What is climate change adaptation?
What is climate change adaptation?
Climate change has been increasingly recognised and felt as a emerging threat to humans. Millions of people are affected by this crisis, and all around us, different aspects of our life are affected by it.
Climate adaptation refers to actions taken to increase resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change effects. In simpler terms, adaptation allows us to withstand effects of climate change and to continue our lives with minimal disturbances. Adaptation can also mean strengthening our resilience to the effects of climate change.
What adaptation is not - unlike climate change mitigation, which is more about tackling the causes and minimising the possible impacts of climate change, adaptation looks at how to adjust to the current and future effects of climate change and how to take advantage of any opportunities that are potentially possible.
Adapting to climate change is essential
Adaptation is necessary and essential because many communities may lack alternative resources if they do not find ways to live with increase warming and rising sea levels. Adaptation is about asking people to make certain changes to their lives and lifestyles in ways that do not cause huge sacrifices.
What adaptation is NOT
It is not about mitigating, but more of doing things or taking actions that prepare people to get used to the new climate realities. It is about identifying and gathering and preparing resources that will be needed by people and places in respond to the new climate realities.
Why adapt? Who should adapt?
Climate adaptation also often is seen as changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change. With that, we could perhaps see adaptation clearer and understand its potential economic, environmental and social implications
Adapting to climate change is now a must, and not a choice, in many places. Climate change has become something that has affected many people, from having to move up closer to the land, to substituting food choices, to seeing their surrounding landscapes change. Adapt because if not, situations become worse, poverty becomes worse, and the vulnerable will find living conditions worse.
Some of the more common climate change effects include rising sea levels, rising temperatures, food shortage and impacts on food sources. With these, people have realised a need to adapt. Peoples' lifestyles change, cultures face changes too and so adaptation is needed to allow populations to withstand climate change impacts.
Who adapts to climate change affects? Often, the people most affected by the effects. People whose lives and cultures are potentially most affected by the changing of the climate.
Watch the below video, and ponder about the 2 questions below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq234w56n2o
1. How might local people be affected if adaptation is not carried out?
2. What affects the level of adaptation carried out?
Adaptation practices can take a long time and also can be costly. However, the longer adaptation efforts are put off, the more expensive adaptation could be.
Task: We would like you to look for an article about climate change adaptation and highlight a few key words in the article. We will use that article in the next part.
If some are worse off than others when it comes to being affected, should we then start to think about specific adaptation strategies?
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