A co-evolutionary approach to climate change impact assessment — Part II: A scenario-based case study in East Anglia (UK)

Policy makers are beginning to intensify their search for policies that assist society to adapt to the unfolding impacts of climate change at the local level. This paper forms the second part of two part a examination of the potential for using scenarios in adaptation and vulnerability assessment. Part I explained how climate change and socio-economic scenarios can be integrated to better understand the complex inter-relationships between a changing climate and a dynamically evolving social system. This second part describes how a broadly representative sample of public, private and voluntary organisations in the East Anglian region of the UK responded to the scenarios, and identifies future research priorities. The main findings are that integrated socio-economic and climate scenarios applied `bottom up’ to locally important stakeholders: (1) provide a sophisticated and dynamic mechanism to explore the potential feedbacks between natural and human systems; (2) offer a means to understand the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of different exposure units; (3) promote social learning by encouraging participants to assess the adequacy of their existing climate strategies for longer than their normal planning periods.     

Adapting to climate change: Public water supply in England and Wales

This paper describes an assessment of the ways in which water supply companies in England and Wales are adapting to climate change, evaluated in the context of a model of the adaptation process. The four components of the model are (i) awareness of and concern about the potential impacts of climate change, (ii) adaptation strategy, (iii) the concept of an adaptation space from which options are selected, and (iv) the notion that three groups of factors influence awareness, strategy and option selection: susceptibility to change, internal characteristics of the organisation, and regulatory and market context.Public water supply in England and Wales is provided by private sector companies, subject to environmental and economic regulation. Hydrological simulations suggest that climate change has the potential to reduce the reliability of supply sources over the next few decades. The industry in December 2004 completed a review of investment requirements over the next five years.Awareness of climate change is high in the water industry, but by developing assessment procedures and incorporating them into the investment review the regulators forced companies to consider explicitly the potential impacts of climate change in a consistent and rigorous manner. These analyses combined climate change with other pressures on water resources, and in practice companies did not attribute specific investment decisions or proposals to climate change or indeed any other individual drivers. The broad strategy adopted by all water supply companies – to maintain standards of service – is determined by regulatory controls and market considerations, but the degree of concern about the impacts of climate change and precise adaptation options necessary to address supply-demand imbalances varied between water supply companies, reflecting local geographic conditions. The water supply companies and regulators have different perspectives on the relative merits of supply-side and demand-side measures, reflecting different organisational priorities.The 2004 investment review determined that no specific actions were necessary to deal with future climate change, but that measures set in place – in terms of methodologies and investment in investigations into specific resource developments – provided a sound foundation for more specific actions in the next investment review in five years time. The paper concludes by summarising the factors assisting and constraining adaptation over the next few decades.     

Observed adaptation to climate change: UK evidence of transition to a well-adapting society

This paper investigates whether and to what extent a wide range of actors in the UK are adapting to climate change, and whether this is evidence of a social transition. We document evidence of over 300 examples of early adopters of adaptation practice to climate change in the UK. These examples span a range of activities from small adjustments (or coping), to building adaptive capacity, to implementing actions and to creating deeper systemic change in public and private organisations in a range of sectors. We find that adaptation in the UK has been dominated by government initiatives and has principally occurred in the form of research into climate change impacts. These government initiatives have stimulated a further set of actions at other scales in public agencies, regulatory agencies and regional government (and the devolved administrations), though with little real evidence of climate change adaptation initiatives trickling down to local government level. The sectors requiring significant investment in large scale infrastructure have invested more heavily than those that do not in identifying potential impacts and adaptations. Thus we find a higher level of adaptation activity by the water supply and flood defence sectors. Sectors that are not dependent on large scale infrastructure appear to be investing far less effort and resources in preparing for climate change. We conclude that the UK government-driven top-down targeted adaptation approach has generated anticipatory action at low cost in some areas. We also conclude that these actions may have created enough niche activities to allow for diffusion of new adaptation practices in response to real or perceived climate change. These results have significant implications for how climate policy can be developed to support autonomous adaptors in the UK and other countries.     

