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.     

Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: Dimensions, determinants and change over time

While scientific consensus and political and media messages appear to be increasingly certain, public attitudes and action towards the issue do not appear to be following suit. Popular and academic debate often assumes this is due to ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of the public, but some studies have suggested political beliefs and values may play a more important role in determining belief versus scepticism about climate change. The current research used two representative postal surveys of the UK public to: measure scepticism and uncertainty about climate change; determine how scepticism varies according to individual characteristics, knowledge and values; and examine how scepticism has changed over time. Findings show denial of climate change is less common than the perception that the issue has been exaggerated. Scepticism was found to be strongly determined by individuals’ environmental and political values (and indirectly by age, gender, location and lifestyle) rather than by education or knowledge. Between 2003 and 2008, public uncertainty about climate change has remained remarkably constant, although belief that claims about the issue are exaggerated has doubled over that period. These results are interpreted with reference to psychological concepts of motivated reasoning, confirmation bias and ‘finite pool of worry’. Implications for communication and policy are discussed.     

Considering attitudinal uncertainty in the climate change skepticism continuum

In this paper we present an empirically driven language to discuss climate change skepticism. We conceptualize skeptic/skepticism as an umbrella term that includes those who actively reject climate science and those who are uncertain about climate change. We propose four categories for better empirical analysis of climate skepticism: epistemic deniers, epistemic doubters (borrowing from Capstick and Pidgeon 2014), attribution deniers, and attribution doubters (borrowing from Rahmstorf 2004). Using a unique dataset of surveys (n = 1000) and interviews (n = 33) with residents of the U.S. Pacific Northwest who are skeptical about climate change, we compare those four groups across several predictors and demographic variables (age, race, gender, political ideology, religiosity, income, education, and level of trust in science) and outcome variables (environmental concern, policy support, and conspiracy ideation (adherence to the belief that climate change is a “hoax”). We demonstrate the importance of considering attitudinal uncertainty in the analysis of climate skepticism by providing evidence for the presence of a continuum of thought wherein epistemic deniers and attribution doubters make up the two ends of a continuum with more complicated distinctions between epistemic doubters and attribution deniers.     

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.     

Communicating the climate impacts of meat consumption: The effect of values and message framing

Meat production for human consumption has serious environmental implications and contributes significantly to climate change. Changing people’s food choices is an important step towards reducing human impacts on the climate. Previous research shows that self-enhancement (i.e. self-interest) and self-transcendence (i.e. altruism) values are related to meat consumption. This study examined the effectiveness of the provision of information about climate impacts of meat consumption in influencing concern about these climate impacts of meat consumption, attitudes towards eating meat and behavioural intentions in a New Zealand sample (N = 848). Further, the study examined whether framing the message to align with people’s value sets would enhance the information’s effectiveness in affecting concern, attitudes and intentions. Survey participants were randomly assigned to a no-information control group, a message targeting self-enhancement values, or a message targeting self-transcendence values. Results indicated that the information provision was associated with significantly higher levels of concern about the climate impacts of meat consumption and significantly lower intentions to eat meat, but it did not affect attitudes towards meat consumption. However, the framing of the message did affect attitudes towards meat consumption, depending on existing values. Implications of this research can be applied to future climate change communication campaigns, through the use of targeted, value-congruent information.     

Climate change or nuclear power—No thanks! A quantitative study of public perceptions and risk framing in Britain

The UK is witnessing a new line in political debate around new nuclear energy generation as one potential feature of future energy policy, specifically for contributing to climate change mitigation alongside energy security. Little is known about how ordinary citizens might be responding to this reframing. This paper reports the results from a major British survey (n=1491) undertaken in the autumn of 2005. The consistent message is that while higher proportions of the British public are prepared to accept nuclear power if they believe it contributes to climate change mitigation, this is a highly conditional view, with very few actively preferring this over renewable sources given the choice. People see both climate change and nuclear power as problematic in terms of risks and express only a ‘reluctant acceptance’ of nuclear power as a ‘solution’ to climate change. The combined data from this survey can also be interpreted as an indication of the complexity surrounding beliefs about energy futures and the difficulty of undertaking simplistic risk–risk tradeoffs within any single framing of the issues; such as nuclear energy versus climate change. The results also indicate that it would be unwise, in the UK as elsewhere, to simplistically assume that there exists any single or stable public ‘opinion’ on such complex matters. We conclude with a discussion of the role and implications of the survey evidence for the policy process.     

