Adaptation action and research in glaciated mountain systems: Are they enough to meet the challenge of climate change?

The challenge of climate change in glaciated mountain systems is significant and cannot be met without adaptation actions and research that addresses the interwoven scientific, human, and socio-ecological dimensions of climate change. However, our understanding of the effectiveness of existing efforts in meeting this challenge is lacking, a shortcoming compounded by a lack of consistent and comparable information about adaptation action and research in glaciated mountain systems. This study develops a typology of the challenge of climate change in glaciated mountain systems and uses formal systematic review methods to critically evaluate existing adaptation actions and research in light of this framework. Our results––based on an evaluation of 170 English-language peer-reviewed and grey literature documents––indicate that socially-relevant climate-related changes are already manifesting in glaciated mountain systems, with the most commonly documented stimuli for adaptation being hydrological changes related to the degradation of the high mountain cryosphere. Some degree of adaptation action has occurred in 78% of countries with glaciated mountain ranges, but most adaptations are reactions to experienced climatic stimuli and carried out without guidance from a formal adaptation plan. The study also identified the emergence of explicitly mountain-focused adaptation research, yet studies framed in this way are still relatively scarce and have only been carried out in about half of the countries with glaciated mountain ranges. Although we document several laudable adaptation action and research efforts, few initiatives are adequately addressing the difficulties outlined in our evaluation framework for the challenge of climate change. The study discusses the consequences of observed shortcomings and identifies recommendations for more fully meeting the challenge of climate change in glaciated mountain systems.     

Are we adapting to climate change?

Human systems will have to adapt to climate change. Understanding of the magnitude of the adaptation challenge at a global scale, however, is incomplete, constrained by a limited understanding of if and how adaptation is taking place. Here we develop and apply a methodology to track and characterize adaptation action; we apply these methods to the peer-reviewed, English-language literature. Our results challenge a number of common assumptions about adaptation while supporting others: (1) Considerable research on adaptation has been conducted yet the majority of studies report on vulnerability assessments and natural systems (or intentions to act), not adaptation actions. (2) Climate change is rarely the sole or primary motivator for adaptation action. (3) Extreme events are important adaptation stimuli across regions. (4) Proactive adaptation is the most commonly reported adaptive response, particularly in developed nations. (5) Adaptation action is more frequently reported in developed nations, with middle income countries underrepresented and low-income regions dominated by reports from a small number of countries. (6) There is limited reporting on adaptations being developed to take advantage of climate change or focusing on women, elderly, or children.     

Risk perception and decision-making: do farmers consider risks from climate change?

This paper provides one of the first empirical studies that examine the impact of climate change adaptation practices on technical efficiency (TE) among smallholder farmers in Nepal. An adaptation index is used to explore the impact of farmers’ adaptation on TE using the stochastic frontier analysis framework. Data for six districts of Nepal representing all three agro-ecological regions (terai, hill, and mountain) were collected from a focus group discussion, a stakeholder workshop and a household survey. The survey shows that about 91% of the farming households have adopted at least one practice to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change. Empirical results reveal that adaptation is an important factor explaining efficiency differentials among farming households. Those adopting a greater number of adaptation practices on a larger scale are, on average, found to be 13% more technically efficient than those adopting fewer practices on smaller scale. The empirical results also show that average TE is only 0.72, indicating that there are opportunities for farming households in Nepal to further improve productive efficiency, on average by 28%. Other important factors that explain variations in the productive efficiency across farming households include farmer’s education level, irrigation facilities, market access, and social capital such as farmer’s participations in relevant agricultural organizations and clubs. This study provides empirical evidence to policy makers that small scale adjustments made by farmers in response to climate change impacts are effective in improving farmers’ efficiency in agriculture production. This indicates a need for farmers’ involvement in climate change adaptation planning.     

Adaptation,adaptive capacity and vulnerability

This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs.     

