Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy

Climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. We propose that a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. First we frame the set of responses at the national policy level as a trade off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. We argue that these are the pertinent trade-offs, rather than those usually posited between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment. Starting with this complete vision of response options should enable policy makers to re-evaluate the risk environment and the set of response options available to them. From here, policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken. Institutional arrangements dictate social and political acceptability of different policies, they structure worldviews, and they determine the provision of resources for investment in technological innovation and social change. The importance of focussing on the timing of the response is emphasised to maximise the potential for adjustments through social learning and institutional change at different policy scales. We argue that the ability to respond to climate change is both enabled and constrained by social and technological conditions. The ability of society to respond to climate change and the need for technological change for both decarbonisation and for dealing with surprise in general, are central to concepts of sustainable development.     

Re-thinking water policy priorities in the Mediterranean region in view of climate change

Water is scarce in Mediterranean countries: cities are crowded with increasing demand; food is produced with large amounts of water; ecosystems demand more water that is often available; drought affects all. As climate change impacts become more noticeable and costlier, some current water management strategies will not be useful. According to the findings of CIRCE, the areas with limited water resources will increase in the coming decades with major consequences for the way we produce food and we protect ecosystems. Based on these projections this paper discusses water policy priorities for climate change adaptation in the Mediterranean. We first summarise the main challenges to water resources in Mediterranean countries and outline the risks and opportunities for water under climate change based on previous studies. Recognising the difficulty to go from precipitation to water policy, we then present a framework to evaluate water availability in response to natural and management conditions, with an example of application in the Ebro basin that exemplifies other Mediterranean areas. Then we evaluate adaptive capacity to understand the ability of Mediterranean countries to face, respond and recover from climate change impacts on water resources. Social and economic factors are key drivers of inequality in the adaptive capacity across the region. Based on the assessment of impacts and adaptive capacity we suggest thresholds for water policy to respond to climate change and link water scarcity indicators to relevant potential adaptation strategies. Our results suggest the need to further prioritise socially and economically sensitive policies.     

The relationship between adaptation and mitigation in managing climate change risks: a regional response from North Central Victoria,Australia

This two-part paper considers the complementarity between adaptation and mitigation in managing the risks associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect. Part one reviews the application of risk management methods to climate change assessments. Formal investigations of the enhanced greenhouse effect have produced three generations of risk assessment. The first led to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), First Assessment Report and subsequent drafting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The second investigated the impacts of unmitigated climate change in the Second and Third IPCC Assessment Reports. The third generation, currently underway, is investigating how risk management options can be prioritised and implemented. Mitigation and adaptation have two main areas of complementarity. Firstly, they each manage different components of future climate-related risk. Mitigation reduces the number and magnitude of potential climate hazards, reducing the most severe changes first. Adaptation increases the ability to cope with climate hazards by reducing system sensitivity or by reducing the consequent level of harm. Secondly, they manage risks at different extremes of the potential range of future climate change. Adaptation works best with changes of lesser magnitude at the lower end of the potential range. Where there is sufficient adaptive capacity, adaptation improves the ability of a system to cope with increasingly larger changes over time. By moving from uncontrolled emissions towards stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mitigation limits the upper part of the range. Different activities have various blends of adaptive and mitigative capacity. In some cases, high sensitivity and low adaptive capacity may lead to large residual climate risks; in other cases, a large adaptive capacity may mean that residual risks are small or non-existent. Mitigative and adaptive capacity do not share the same scale: adaptive capacity is expressed locally, whereas mitigative capacity is different for each activity and location but needs to be aggregated at the global scale to properly assess its potential benefits in reducing climate hazards. This can be seen as a demand for mitigation, which can be exercised at the local scale through exercising mitigative capacity. Part two of the paper deals with the situation where regional bodies aim to maximise the benefits of managing climate risks by integrating adaptation and mitigation measures at their various scales of operation. In north central Victoria, Australia, adaptation and mitigation are being jointly managed by a greenhouse consortium and a catchment management authority. Several related studies investigating large-scale revegetation are used to show how climate change impacts and sequestration measures affect soil, salt and carbon fluxes in the landscape. These studies show that trade-offs between these interactions will have to be carefully managed to maximise their relative benefits. The paper concludes that when managing climate change risks, there are many instances where adaptation and mitigation can be integrated at the operational level. However, significant gaps between our understanding of the benefits of adaptation and mitigation between local and global scales remain. Some of these may be addressed by matching demands for mitigation (for activities and locations where adaptive capacity will be exceeded) with the ability to supply that demand through localised mitigative capacity by means of globally integrated mechanisms.     