Drought and the future of rural communities: Opportunities and challenges for climate change adaptation in regional Victoria,Australia

Australia's vulnerability to climate variability and change has been highlighted by the recent drought (i.e. the Big Dry or Millennium Drought), and also recent flooding across much of eastern Australia during 2011 and 2012. There is also the possibility that the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts may increase due to anthropogenic climate change, stressing the need for robust drought adaptation strategies. This study investigates the socio-economic impacts of drought, past and present drought adaptation measures, and the future adaptation strategies required to deal with projected impacts of climate change. The qualitative analysis presented records the actual experiences of drought and other climatic extremes and helps advance knowledge of how best to respond and adapt to such conditions, and how this might vary between different locations, sectors and communities. It was found that more effort is needed to address the changing environment and climate, by shifting from notions of ‘drought-as-crisis’ towards acknowledging the variable availability of water and that multi-year droughts should not be unexpected, and may even become more frequent. Action should also be taken to revalue the farming enterprise as critical to our environmental, economic and cultural well-being and there was also strong consensus that the value of water should be recognised in a more meaningful way (i.e. not just in economic terms). Finally, across the diverse stakeholders involved in the research, one point was consistently reiterated: that ‘it's not just drought’. Exacerbating the issues of climate impacts on water security and supply is the complexity of the agriculture industry, global economics (in particular global markets and the recent/ongoing global financial crisis), and demographic changes (decreasing and ageing populations) which are currently occurring across most rural communities. The social and economic issues facing rural communities are not just a product of drought or climate change – to understand them as such would underestimate the extent of the problems and inhibit the ability to coordinate the holistic, cross-agency approach needed for successful climate change adaptation in rural communities.     

Empirical testing of the visualizations of climate change mitigation scenarios with citizens: A comparison among Germany,Poland, and France

While scenarios are used extensively for communication about climate change mitigation, little is known about the interpretation of these scenarios by citizens. We conducted a cross-country empirical evaluation of scenario visualizations for global mitigation, using online surveys in Germany (N = 379), Poland (N = 223), and France (N = 225). Each respondent received visualizations of the required changes in global carbon dioxide emissions and composition of electricity supply (fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable sources) for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. We evaluated the effects of respondents’ demographics, prior beliefs, numeracy, and graph literacy on the reading accuracy and knowledge gains from the visualizations. We also included an experimental between-groups design on visualization format, where four groups received different graph formats (steep or gradual graphs with depictions of uncertainty ranges or scenario ensembles) and the fifth group received a table. Results showed that higher education level, numeracy, and graph literacy increased reading accuracy in all countries, while age reduced them. Respondents with prior beliefs about climate change mitigation that matched the information in the visualizations had also higher reading accuracy and knowledge gains. While the effects of different visualization formats were comparatively minor, customizing formats according to demographic and country differences was used to reduce adverse effects from these differences. These results emphasize the need to design visualizations that match characteristics of the intended audience and could inform better communication of climate change mitigation scenarios to non-expert audience.     

How you talk about climate change matters: A communication network perspective on epistemic skepticism and belief strength

A population’s attitudes toward climate change can strongly influence governmental policies as well as community and individual climate-related behaviors. These attitudes have been explained with a variety of factors, including cultural worldviews, environmental attitudes, political ideology, knowledge of climate change, severe weather exposure, and sociodemographic characteristics. These studies typically assume an individual forms attitudes on the basis of preexisting values or beliefs and do not account for dynamic social interaction as a source of influence. This study introduces a network perspective that accounts for the social embeddedness of individuals, using network variables to predict climate attitudes, including homophily, network strength, attitude diversity, centrality, network size, and network valence. An exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct attitudinal dimensions: climate change epistemic skepticism and belief strength. Using egocentric data from a nationally representative survey collected in 2011, this study found that network variables were significant in predicting both climate attitude dimensions; hierarchical regression analyses accounting for other known predictors found two different predictive models for epistemic skepticism and belief strength. Homophily, network strength, attitude diversity, and network valence predicted epistemic skepticism (R²_change = 4.8%), while centrality and network strength predicted belief strength (R²_change = 8.9%). The analyses also found support for cultural factors as significant predictors of climate attitudes, particularly Christianity and cultural worldviews. The results of this study suggest that interpersonal influence through communication networks is a promising avenue for continued research, and should be included in studies of climate attitude formation and change.     

It's political: How the salience of one's political identity changes climate change beliefs and policy support

Previous research has demonstrated a striking difference in climate change beliefs and policy support between people who identify with the right-wing of politics and with the left-wing of politics. But are we destined to continue with this divergence? We suggest that there is movement around these differences based on the politicization of climate change and we conducted two experimental studies with 126 and 646 people, respectively, to examine this effect. We found that those people whose political identity was made salient were less likely to believe in an anthropogenic cause of climate change and less likely to support government climate change policies than those whose identity was not made salient; particularly when those people were aligned with the right-wing of politics. The results demonstrate the importance of the salience of one's political identity in determining attitudes and beliefs even for scientific facts such as climate change. Our research also identifies some ways forward in dealing with climate change-based on depoliticizing the issue.     