Everyday Adaptation: Theorizing climate change adaptation in daily life

Climate science to date demonstrates that natural and human systems must urgently adapt. Adaptation refers to changes in societies and ecological systems as they respond to both actual and anticipated impacts of the changing climate. While adaptation is not limited to the level of planning and policy, existing adaptation practice privileges institutional action. We argue that the definition of adaptation should be broadened to include the small, incremental changes made in our daily lives to accommodate the shifting ecologies in which we live. Drawing on critical adaptation research and our own ethnographic fieldwork in the Global South, we define everyday adaptation as the shifted ways a person works, eats, lives and thinks in response to climate realities, rather than the hardening of coastlines or the relocation of vulnerable structures. We integrate and build on existing scholarship on adaptation and the everyday to theorize the logics of everyday, hyperlocal adaptation. This hyperlocal scale is a critical component of any definition of adaptation and a useful lens for studying the way much of the global population adapts and will continue to adapt their lives to climate change. We offer two theoretical components of adaptation revealed by the everyday - adaptation labor and value adaptation – as lenses to see changes in everyday action. Through considering hyperlocal action, we then identify and explore four logics of everyday adaptation actions: lifestyle stability, socio-ecological reactivity, livelihood flexibility, and community capacity. Everyday adaptations are limited by individuals’ capacity to adapt and thereby determine the longevity, livability, and quality of life of places on the frontlines of climate change. We argue for understanding the aggregate effects of everyday adaptation in order to better align the actions of those living with climate change in their everyday lives and the large-scale adaptation projects aiming to protect them.     

Adapting and coping with climate change in temperate forests

A growing body of research documents how individuals respond to local impacts of global climate change and a range of policy efforts aim to help individuals reduce their exposure and improve their livelihoods despite these stressors. Yet there is still limited understanding of how to determine whether and how adaptation is occurring. Through qualitative analysis of focus group interviews, I evaluated individual behavioral responses to local forest stressors that can arguably be linked to global climate change among landowners in the Upper Midwest, USA. I found that landowner responses were planned as well as autonomous, more proactive than reactive, incremental rather than transformational, and aimed at being resilient to change and transitioning to new conditions, rather than resisting change alone. Many of the landowners’ responses can be considered forms of adaptation, rather than coping, because they were aimed at moderating and avoiding harm on long time horizons in anticipation of change. These findings stand in contrast to the short-term, reactive, and incremental responses that current socio-psychological theories of adaptation suggest are more typical at the individual level. This study contributes to scientific understanding of how to evaluate behavioral adaptation to climate change and differentiate it from coping, which is necessary for developing conceptually rigorous analytical frameworks to guide research and policy.     

Are cultural heritage and resources threatened by climate change? A systematic literature review

Climate change poses serious threats to the protection and preservation of cultural heritage and resources. Despite a high level of scholarly interest in climate change impacts on natural and socio-economic systems, a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of climate change on cultural heritage and resources across various continents and disciplines is noticeably absent from the literature. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review methodology to identify and characterize the state of knowledge and how the cultural heritage and resources at risk from climate change are being explored globally. Results from 124 reviewed publications show that scholarly interest in the topic is increasing, employs a wide range of research methods, and represents diverse natural and social science disciplines. Despite such increasing and diverse interest in climate change and cultural heritage and resources, the geographic scope of research is limited (predominantly European focused). Additionally, we identified the need for future studies that not only focuses on efficient, sustainable adaptation planning options but also documents if, and how, the implementation of cultural heritage and resources adaptation or preservation is taking place. This systematic literature review can help direct scholarly research in climate change and cultural heritage and resource area. Ultimately, we hope these new directions can influence policy-making for preservation and adaptation of cultural heritage and cultural resources globally.     

Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Florida��s unenviable position with respect to sea level rise

This paper introduces and summarizes a series of articles on the potential impacts of sea level rise on Florida??s natural and human communities and what might be done to reduce the severity of those impacts. Most of the papers in this special issue of Climatic Change were developed from presentations at a symposium held at Archbold Biological Station in January 2010, sponsored by the Florida Institute for Conservation Science. Symposium participants agreed that adaptation to sea level rise for the benefit of human communities should be planned in concert with adaptation to reduce vulnerability and impacts to natural communities and native species. The papers in this special issue discuss both of these categories of impacts and adaptation options. In this introductory paper, I place the subject in context by noting that that the literature in conservation biology related to climate change has been concerned largely about increasing temperatures and reduced moisture availability, rather than about sea level rise. The latter, however, is the most immediate and among the most severe impacts of global warming in low-lying regions such as Florida. I then review the content of this special issue by summarizing and interpreting the following 10 papers. I conclude with a review of the recommendations for research and policy that were developed from group discussions at the Archbold symposium. The main lesson that emerges from this volume is that sea level rise, combined with human population growth, urban development in coastal areas, and landscape fragmentation, poses an enormous threat to human and natural well-being in Florida. How Floridians respond to sea level rise will offer lessons, for better or worse, for other low-lying regions worldwide.     

Climatic Change in Mountain Regions: A Review of Possible Impacts

This paper addresses a number of issues related to current and future climatic change and its impacts on mountain environments and economies, focusing on the `Mountain Regions' Chapter 13 of Agenda 21, a basis document presented at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and the International Year of the Mountains (IYM) 2002. The awareness that mountain regions are an important component of the earth's ecosystems, in terms of the resources and services that they provide to both mountain communities and lowland residents, has risen in the intervening decade. Based upon the themes outlined in the supporting documents for IYM, this paper will provide a succinct review of a number of sectors that warrant particular attention, according to IYM. These sectors include water resources, ecosystems and biological diversity, natural hazards, health issues, and tourism. A portfolio of research and policy options are discussed in the concluding section, as a summary of what the IYM and other concerned international networks consider to be the priority for mountain environmental protection, capacity building, and response strategies in the face of climatic change in the short to medium term future.     

Adaptation: Sensitivity to Natural Variability, Agent Assumptions and Dynamic Climate Changes

The role of adaptation in impact assessment and integrated assessment of climate policy is briefly reviewed. Agriculture in the US is taken as exemplary of this issue. Historic studies in which no adaptation is assumed (so-called "dumb farmer") versus farmer-agents blessed with perfect foresight (so-called "clairvoyant farmer") are contrasted, and considered limiting cases as compared to "realistic farmers." What kinds of decision rules such realistic farmer-agents would adopt to deal with climate change involves a range of issues. These include degrees of belief the climate is actually changing, knowledge about how it will change, foresight on how technology is changing, estimation of what will happen in competitive granaries and assumptions about what governmental policies will be in various regions and over time. Clearly, a transparent specification of such agent-based decision rules is essential to model adaptation explicitly in any impact assessment. Moreover, open recognition of the limited set of assumptions contained in any one study of adaptation demands that authors clearly note that each individual study can represent only a fraction of plausible outcomes. A set of calculations using the Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) crop model is offered here as an example of explicit decision rules on adaptive behavior on climate impacts. The model is driven by a 2xCO₂ regional climate model scenario (from which a "mock" transient scenario was devised) to calculate yield changes for farmer-agents that practice no adaptation, perfect adaptation and 20-year-lagged adaptation, the latter designed to mimic the masking effects of natural variability on farmers' capacity to see how climate is changing. The results reinforce the expectation that the likely effects of natural variability, which would mask a farmer's capacity to detect climate change, is to place the calculated impacts of climate changes in two regions of the US in between that of perfect and no adaptation. Finally, the use of so-called "hedonic" methods (in which land prices in different regions with different current average climates are used to derive implicitly farmers' adaptive responses to hypothesized future climate changes) is briefly reviewed. It is noted that this procedure in which space and time are substituted, amounts to "ergodic economics." Such cross-sectional analyses are static, and thus neglect the dynamics of both climate and societal evolution. Furthermore, such static methods usually consider only a single measure of change (local mean annual temperature), rather than higher moments like climatic variability, diurnal temperature range, etc. These implicit assumptions in ergodic economics make use of such cross-sectional studies limited for applications to integrated assessments of the actual dynamics of adaptive capacity. While all such methods are appropriate for sensitivity analyses and help to define a plausible range of outcomes, none is by itself likely to define the range of plausible adaptive capacities that might emerge in response to climate change scenarios.     