The perceived psychological distance of climate change impacts and its influence on support for adaptation policy

Factors influencing support for climate mitigation policy in the United States are well researched, however, research regarding individuals’ support for climate adaptation policy is relatively sparse. This study explores how an individual’s perception of climate change impacts may influence their support for adaptation actions. Results of a survey of the U.S. public (n = 653) indicates that individuals who believe climate change impacts are unlikely to happen or will primarily affect other people in other places are less likely to be concerned about climate change impacts and less likely to support climate adaptation. However, an individual’s support for climate change adaptation measures is not influenced by their perception of when climate change impacts will occur even when taking into account concern for climate impacts. Critical for policy-makers, a belief that climate adaptation measures will not be effective attenuates the relationship between psychological distance, concern for climate change impacts, and adaptation policy measures. Our results indicate that to effectively communicate about climate change, policy-makers should emphasize that: (i) climate change impacts are occurring, (ii) that their constituents are being affected now, or will be in the future, and (iii) communicate that adaptation measures can be effective in addressing risks associated with climate change impacts.     

Adaptation and mitigation as complementary tools for reducing the risk of climate impacts

This paper uses the likelihood of flooding along Brahmaputra and Ganges Rivers in India to explore the hypothesis that adaptation and mitigation can be viewed as complements rather than sustitutes. For futures where climate change will produce smooth, monotonic and manageable effects, adopting a mitigation strategy is shown to increase the ability of adaptation to reduce the likelihood of crossing critical threshold of tolerable climate. For futures where climate change will produce variable impacts overtime, though, it is possible that mitigation will make adaptation less productive for some time intervals. In cases of exaggerated climate change, adaptation may fail entirely regardless of how much mitigation is applied. Judging the degree of complementarity is therefore an empirical question because the relative efficacy of adaptation is site specific and path dependent. It follows that delibrations over climate policy should rely more on detailed analyses of how the distributions of possible impacts of climate might change over space and time.

Integrating mitigation and adaptation as responses to climate change: a synthesis

Integrating mitigation and adaptation (M&A) is a practical reality for climate change response policy, despite a range of conceptual and methodological challenges. Based on the papers in this special issue, some preliminary findings about appropriate integrated portfolios are offered, along with several implications for climate policy.     

Integrating mitigation and adaptation into climate and development policy: three research questions

The potential for developing synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation has become a recent focus of both climate research and policy. Presumably the interest in synergies springs from the appeal of creating win–win situations by implementing a single climate policy option. However, institutional complexity, insufficient opportunities and uncertainty surrounding their efficiency and effectiveness present major challenges to the widespread development of synergies. There are also increasing calls for research to define the optimal mix of mitigation and adaptation. These calls are based on the misguided assumption that there is one single optimal mix of adaptation and mitigation options for all possible scenarios of climate and socio-economic change, notwithstanding uncertainty and irrespective of the diversity of values and preferences in society. In the face of current uncertainty, research is needed to provide guidance on how to develop a socially and economically justifiable mix of mitigation, adaptation and development policy, as well as on which elements would be part of such a mix. Moreover, research is needed to establish the conditions under which the process of mainstreaming can be most effective. Rather than actually developing and implementing specific mitigation and adaptation options, the objective of climate policy should be to facilitate such development and implementation as part of sectoral policies. Finally, analysis needs to focus on the optimal use and expected effectiveness of financial instruments, taking into account the mutual effects between these instruments on the one hand, and national and international sectoral investments and official development assistance on the other.     