Mainstreaming adaptation to climate change in Least Developed Countries (LDCs)

Abstract

The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are a group of 49 of the world's poorest countries. They have contributed least to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) but they are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. This is due to their location in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world and their low capacities to adapt to these changes. Adaptation to climate change has become an important policy priority in the international negotiations on climate change in recent years. However, it has yet to become a major policy issue within developing countries, especially the LDCs. This article focuses on two LDCs, namely Bangladesh and Mali, where progress has been made regarding identifying potential adaptation options. For example, Bangladesh already has effective disaster response systems, and strategies to deal with reduced freshwater availability, and Mali has a well-developed programme for providing agro-hydro-meteorological assistance to communities in times of drought. However, much remains to be done in terms of mainstreaming adaptation to climate change within the national policymaking processes of these countries. Policymakers need targeting and, to facilitate this, scientific research must be translated into appropriate language and timescales.     

The strengths and weaknesses of future visioning approaches for climate change adaptation: A review

Adaptation to climate change is about planning for the future while responding to current pressures and challenges. Adaptation scientists are increasingly using future visioning exercises embedded in co-production and co-development techniques to assist stakeholders in imagining futures in a changing climate. Even if these exercises are growing in popularity, surprisingly little scrutiny has been placed on understanding the fundamental assumptions and choices in scenario approaches, timeframes, scales, or methods, and whether they result in meaningful changes in how adaptation is being thought about. Here, we unpack key insights and experiences across 62 case studies that specifically report on using future visioning exercises to engage stakeholders in climate change adaptation. We focus on three key areas: 1) Stakeholder diversity and scales; 2) Tools, methods, and data, and 3) Practical constraints, enablers, and outcomes. Our results show that most studies focus on the regional scale (n = 32; 52%), involve mainly formal decision makers and employ vast array of different methods, tools, and data. Interestingly, most exercises adopt either predictive (what will happen) and explorative (what could happen) scenarios while only a fraction use the more normative (what should happen) scenarios that could enable more transformative thinking. Reported positive outcomes include demonstrated increases in climate change literacy and support for climate change adaptation planning. Unintended and unexpected outcomes include increased anxiety in cases where introduced timeframes go beyond an individual’s expected life span and decreased perceived necessity for undertaking adaptation at all. Key agreed factors that underpin co-production and equal representation, such as gender, age, and diversity, are not well reported, and most case studies do not use reflective processes to harness participant feedback that could enable more robust methodology development. This is a missed opportunity in developing a more fundamental understanding of how these exercises can effectively shift individual and collective mindsets and advance the inclusion of different viewpoints as a pathway for more equitable and just climate adaptation.     

The importance of population,climate change and CO2 plant physiological forcing in determining future global water stress

Future levels of water stress depend on changes in several key factors including population, climate-change driven water availability, and a carbon dioxide physiological-forcing effect on evaporation and run-off. In this study we use an ensemble of the HadCM3 climate model forced with a range of future emissions scenarios combined with a simple water scarcity index to assess the contribution of each of these factors to the projected population living in water stress over the 21st century.Population change only scenarios increase the number of people living in water stress such that at peak global population 65% of people experience some level of water stress. Globally, the climate model ensemble projects an increase in water availability which partially offsets some of the impacts of population growth. The result is 1 billion fewer people living in water stress by the 2080s under the high end emissions scenarios than if population increased in the absence of climate change.This study highlights the important role plant-physiological forcing has on future water resources. The effect of rising CO₂ is to increase available water and to reduce the number of people living in high water stress by around 200 million compared to climate only projections. This effect is of a similar order of magnitude to climate change.     

Public engagement with marine climate change issues: (Re)framings,understandings and responses

Climate change impacts on marine environments have been somewhat neglected in climate change research, particularly with regard to their social dimensions and implications. This paper contributes to addressing this gap through presenting a UK focused mixed-method study of how publics frame, understand and respond to marine climate change-related issues. It draws on data from a large national survey of UK publics (N = 1,001), undertaken in January 2011 as part of a wider European survey, in conjunction with in-depth qualitative insights from a citizens’ panel with participants from the East Anglia region, UK. This reveals that discrete marine climate change impacts, as often framed in technical or institutional terms, were not the most immediate or significant issues for most respondents. Study participants tended to view these climate impacts ‘in context’, in situated ways, and as entangled with other issues relating to marine environments and their everyday lives. Whilst making connections with scientific knowledge on the subject, public understandings of marine climate impacts were mainly shaped by personal experience, the visibility and proximity of impacts, sense of personal risk and moral or equity-based arguments. In terms of responses, study participants prioritised climate change mitigation measures over adaptation, even in high-risk areas. We consider the implications of these insights for research and practices of public engagement on marine climate impacts specifically, and climate change more generally.     