Accessing adaptation: Multiple stressors on livelihoods in the Bolivian highlands under a changing climate

Smallholder farmers continuously confront multiple social and environmental stressors that necessitate changes in livelihood strategies to prevent damages and take advantage of new opportunities, or adaptation. Vulnerability, meaning susceptibility to harm, is attributable to social determinants that limit access to assets, leading to greater exposure and sensitivity to stressors and a limited capacity to adapt. Stressors and adaptation are intertwined because stressors deplete resources available for adaptation, while adaptation may erode resources available to respond to future stressors. We present empirical evidence demonstrating the interactions of multiple stressors and adaptations over time through a case study of indigenous farmers in highland Bolivia. We examine how farmers perceive the stress on their livelihoods, their strategies for adapting to these threats, and the influence of past adaptation and exposure on vulnerability under increasing climatic change. We find that vulnerability changes over time as multiple stressors, such as land scarcity and delayed seasonal rainfall, compound, simultaneously reducing access and demanding the expenditure of household assets for adaptation, including natural capital (water and land), human capital (including labor), and financial, physical, and social capital. To reduce vulnerability over time, constraints on access to key resources must be addressed, allowing households the flexibility to reduce their exposure and improve their adaptive capacity to the multiple stressors they confront.     

Adaptation in the context of technology development and transfer

Starting from a summary of key developments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) related to adaptation and technologies, the commentary provides an initial review of the available literature relevant to adaptation in the context of technology development and transfer. It summarizes what technologies for adaptation are, how they relate to development, and what their role is in adaptation. It subsequently highlights a number of policy and research issues that could be important to inform future policy. The commentary has two key messages. First, it argues that informed policy decisions on technology development and transfer to enhance adaptation require systematic assessments of the findings in the theoretical and empirical literature. Second, in light of the potential for overlap between processes for adaptation and processes for technologies for adaptation, there is a need for coordination and exchange of information between the work under the Cancún Adaptation Framework and under the Technology Mechanism of the UNFCCC.     

Defining and classifying personal and household climate change adaptation behaviors

With climate change increasingly affecting individuals’ day-to-day lives, interest is growing in the personal and household adaptation behaviors that people can engage in. Many of these behaviors focus on actions to protect oneself or one's household in response to immediate hazards rather than ones that may achieve longer-term adaptation goals. We conducted a content analysis of 75 publications identified through a systematic literature review to learn how researchers from a range of disciplines conceptualize adaptive behavior in the context of climate change and what kinds of specific actions they describe. Based on this review, we propose a comprehensive definition of personal and household adaptation behavior that considers its purpose (i.e., preventing harm or gaining benefits), timing (i.e., proactive or reactive), time scale (i.e., short-term or long-term), as well as who acts (i.e., the individual alone or with others) and who is affected by those actions (i.e., the individual, other people, or the environment). We classify specific individual adaptation behaviors into civic engagement, consumption, coping, household protection, learning, lifestyle changes, migration, and self-protection. Research is needed to better understand the personal and societal benefits of adaptation behaviors and how to more equitably support these actions in different contexts.     