Managing climate change risks in New York City’s water system: assessment and adaptation planning

Managing risk by adapting long-lived infrastructure to the effects of climate change must become a regular part of planning for water supply, sewer, wastewater treatment, and other urban infrastructure during this century. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP), the agency responsible for managing New York City’s (NYC) water supply, sewer, and wastewater treatment systems, has developed a climate risk management framework through its Climate Change Task Force, a government-university collaborative effort. Its purpose is to ensure that NYCDEP’s strategic and capital planning take into account the potential risks of climate change—sea-level rise, higher temperature, increases in extreme events, changes in drought and flood frequency and intensity, and changing precipitation patterns—on NYC’s water systems. This approach will enable NYCDEP and other agencies to incorporate adaptations to the risks of climate change into their management, investment, and policy decisions over the long term as a regular part of their planning activities. The framework includes a 9-step Adaptation Assessment procedure. Potential climate change adaptations are divided into management, infrastructure, and policy categories, and are assessed by their relevance in terms of climate change time-frame (immediate, medium, and long term), the capital cycle, costs, and other risks. The approach focuses on the water supply, sewer, and wastewater treatment systems of NYC, but has wide application for other urban areas, especially those in coastal locations.     

Human adaptation to climate change: a review of three historical cases and some general perspectives

To study mitigation and adaptation to climate change, social scientists have drawn on different approaches, particularly sociological approaches to the future and comparative history of past societies. These two approaches frame the social and temporal boundaries of decision-making collectivities in different ways. A consideration of the responses to climate variability in three historical cases, the Classic Maya of Mexico and Central America, the Viking settlements in Greenland, and the US Dust Bowl, shows the value of integrating these two approaches.     

A multiple timescales approach to assess urgency in adaptation to climate change with an application to the tourism industry

As climate change adaptation is increasingly discussed and becoming a mainstream concept, different types of users are asking themselves if and when they should develop an adaptation strategy, often not knowing where to begin. Climate experts, on the other hand, have access to an enormous amount of data that could be useful to users but often do not know how to translate it into something practical. Both users and experts can be linked through two timescales, the system lifespan and climate vulnerability. While the system lifespan relies on the user’s estimation of his planning timeframe, the climate vulnerability is estimated from climate model projections and observations. We propose a simple tool to relate user and climate expert knowledge by combining the two timescales. To be reliable, the interconnection implies a dialogue to first identify what sensitive climate variable will impact the system and subsequently the extent of the impact. Climate data can then be used to identify, with the use of a simple graph, how sensitive a system is likely to be and help users position themselves about the urgency of adaptation. The concept has been successfully presented and applied to the tourism industry, notably the ski industry, which is showcased in this paper.     

Beyond the black box: Forest sector vulnerability assessments and adaptation to climate change in North America

In the wake of the failures to date of well-publicized multilateral and multi-sectoral mitigation efforts to control greenhouse gases, attention is now increasingly focused on the effectiveness and capacity of national and sub-national level sectoral plans, including forestry, to usher in a new era of adaptation efforts. In Canada, the government of British Columbia spent several years developing its Future Forest Ecosystems Initiative as part of a larger climate change response strategy in the forest sector. Similarly, in the United States, wildfire related events have led to climate change inspired efforts by individual states (e.g., Alaska, California) and the US Forest Service has recently undertaken plans to incorporate climate change considerations in national forest planning beginning with the National Road Map for Responding to Climate Change. This paper highlights a number of shortcomings with both these national and sub-national strategies with respect to the relationships existing between governance, forestry and climate change. It proposes incorporating considerations of governance mechanisms directly into forest sector planning and the need to assess not only natural system level changes but also the extent to which new problems can be dealt with by ‘old’ or ‘new’ governance arrangements.     

