Much of the discussion on adapting to climate change has thus focused on making the vulnerable ‘less vulnerable’.

Organisations focusing on adaptation have largely been broadly split into four categories: Disaster Reduction, Climate Change Action, Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation. As these categories naturally overlap efforts are being made to work collaboratively. Thinking has therefore moved on considerably from viewing adaptation strategies as decrees handed down by governments through laws, and instead it is communities who are seen as the driving force behind change. The phenomenon of climate change is a global concern but the solutions need not be globally focused, but rather from the individual, family and village level upwards.

The poor are not just vulnerable because they have less money, but also because their livelihoods rely heavily on the state of the environment around them. They lack the assets needed to escape the effects of degraded ecological systems; these include lack of education, lack of transferable skills (that would need should they migrate away from their homes), as well as lack of funds.

Poor nutrition and sanitation also exposes the poor to water-borne diseases and illnesses that increase in humid tropical environments.

However it is also recognised that it is the poor who, because they have the most need to adapt, have the most motivation. Whether it is mangrove rehabilitation in Vietnam or reintroducing locally extinct species, locally driven adaptation projects have multiple advantages: they are cheaper, rooted in the local resources and knowledge networks of communities, and directly aid in improving livelihoods.

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Want to learn more?
"Climate Change: Impacts, Vulnerabilities and Adaptation in Developing Countries", United Nations Framework Convention to Climate Change

"Biodiversity-climate interactions: adaptation, mitigation and human livelihoods", Report of International Meeting, The Royal Society, June 2007

"Adapting to Climate Change in Developing Countries", Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Postnote, No. 269, October 2006

"Water for life:Lessons for climate change adaptation from better management of rivers for people and nature", WWF

"The London climate change adaptation strategy: Summary draft report", Mayor of London, August 2008

A number of reports on key issues related to Adaptation can be found at the ELDIS website.

Christian-Muslim Youth Forum on climate Change - Online Forum: Adaptation

Adapting to Climate Change