Implementing climate change adaptation: lessons from India’s national adaptation fund on climate change (NAFCC)

With poverty alleviation and sustainable development as key imperatives for a developing economy like India, what drives the resource-constrained state governments to prioritize actions that address climate change impacts? We examine this question and argue that without access to additional earmarked financial resources, climate action would get overshadowed by developmental priorities and effective mainstreaming might not be possible. A systematic literature review was carried out to draw insights from the current state of implementation of adaptation projects, programmes and schemes at the subnational levels, along with barriers to mainstreaming climate change adaptation. The findings from a literature review were supplemented with lessons emerging from the implementation of India’s National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC). The results of this study underscore the scheme’s relevance.

Key policy insights

• Experience with NAFCC implementation reveals that states require sustained ‘handholding’ in terms of financial, technical and capacity support until climate change issues are fully understood and embedded in the policy landscape.

• Domestic sources of finance are critically important in the absence of predictable and adequate adaptation finance from international sources.

• The dedicated window for climate finance fosters a spirit of competitive federalism among states and encourages enhanced climate action.

• Enhanced budgetary allocation to NAFCC to strengthen the state-level adaptation response and create capacity to mainstream climate change concerns in state planning frames, is urgently needed.

     

Catching sea cucumber fever in coastal communities: Conceptualizing the impacts of shocks versus trends on social-ecological systems

Research on vulnerability and adaptation in social-ecological systems (SES) has largely centered on climate change and associated biophysical stressors. Key implications of this are twofold. First, there has been limited engagement with the impacts of social drivers of change on communities and linked SES. Second, the focus on climate effects often assumes slower drivers of change and fails to differentiate the implications of change occurring at different timescales. This has resulted in a body of SES scholarship that is under-theorized in terms of how communities experience and respond to fast versus slow change. Yet, social and economic processes at global scales increasingly emerge as ‘shocks’ for local systems, driving rapid and often surprising forms of change distinct from and yet interacting with the impacts of slow, ongoing ‘trends’. This research seeks to understand the nature and impacts of social shocks as opposed to or in concert with trends through the lens of a qualitative case study of a coastal community in Mexico, where demand from international seafood markets has spurred rapid development of a sea cucumber fishery. Specifically, we examined what different social-ecological changes are being experienced by the community, how the impacts of the sea cucumber fishery are distinct from and interacting with slower ongoing trends and how these processes are affecting system vulnerability, adaptations and adaptive capacity. We begin by proposing a novel framework for conceptualizing impacts on social systems, as comprised of structures, functions, and feedbacks. Our results illustrate how the rapid-onset of this fishery has driven dramatic changes in the community. New challenges such as the ‘gold-rush-style’ arrival of new actors, money, and livelihoods, the rapid over-exploitation of fish stocks, and increases in poaching and armed violence have emerged, exacerbating pressures from ongoing trends in immigration, overfishing and tourism development. We argue that there is a need to better understand and differentiate the social and ecological implications of shocks, which present novel challenges for the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of communities and the sustainability of marine ecosystems.     

Diversity to decline-livelihood adaptations of the Namaqua Khoikhoi (1800–1900)

An environmental history of the Leliefontein community of Namaqualand, Northern Cape provides a detailed case of the nexus between social and ecological stresses shaping livelihood change. By combining an historical proxy precipitation data set with a livelihood change study the value of historical research in integrated studies of past human-environment systems is illustrated. The identification of effective livelihood adaptation to extreme climatic conditions is examined, illustrating the tradeoffs made between adaptation and ‘coping’ strategies which were unsuccessful over the long term. During the course of the 19th century the Namaqua Khoikhoi population changed from a sustainable nomadic pastoral community to a poverty stricken rural community with a diversity of livelihood strategies. For the Namaqua increased livelihood diversity – usually an effective adaptation in times of stress – instead of promoting resilience, contributed to their material decline. Widespread transhumance between different climatic regions is shown to have been a successful adaptation to climatic extremes, but external economic exposure and restricted access to land become drivers of decline. The ‘double exposure’ framework used in contemporary studies, proved useful in accounting for this decline as it can accommodate both environmental and economic stressors.     