Institutional dynamics and climate change adaptation in South Africa

Climate change is a multi-dimensional issue and in terms of adaptation numerous state and non-state actors are involved from global to national and local scales. The aim of this paper is first to analyse specific institutional networks involved in climate change predominantly at the national level in South Africa and second to determine how different stakeholders perceive their role vis-a-vis climate change adaptation. Within the South African context there is a gap in understanding and evaluating how institutional networks operate and thus the findings of this work may help inform and strengthen such relationships in the future. Results showed that few institutions fully understand the implications of adaptation and their roles and responsibilities have not yet been properly defined. Constraints relating to capacity, lack of awareness and poor information flow need to be addressed. Climate change is perceived as an important issue although problems such as poverty reduction and job creation remain national priorities. Most importantly this research has demonstrated how adaptation challenges the hierarchical manner in which government works and a more collaborative approach to climate change adaptation is needed. Adaptation needs to be mainstreamed and institutional networks need to be strengthened in order for adaptation mechanisms to be effectively implemented.

The future of hydropower in Europe: Interconnecting climate,markets and policies

Hydropower is very important for electricity supply security in the European inter-connexion as well as for the economy of regions (primarily peripheral) that possess water resources. Its future may however be jeopardized by several factors: climate change, the development of new renewable energy, the creation of super and micro-grids, and progress in power storage technology. Energy and climate policy, as well as electricity market design and dynamics play a pivotal role.This article carries out a comprehensive analysis of all these factors and discusses the future of hydropower. This discussion follows an overview of the present situation and of future drivers. The technical, environmental, economic and political aspects of the problem are analyzed with an interdisciplinary approach. The stakes as well as the uncertainties are highlighted.The conclusion is that hydropower has a promising future, particularly in light of emerging sustainable energy policy, but that the risks should not be overlooked. Academics will find a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of hydropower in this article, whereas public bodies, communities and hydropower companies can identify the strategic variables that should be taken into consideration in the decision making process. The end of water concessions or authorizations is also evoked.     

Mitigation needs adaptation: Tropical forestry and climate change

The relationship between tropical forests and global climate change has so far focused on mitigation, while much less emphasis has been placed on how management activities may help forest ecosystems adapt to this change. This paper discusses how tropical forestry practices can contribute to maintaining or enhancing the adaptive capacity of natural and planted forests to global climate change and considers challenges and opportunities for the integration of tropical forest management in broader climate change adaptation. In addition to the use of reduced impact logging to maintain ecosystem integrity, other approaches may be needed, such as fire prevention and management, as well as specific silvicultural options aimed at facilitating genetic adaptation. In the case of planted forests, the normally higher intensity of management (with respect to natural forest) offers additional opportunities for implementing adaptation measures, at both industrial and smallholder levels. Although the integration in forest management of measures aimed at enhancing adaptation to climate change may not involve substantial additional effort with respect to current practice, little action appears to have been taken to date. Tropical foresters and forest-dependent communities appear not to appreciate the risks posed by climate change and, for those who are aware of them, practical guidance on how to respond is largely non-existent. The extent to which forestry research and national policies will promote and adopt management practices in order to assist production forests adapt to climate change is currently uncertain. Mainstreaming adaptation into national development and planning programs may represent an initial step towards the incorporation of climate change considerations into tropical forestry.     

Fishery livelihoods and adaptation to climate change: a case study of Chilika lagoon, India

Climate change combined with human activities poses significant risks to people’s livelihood especially in developing countries. Adaptation at the community level is of crucial importance in enabling them to respond to the direct and indirect effects of changes in climate. In a case study of fishing communities in Chilika lagoon, India, the focus is made on understanding climate change adaptation at the community level and scaling it up into the policy perspective through application of Sustainable Livelihood Approach. This article challenges the research and policy community to encourage the identification of locally negative constraints and positive strengths toward climate resilient communities in rural areas.