Climate change adaptation in Australian mining communities: comparing mining company and local government views and activities

Effective climate change adaptation in mining communities is reliant on action by both local authorities and mining operations. This article reports the findings of two surveys conducted in late 2010, with Australian mining companies and local government authorities respectively, investigating their perceptions and activities related to climate change adaptation. The research identified the main types of weather and climate-related impacts experienced in the past and expected under future climate conditions for the two groups. There were significantly differing levels of concern about weather and climate-related impacts between the two types of organisations. Mining company respondents reported lower levels of severity of impact from both past and (expected) future weather events, as well as lower levels of belief in climate change and of adaptation activities to prepare for it. Interestingly, mining companies generally reported less concern about future impacts than those experienced in the past, suggesting discounting of risks due to climate change scepticism. The article reports on a range of factors relevant to adaptation in mining communities, including perceived barriers, collaboration and further information needs. The research findings are discussed in the context of other recent research on climate change adaptation by Australian organisations and studies of mining industry adaptation in other countries.     

Reconceptualising adaptation to climate change as part of pathways of change and response

The need to adapt to climate change is now widely recognised as evidence of its impacts on social and natural systems grows and greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Yet efforts to adapt to climate change, as reported in the literature over the last decade and in selected case studies, have not led to substantial rates of implementation of adaptation actions despite substantial investments in adaptation science. Moreover, implemented actions have been mostly incremental and focused on proximate causes; there are far fewer reports of more systemic or transformative actions. We found that the nature and effectiveness of responses was strongly influenced by framing. Recent decision-oriented approaches that aim to overcome this situation are framed within a “pathways” metaphor to emphasise the need for robust decision making within adaptive processes in the face of uncertainty and inter-temporal complexity. However, to date, such “adaptation pathways” approaches have mostly focused on contexts with clearly identified decision-makers and unambiguous goals; as a result, they generally assume prevailing governance regimes are conducive for adaptation and hence constrain responses to proximate causes of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore a broader conceptualisation of “adaptation pathways” that draws on ‘pathways thinking’ in the sustainable development domain to consider the implications of path dependency, interactions between adaptation plans, vested interests and global change, and situations where values, interests, or institutions constrain societal responses to change. This re-conceptualisation of adaptation pathways aims to inform decision makers about integrating incremental actions on proximate causes with the transformative aspects of societal change. Case studies illustrate what this might entail. The paper ends with a call for further exploration of theory, methods and procedures to operationalise this broader conceptualisation of adaptation.     

适应气候变化研究中的常见术语辨析

适应气候变化在国际公约谈判及国内适应实践中成为重要的关注内容,明晰适应相关的术语含义具有科学参考价值和实践指导意义。本文通过比较适应相关术语认为,适应是行为方式或对策措施的界定,可不需量化数据支持;适应能力需有明确评价指标体系,并最终产生量化性评价结果;适应性更偏重于能力属性,其基本结论是有或无、强或弱的判断,在适应性有量化结论支持或明确强弱确定时则等同于适应能力。脆弱性评价中,暴露度体现主体对象与气候变化相关的基本处境概况,敏感性表明气候变化对主体对象的影响,适应能力则是经济资本、自然资源、技术水平、社会保障四大要素的综合评价,各要素涵盖的具体指标需要酌情依据适应主体属性予以判别和遴选。适应气候变化与灾害风险管理在主体范畴、驱动因子、行动目的上有所区别,但两者共同关注提高对气候变化/气候灾害风险的抵御、承受、恢复能力,以降低不利影响,实现可持续发展为共同目标。     

An assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation for the Torres Strait Islands, Australia

Adaptive practices are taking place in a range of sectors and regions in Australia in response to existing climate impacts, and in anticipation of future unavoidable impacts. For a rich economy such as Australia’s, the majority of human systems have considerable adaptive capacity. However, the impacts on human systems at the intra-nation level are not homogenous due to their differing levels of exposure, sensitivity and capacity to adapt to climate change. Despite past resilience to changing climates, many Indigenous communities located in remote areas are currently identified as highly vulnerable to climate impacts due to their high level of exposure and sensitivity, but low capacity to adapt. In particular, communities located on low-lying islands have particular vulnerability to sea level rise and increasingly intense storm surges caused by more extreme weather. Several Torres Strait Island community leaders have been increasingly concerned about these issues, and the ongoing risks to these communities’ health and well-being posed by direct and indirect climate impacts. A government agency is beginning to develop short-term and long-term adaptation plans for the region. This work, however, is being developed without adequate scientific assessment of likely ‘climate changed futures.’ This is because the role that anthropogenic climate change has played, or will play, on extreme weather events for this region is not currently clear. This paper draws together regional climate data to enable a more accurate assessment of the islands’ exposure to climate impacts. Understanding the level of exposure and uncertainty around specific impacts is vital to gauge the nature of these islands’ vulnerability, in so doing, to inform decisions about how best to develop anticipatory adaptation strategies over various time horizons, and to address islanders’ concerns about the likely resilience and viability of their communities in the longer term.     

