Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Climate change: scientific background and introduction
- 2 Future scenarios of development and climate change
- 3 Framework for making development more sustainable (MDMS): concepts and analytical tools
- 4 Interactions between climate and development
- 5 Adaptation to climate change: concepts, and linkages with sustainable development
- 6 Vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation by sectors and systems
- 7 Vulnerability, impacts, and adapation by geographic region
- 8 Mitigating climate change: concepts and linkages with sustainable development
- 9 Mitigation measures: technologies, practices, barriers, and policy instruments
- 10 Assessment of mitigation costs and benefits
- 11 Climate change and sustainable development: a synthesis
- Index
- References
5 - Adaptation to climate change: concepts, and linkages with sustainable development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Climate change: scientific background and introduction
- 2 Future scenarios of development and climate change
- 3 Framework for making development more sustainable (MDMS): concepts and analytical tools
- 4 Interactions between climate and development
- 5 Adaptation to climate change: concepts, and linkages with sustainable development
- 6 Vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation by sectors and systems
- 7 Vulnerability, impacts, and adapation by geographic region
- 8 Mitigating climate change: concepts and linkages with sustainable development
- 9 Mitigation measures: technologies, practices, barriers, and policy instruments
- 10 Assessment of mitigation costs and benefits
- 11 Climate change and sustainable development: a synthesis
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction to adaptation
Rationale for adaptation
Global losses due to climate-related disasters have increased by a factor of 40 since the 1960s (IPCC 1998). While these disasters may be related to climate variability rather than change, the losses underline the vulnerability of societies to climatic events. As we have seen in Chapter 1, impacts from climate change have been observed already and, because of continued greenhouse gas emissions and the inertia of the climate system, the impacts are projected to continue and increase in the future (McCarthy et al. 2001). Even if international mitigation is successful and greenhouse gas concentrations are stabilized, the climate will continue to change for quite some time, and adaptation would be a key component of any climate change response strategy. Mitigation by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations would help to delay climatic impacts and reduce their severity, but can never fully substitute for adaptation.
Adaptation reduces the impact of climate stresses on human and natural systems, while mitigation lowers the potential greenhouse gas emissions. Development paths affect strongly the capacity to both adapt to, and mitigate, climate change in any region. In this way, adaptation and mitigation strategies are connected dynamically with changes in the climate system and the prospects for ecosystem adaptation, food production, and long-term economic development.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Primer on Climate Change and Sustainable DevelopmentFacts, Policy Analysis, and Applications, pp. 172 - 206Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005