气候变暖背景下青藏高原山地灾害及其风险分析

基于青藏高原1930-2010年山地灾害实例,分析了气候变暖对青藏高原山地灾害的影响。结果表明：在气候变暖背景下,冰湖溃决灾害增多,冰川泥石流趋于活跃,特大灾害出现频繁,灾害链生特征明显,表现出时间和空间上的延拓性,巨灾发生概率增大;在藏东南地区表现出雨热同期的气候特征,构成了利于冰川类泥石流形成的条件;波密县城位于两条泥石流危险区的建筑物占地面积由1988年0.014 km²扩展到2012年1.004 km²,人口与经济密集区与灾害高风险区重叠,加之气候变化导致的灾害危险性增加,青藏高原灾害风险显著增大。上述结果提供了气候变化对青藏高原山地灾害影响的证据,初步阐述了其影响特征,有助于山地减灾和进一步认识气候变化对山地灾害的影响机理。     

Using carbon finance to support climate policy objectives in high mountain ecosystems

Carbon markets and climate finance payments are being used to incentivize the mitigation of CO₂ arising from anthropogenic land-use change in forests, marine ecosystems, and lowland grasslands. However, no such consideration has been given to how these ‘carbon finance incentives’ might be applied to mountain grasslands and shrublands, ecosystems that contain a substantial amount of carbon. These incentives amount to more than US$350 billion per annum and could potentially support underfunded natural resource management (NRM) activities, which are urgently needed to address numerous stressors impacting these important ecosystems. In the mountain context, NRM activities could include adaptive grazing management, sustainable cropping, ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and engineered soil conservation measures. This article investigates the stressors, challenges, and priorities related to the NRM of carbon stocks in mountain grasslands and shrublands; why carbon markets and climate finance have not yet been utilized in this context; and, what is required to position mountain-based NRM activities as eligible for carbon finance incentives. Using surveys and interviews triangulated with a systematic literature review, the study found that carbon finance incentives are not well understood, both amongst mountain-focused experts and in the literature. The study also found the required technical methodologies, policy frameworks, and data to be largely undeveloped. This article proposes a top-down conceptual policy framework that can be used to develop key ‘enabling factors’ with the view of extending the eligibility of carbon markets and climate finance to NRM activities undertaken in mountain grasslands and shrublands in the same way that has been afforded to other ecosystems.

Policy relevance

This is the first study to explicitly highlight the important role that the mountain grasslands and shrublands might play in international climate policy, and how carbon finance mechanisms might support better NRM in these areas. It is also the first to investigate why these incentives have not been adopted thus far. The article concludes by proposing a novel top-down ‘carbon incentive enabling’ framework that could be driven by governments and mountain development focused organizations so as to capture some of the opportunities offered by carbon-based incentives, and help meet international climate policy objectives.     

What do we know about UK household adaptation to climate change? A systematic review

The UK Government’s first National Adaptation Programme seeks to create a ‘climate-ready society’ capable of making well-informed and far-sighted decisions to address risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate, where individual households are expected to adapt when it is in their interest to do so. How, and to what extent, households are able to do this remains unclear. Like other developed countries, research on UK adaptation has focused predominately on public and private organisations. To fill that gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to understand what actions UK households have taken in response to, or in anticipation of, a changing climate; what drives or impedes these actions; and whether households will act autonomously. We found that UK households struggle to build long-term adaptive capacity and are reliant upon traditional reactive coping responses. Of concern is that these coping responses are less effective for some climate risks (e.g. flooding); cost more over the long-term; and fail to create household capacity to adapt to other stresses. While low-cost, low-skill coping responses were already being implemented, the adoption of more permanent physical measures, behavioural changes, and acceptance of new responsibilities are unlikely to happen autonomously without further financial or government support. If public policy on household adaptation to climate change is to be better informed than more high-quality empirical research is urgently needed.