气候变化影响与适应问题的谈判进展

 从《气候变化框架公约》（以下简称《公约》）第一次缔约方会议到目前为止，几乎历次会议都涉及气候变化影响与适应的谈判内容，但谈判进展甚微。通过综述《公约》谈判进程中与适应气候变化有关的主要决定，分析了适应气候变化影响与适应问题谈判的制约因素，最后提出了我国在气候变化影响与适应问题谈判中应持的立场。     

How robust are global conservation priorities to climate change?

International conservation organisations have identified priority areas for biodiversity conservation. These global-scale prioritisations affect the distribution of funds for conservation interventions. As each organisation has a different focus, each prioritisation scheme is determined by different decision criteria and the resultant priority areas vary considerably. However, little is known about how the priority areas will respond to the impacts of climate change. In this paper, we examined the robustness of eight global-scale prioritisations to climate change under various climate predictions from seven global circulation models. We developed a novel metric of the climate stability for 803 ecoregions based on a recently introduced method to estimate the overlap of climate envelopes. The relationships between the decision criteria and the robustness of the global prioritisation schemes were statistically examined. We found that decision criteria related to level of endemism and landscape fragmentation were strongly correlated with areas predicted to be robust to a changing climate. Hence, policies that prioritise intact areas due to the likely cost efficiency, and assumptions related to the potential to mitigate the impacts of climate change, require further examination. Our findings will help determine where additional management is required to enable biodiversity to adapt to the impacts of climate change.     

Identifying thresholds and barriers to adaptation through measuring climate sensitivity and capacity to change in an Australian primary industry

Primary producers, including graziers, crop farmers and commercial fishers are especially vulnerable to climate change because they depend on highly climate-sensitive natural resources. Adaptation to climate change will make a major difference to the severity of the impacts experienced. However, individuals (resource users) can erect sometimes seemingly peculiar barriers to potential adaptation options that need to be addressed if adaptation is to be effective. Our aim was to understand the nature of barriers to change for cattle graziers in the northern Australian rangelands. We conceptualised barriers as adverse reactions where resource users are unlikely to contemplate adaptations that threaten core values or perceptions about themselves. We assumed that resource users that were more sensitive to climate change impacts—or more dependent on the resource—were more proximate to thresholds of coping and thus more likely to erect barriers, especially people with little adaptive capacity. Given that climate sensitivity and adaptive capacity are important components of vulnerability, our approach was to conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify potential but important barriers to change. Data from 240 graziers suggest that graziers in northern Australia might be especially vulnerable to climate change because their identity, place attachment, low employability, weak networks and dependents can make them sensitive to change, and their sensitivity can be compounded by a low adaptive capacity. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation, especially at the scale of the individual.     

The right stuff? informing adaptation to climate change in British Local Government

Local government has a crucial role to play in climate change adaptation, both delivering adaptation strategies devised from above and coordinating bottom-up action. This paper draws on a unique longitudinal dataset to measure progress in adaptation by local authorities in Britain, comparing results from a national-scale survey and follow-up interviews conducted in 2003 with a second wave of research completed a decade later. Whereas a decade ago local authority staff were unable to find scientific information that they could understand and use, we find that these technical-cognitive barriers to adaptation are no longer a major problem for local authority respondents. Thanks to considerable Government investment in research and science brokerage to improve the quality and accessibility of climate information, local authorities have developed their adaptive capacity, and their staff are now engaging with the ‘right’ kind of information in assessing climate change risks and opportunities. However, better knowledge has not translated into tangible adaptation actions. Local authorities face substantial difficulties in implementing adaptation plans. Budget cuts and a lack of political support from central government have sapped institutional capacity and political appetite to address long-term climate vulnerabilities, as local authorities in Britain now struggle even to deliver their immediate statutory responsibilities. Local authority adaptation has progressed farthest where it has been rebranded as resiliency to extreme weather so as to fit with the focus on immediate risks to delivering statutory duties. In the current political environment, adaptation officers need information about the economic costs of weather impacts to local authority services if they are to build the business case for adaptation and gain the leverage to secure resources and institutional license to implement tangible action. Unless these institutional barriers are addressed, local government is likely to struggle to adapt to a changing climate.     

