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Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability

Definitions from various experts:

“Human activities and groups are sensitive to climate to the degree that they can be affected by it, and vulnerable to the degree that they can be harmed.  Only the latter term incorporates a human judgement of value...vulnerability [refers] to the potential for negative outcomes or consequences.  A resilient system, activity, or population is one with low vulnerability, being either resistant to hazard effects or readily capable of coping with and recovering from them...hazards demote either events threatening people and things that they value, or the probability of the occurrence of such events.  Impacts...are the actual consequences (losses, or conceivably, gains) resulting from a biophysical event.  Negative impacts are the product of hazard events and vulnerability." From Reasoning by analogy, a chapter by Meyer, W. B., K. W. Butzer, T. E. Downing, B. L. I. Turner, G. W. Wenzel, and J. L. Wescoat in Human Choice and Climate Change: The tools for policy analyses, S. Rayner and E. L. Malone, Eds. (1998)  Batelle Press, 217-276.

“Adaptation is a process by which individuals, communities and countries seek to cope with the consequences of climate change. The process of adaptation is not new; the idea of incorporating future climate risk into policy-making is. While our understanding of climate change and its potential impacts has become clearer, the availability of practical guidance on adaptation has not kept pace. The development of the Adaptation Policy Framework (APF) is intended to help provide the rapidly evolving process of adaptation policy-making with a much-needed roadmap. Ultimately, the purpose of the APF is to support adaptation processes to protect - and enhance - human well-being in the face of climate change. This volume will be invaluable for everyone working on climate change adaptation and policy-making, ” (this is an exerpt from Adaptation policy frameworks for climate change: developing strategies, policies, and measures, co-edited by Bo Lim, Erika Spanger-Siegfried ; co-authored by Ian Burton, Elizabeth Malone, Saleemul Huq, Cambrige University Press, 2005,  258pp.)

Adaptation and mitigation are both approaches for society to respond to long-term climate change.  Ian Burton described these approaches in, “Vulnerability and adaptive response in the context of climate and climate change,” Climatic Change, 36: 185-196; the following is an exerpt from that paper: 

 "This paper explores the distinction between climate and climate change [from the perspective of adaptation]. Adaptation to current climate variability has been proposed as an additional way to approach adaptation to long-term climate change. In effect improved adaptation to current climate is a step in preparation for longer term climate change. International programs of research and assessment are separately organized to deal with natural disasters and climate change. There is no scientific concensus so far, that extreme events have changed in frequency on a world-wide basis, although some regional changes have occured. It is extremely unlikely that significant shifts in the means of weather distrbutions will take place without shifts in the tails. In some situations it may make more sense to focus on adaptation to extreme events and the tails of distributions. In other circumstances adaptation to the norms is the logical focus. The relationship between normal climate and climate change is examined in terms of single and complex variables and phenomena. It is proposed that the research communities studying adaptation to extreme events and adaptation to climate change work more closely together, perhaps in a newly organized joint research program."

Scientists are also exploring the different roles of adaptation and mitigation in responding to climate change.  Two good articles on this are by Pielke of the University of Colorado, and co-authors,  and  McKibbin and Wilcoxen, both non-resident senior fellows of the Brookings Institution.

In a commentary published in the 7 February 2007 edition of Nature, Roger Pielke Jr., Gwyn Prins, Steve Rayner and Daniel Sarewitz commented on how renewed attention to policies for adapting to climate change cannot come too soon,

“During the early policy discussions on climate change in the 1980s, adaptation was understood to be an important option for society. Yet for much of the past two decades the mere idea of adapting to climate change became problematic for those advocating emissions reductions, and was treated 'with the same distaste that the religious right reserves for sex education in schools. That is, both constitute ethical compromises that in any case will only encourage dangerous experimentation with the undesired behaviour.'  Indeed, former US vice-president Al Gore forcefully declared his opposition to adaptation in 1992, explaining that it represented a 'kind of laziness, an arrogant faith in our ability to react in time to save our skins.'

But perspectives have changed. Adaptation is again seen as an essential part of climate policy alongside greenhouse-gas mitigation. Both the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change demonstrate that adaptation is firmly back on the agenda. There are at least three reasons why the taboo on adaptation can no longer be enforced.” (Pielke et al, 2007, Climate change 2007: Lifting the taboo on adaptation,  to read the full article, see: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2506-2007.11.pdf

McKibbin and Wilcoxen discuss aspects of uncertainty surrounding climate change and what a realistic policy that deals with this uncertainty would look like. They argue that any sensible response to climate change should consist of both mitigation and adaptation..

Exerpt: “ Because of the long time periods involved, mitigation and adaptation are inseparable issues. Measures to reduce emissions today will only change the climate many years into the future and will therefore impact on the extent of future adaptation.  There are two aspects of adaptation addressed in this paper. The first is the need to provide the appropriate incentives for individual responses to climate change — this requires clear establishment of property rights across a wide range of areas from managing water to pricing energy use. It also requires appropriately regulated markets for individuals to manage a range of different types of risk. The extent to which individuals have an incentive to invest in adaptation depends on the nature and clarity of the policies put in place for current and future mitigation. Greater policy uncertainty changes the incentives for investment in adaptation.

The second part of the paper focuses on implementing an adaptable policy framework that can respond to information on climate change. Like individual adaptation, the key to a durable system for policy is the importance of establishing property rights and providing a mechanism for managing risk caused by changes in policy. This draws extensively on the book by Warwick J. McKibbin and Peter Wilcoxen, Climate Change Policy After Kyoto A Blueprint for a Realistic Approach published in December 2002 by the Brookings Institution. Drawing on this book, the paper outlines important insights that economic theory offers for the design of sustainable climate policy in an uncertain world. The authors outline a clear framework that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) while guaranteeing that short-run costs of compliance will not be excessive, and encouraging adaptation of the economic structure to deal with future mitigation. It also allows flexibility in adjusting policy settings when new information about various aspects of climate change becomes available.”  From, Climate Policy and Uncertainty: The Roles of Adaptation versus Mitigation, Brookings Discussion Papers in International Economics No. 161, May 2004.  To view the full article, see: http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/20040515_bdpie161.htm
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