Accounting for risk and uncertainty in determining preferred strategies for adapting to future climate change

Individuals, businesses, and policymakers face the problem of selecting a preferred strategy for adapting a managed ecosystem to future climate change when there is risk and/or uncertainty about future climate change and its ecosystem impacts, and the conditional outcomes of adaptive strategies (i.e., performance of an adaptive strategy given a particular future climate change scenario occurs). Evaluation methods for this purpose are described for two cases; one in which the decision-maker can (climate risk case) and cannot (climate uncertainty case) assign probabilities to future climate change scenarios. Fuzzy sets are used to characterize uncertainty regarding both future climate change, and the conditional outcomes of adaptive strategies. The preferred conditional adaptive strategy for a future climate change scenario is determined by ordering the adaptive strategies for that scenario using a fuzzy set operation. Two methods are described for determining the adaptive strategy that is preferred across all climate change scenarios. The preferred overall adaptive strategy for the climate risk case is determined by maximizing a performance index for strategies. The preferred overall adaptive strategy for the climate uncertainty case is determined using the minimax regret criterion, which selects the strategy that minimizes the maximum loss in performance that can occur across all strategies and climate change scenarios. Ways for making the evaluation methods dynamic are considered.     

Adapting regional eutrophication targets for surface waters—influence of the EU Water Framework Directive, national policy and climate change

Large amounts of waterborne nutrients are major problems for society since they can cause harmful algal blooms in surface water bodies. Consequently, there are a variety of national and international guidelines, e.g. Swedish National Environmental Quality Objectives and the EU Water Framework Directive, which include targets to be achieved within a certain time frame. This paper uses the example of a large Swedish lake to show that national and international targets must be adapted to the local situations. Despite decreasing nutrient concentrations, cyanobacterial blooms in the lake have increased over recent years. We found that these blooms coincide with depleted nitrate–nitrogen concentrations and increased water temperatures. We propose a simple model with water temperature, nitrate–nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations as input variables as a basis for formulation of regional eutrophication targets. Political decisions should be preceded by open discussion between policymakers and scientists to differentiate between real knowledge, assumptions or feelings. For optimal results, recommendations for reducing nutrient load should consider all sources, including urban stormwater and wastewater from rural houses, and should be founded on a balanced reduction in emissions of algae-available nutrients. In addition, climate change calls for more effective environmental policy to protect surface water resources.     

Analysing countries’ contribution to climate change: scientific and policy-related choices

This paper evaluates the influence of different policy-related and scientific choices on the calculated regional contributions to global climate change (the “Brazilian Proposal”). Policy-related choices include the time period of emissions, the mix of greenhouse gases and different indicators of climate change impacts. The scientific choices include historical emissions and model representations of the climate system. We generated and compared results of several simple climate models. We find that the relative contributions of different nations to global climate change—from emissions of greenhouse gases alone—are quite robust, despite the varying model complexity and differences in calculated absolute changes. For the default calculations, the average calculated contributions to the global mean surface temperature increase in 2000 are about 40% from OECD, 14% from Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, 24% from Asia and 22% from Africa and Latin America. Policy-related choices, such as time period of emissions, climate change indicator and gas mix generally have larger influence on the results than scientific choices. More specifically, choosing a later attribution start date (1990 instead of 1890) for historical emissions, decreases the contributions of regions that started emitting early, such as the OECD countries by 6 percentage points, whereas it increases the contribution of late emitters such as Asia by 8 percentage points. However, only including the fossil CO₂ emissions instead of the emissions of all Kyoto gases (fossil and land use change), increases the OECD contributions by 21 percentage points and decreases the contribution of Asia by 14 percentage points.     

Air quality and climate change: Designing new win-win policies for Europe

Anthropogenic activities are responsible for the emission of gaseous and particulate pollutants that modify atmospheric composition. Such changes are, in turn, responsible for the degradation of air quality at the regional/local scale as well as for changes of climate. Air pollution and climate change are two intimately connected environmental issues. However, these two environmental challenges are still viewed as separate issues, which are dealt with by different science communities and within different policy frameworks. Indeed, many mitigation options offer the possibility to both improve air quality and mitigate climate change but, at the same time, mitigation options that may provide benefits to one aspect, are worsening the situation in the other. Therefore, coordinated actions taking into account the air quality-climate linkages are required. These actions need to be based on strong scientific grounds, as recognised by the European Commission that in the past few years has promoted consultation processes among the science community, the policy makers and the relevant stakeholders. Here, the main fields in which such coordinated actions are needed are examined from a policy perspective.