Determinants of corporate adaptation to climate change in winter tourism: An econometric analysis

While corporate adaptation strategies in response to climate change have been characterized, the determinants of adaptation have not been comprehensively analyzed. Knowledge of these determinants is particularly useful for policy makers to provide favorable conditions in support of corporate adaptation measures. Based on unique data from a survey of Swiss ski lift operators, this paper empirically examines such determinants at the business level. Our econometric analysis with linear regression and count data models finds a positive influence of the awareness of possible climate change effects on the scope of corporate adaptation. Surprisingly, no significant influence of the vulnerability to climate change effects on the scope of adaptation could be found. Finally, the dependency on the affected business and the ability to adapt influence the specific strategic directions of corporate adaptation.     

Views from the vulnerable: Understanding climatic and other stressors in the Sahel

In much of sub-Saharan Africa, considerable research exists on the impacts of climate change on social-ecological systems. Recent adaptation studies emphasize sectoral vulnerability and largely physical adaptation strategies that mirror anti-desertification plans. The adaptive role of subsistence farmers, the vulnerable ‘target’ population, is largely overlooked. This article aims to fill this gap by putting the views from the vulnerable in the center of the analysis. Drawing from participatory risk ranking and scoring among smallholders in central Senegal, data on multiple hazards indicate that farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate change is undermined by poor health, rural unemployment, and inadequate village infrastructure. Results from conceptual mapping reveal incomplete understanding of causes and consequences of climate change. Yet, shared knowledge and lessons learned from previous climatic stresses provide vital entry points for social learning and enhanced adaptive capacity to both wetter and drier periods now and in the future.     

Assessing the vulnerability of food crop systems in Africa to climate change

Africa is thought to be the region most vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability and change. Agriculture plays a dominant role in supporting rural livelihoods and economic growth over most of Africa. Three aspects of the vulnerability of food crop systems to climate change in Africa are discussed: the assessment of the sensitivity of crops to variability in climate, the adaptive capacity of farmers, and the role of institutions in adapting to climate change. The magnitude of projected impacts of climate change on food crops in Africa varies widely among different studies. These differences arise from the variety of climate and crop models used, and the different techniques used to match the scale of climate model output to that needed by crop models. Most studies show a negative impact of climate change on crop productivity in Africa. Farmers have proved highly adaptable in the past to short- and long-term variations in climate and in their environment. Key to the ability of farmers to adapt to climate variability and change will be access to relevant knowledge and information. It is important that governments put in place institutional and macro-economic conditions that support and facilitate adaptation and resilience to climate change at local, national and transnational level.     

Impacts and adaptation to climate change in European economies

This paper evaluates the impacts of climate change to European economies under an increase in global mean temperature at +2 °C and +4 °C. It is based on a summary of conclusions from available studies of how climate change may affect various sectors of the economies in different countries. We apply a macroeconomic general equilibrium model, which integrates impacts of climate change on different activities of the economies. Agents adapt by responding to the changes in market conditions following the climatic changes, thus bringing consistency between economic behaviour and adaptation to climate change. Europe is divided into 85 sub-regions in order to capture climate variability and variations in vulnerabilities within countries. We find that the impacts in the +2 °C are moderate throughout Europe, with positive impacts on GDP in some sub-regions and negative impacts down to 0.1 per cent per year in others. At +4 °C, GDP is negatively affected throughout Europe, and most substantially in the southern parts, where it falls by up to 0.7 per cent per year in some sub-regions. We also find that climate change causes differentiations in wages across Europe, which may cause migration from southern parts of Europe to northern parts, especially to the Nordic countries.     

Adaptive and risk-based approaches to climate change and the management of uncertainty and institutional risk: The case of future flooding in England

This paper focuses on how scientific uncertainties about future peak flood flows and sea level rises are accounted for in long term strategic planning processes to adapt inland and coastal flood risk management in England to climate change. Combining key informant interviews (n = 18) with documentary analysis, it explores the institutional tensions between adaptive management approaches emphasising openness to uncertainty and to alternative policy options on the one hand and risk-based ones that close them down by transforming uncertainties into calculable risks whose management can be rationalized through cost-benefit analysis and nationally consistent, risk-based priority setting on the other hand. These alternative approaches to managing uncertainty about the first-order risks to society from future flooding are shaped by institutional concerns with managing the second-order, ‘institutional’ risks of criticism and blame arising from accountability for discharging those first-order risk management responsibilities. In the case of river flooding the poorly understood impacts of future climate change were represented with a simplistic adjustment to peak flow estimates, which proved robust in overcoming institutional resistance to making precautionary allowances for climate change in risk-based flood management, at least in part because its scientific limitations were acknowledged only partially. By contrast in the case of coastal flood risk management, greater scientific confidence led to successively more elaborate guidance on how to represent the science, which in turn led to inconsistency in implementation and increased the institutional risks involved in taking the uncertain effects of future sea level rise into account in adaptation planning and flood risk management. Comparative analysis of these two cases then informs some wider reflections about the tensions between adaptive and risk-based approaches, the role of institutional risk in climate change adaptation, and the importance of such institutional dynamics in shaping the framing uncertainties and policy responses to scientific knowledge about them.     

Cautionary Tales: Adaptation and the Global Poor

Many who study global change, particularly from industrialized countries, are optimistic about the capacity of agriculture to successfully adapt to climate change. This optimism is based on historic trends in yield increases, on the spread of cropping systems far beyond their traditional agroecological boundaries, and the inherent flexibility of systems of international trade. Analysis of the success (or in rare cases, failure) of adaptation is by analogy—either to analogous socioeconomic or technological change or to short term environmental change. Such studies have been limited to industrialized countries.This paper uses five analogs from developing countries to examine potential adaptation to global climate change by poor people. Two are studies of comparative developing country responses to drought, flood, and tropical cyclone and to the Sahelian droughts of the 1970s and 80s that illustrate adaptations to climate and weather events:. Two address food production and rapid population growth in South Asia and Africa. Three types of adaptive social costs are considered: the direct costs of adaptation, the costs of adapting to the adaptations, and the costs of failing to adapt. A final analog reviews 30 village-level studies for the role that these social costs of adaptation play in perpetuating poverty and environmental degradation.     

Firm relocation as adaptive response to climate change and weather extremes

Growing scientific evidence suggests that human-induced climate change will bring about large-scale environmental changes such as sea-level rise and coastal flooding, extreme weather events and agricultural disruptions. The speed and extent of these changes and the expected impacts on social and corresponding economic and industrial systems are now moving to the forefront of debates. In this paper, we argue that climate change will lead to significant disruptions to firms which might ultimately create the necessity of a geographical shift of firm and industrial activities away from regions highly affected by climate change. Such a shift might become necessary due to (1) direct disruptions through climate change impacts on firm operations, for instance through droughts, floods, or sea level rise, and due to (2) disruptions in a firm's supplier, buyer or resource base that lead to flow-on effects and adverse consequences for a firm. We propose a framework for integrating firm relocation decisions into firm adaptive responses to climate change. The framework consists of three assessment steps: the level of risk from climate change impacts at a firm's location, the feasibility of relocation, and associated costs and benefits. We apply the framework to two case examples. The first case of electricity distribution firms in Victoria/Australia illustrates how the relocation (undergrounding) of cables could decrease the vulnerability of distribution networks to bushfires and the risk of electricity-caused fires, but would require significant investments. The second case of firms in the Australian pastoral industry points to geographic diversification of pastoral land holdings as possible adaptation option, but also to constraints in form of availability of suitable properties, ties to local communities, and adverse impacts on biodiversity. Implications for adaptation research and practice are outlined.     

Food security in the face of climate change: Adaptive capacity of small-scale social-ecological systems to environmental variability

Improving the adaptive capacity of small-scale irrigation systems to the impacts of climate change is crucial for food security in Asia. This study analyzes the capacity of small-scale irrigation systems dependent on the Asian monsoon to adapt to variability in river discharge caused by climate change. Our study is motivated by the Pumpa irrigation system, a small-scale irrigation system located in Nepal that is a model for this type of system. We developed an agent-based model in which we simulated the decisions farmers make about the irrigation strategy to use according to available water flow. Given the uncertainty associated with how climate change may affect the Asian monsoon, we simulated the performance of the system under different projections of climate change in the region (increase and decrease in rainfall, reduction and expansion of the monsoon season, and changes in the timing of the onset of the monsoon). Accordingly to our simulations, farmers might need to adapt to rainfall intensification and a late onset in the monsoon season. The demands for collective action among farmers (e.g. infrastructure repair, meetings, decisions, etc.) might increase considerably due to climate change. Although our model suggests that investment in new infrastructure might increase the performance of the system under some climate change scenarios, the high inequality among farmers when water availability is reduced might hinder the efficiency of these measures due to a reduction of farmers’ willingness to cooperate. Our modeling exercise helps to hypothesize about the most sensitive climate change scenarios for smallscale irrigation farming in Nepal and helps to frame a discussion of some possible solutions and fundamental trade-offs in the process of adaptation to improve for food and water security under climate change.