Adaptation to climate change in Uganda: Evidence from micro level data

This study employed data from the 2005/06 Uganda national household survey to identify adaptation strategies and factors governing their choice in Uganda's agricultural production. Factors that mediate or hinder adaptation across different shocks and strategies include age of the household head, access to credit and extension facilities and security of land tenure. There are also differences in choice of adaptation strategies by agro-climatic zone. The appropriate policy level responses should complement the autonomous adaptation strategies by facilitating technology adoption and availing information to farmers not only with regard to climate related forecasts but available weather and pest resistant varieties.     

Impact of climate and socioeconomic changes on fire carbon emissions in the future: Sustainable economic development might decrease future emissions

Fires and their associated carbon and air pollutant emissions have a broad range of environmental and societal impacts, including negative effects on human health, damage to terrestrial ecosystems, and indirect effects that promote climate change. Previous studies investigated future carbon emissions from the perspective of response to climate change and population growth, but the compound effects of other factors like economic development and land use change are not yet well known. We explored fire carbon emissions throughout the 21st century by changing five factors (meteorology, biomass, land use, population density, and gross domestic product [GDP] per capita). Compared to the historical period (2006–2015), global future fire carbon emissions decreased, mainly caused by an increase in GDP per capita, which leads to improvement in fire management and capitalized agriculture. We found that the meteorological factor has a strong individual effect under higher warming cases. Fires in boreal forests were particularly expected to increase because of an increase in fuel dryness. Our research should help climate change researchers consider fire-carbon interactions. Incorporating future spatial changes under diverse scenarios will be helpful to develop national mitigation and adaptation plans.     

How inequitable is the global distribution of responsibility, capability, and vulnerability to climate change: A comprehensive indicator-based assessment

While it is generally asserted that those countries who have contributed least to anthropogenic climate change are most vulnerable to its adverse impacts some recently developed indices of vulnerability to climate change come to a different conclusion. Confirmation or rejection of this assertion is complicated by the lack of an agreed metric for measuring countries’ vulnerability to climate change and by conflicting interpretations of vulnerability. This paper presents a comprehensive semi-quantitative analysis of the disparity between countries’ responsibility for climate change, their capability to act and assist, and their vulnerability to climate change for four climate-sensitive sectors based on a broad range of disaggregated vulnerability indicators. This analysis finds a double inequity between responsibility and capability on the one hand and the vulnerability of food security, human health, and coastal populations on the other. This double inequity is robust across alternative indicator choices and interpretations of vulnerability. The main cause for the higher vulnerability of poor nations who have generally contributed little to climate change is their lower adaptive capacity. In addition, the biophysical sensitivity and socio-economic exposure of poor nations to climate impacts on food security and human health generally exceeds that of wealthier nations. No definite statement can be made on the inequity associated with climate impacts on water supply due to large uncertainties about future changes in regional water availability and to conflicting indicators of current water scarcity. The robust double inequity between responsibility and vulnerability for most climate-sensitive sectors strengthens the moral case for financial and technical assistance from those countries most responsible for climate change to those countries most vulnerable to its adverse impacts. However, the complex and geographically heterogeneous patterns of vulnerability factors for different climate-sensitive sectors suggest that the allocation of international adaptation funds to developing countries should be guided by sector-specific or hazard-specific criteria despite repeated requests from participants in international climate negotiations to develop a generic index of countries’ vulnerability to climate change.     

A Modeling Study of Climate Change and Its Implication for Agriculture in China Part II: The Implication of Climate Change for Agriculture in China

The potential CO2-induced impacts on the geographical shifts of wheat growth zones in China were studied from seven GCMs outputs. The wheat growth regions may move northward and westward under the condition of a doubling CO2 climate. The wheat cultivation features and variety types may also assume significant changes. Climatic warming would have a positive influence in Northeast China, but high temperature stress may be produced in some regions of central and southern China. Higher mean air temperatures during wheat growth, particularly during the reproductive stages, may increase the need for earlier-maturing and more heat-tolerant cultivars.     

Citizens, consumers and sustainability: (Re)Framing environmental practice in an age of climate change

Recent moves by national and local policy makers have sought to encourage individuals to engage in a wide range of pro-environmental practices to address both discrete environmental problems and major, global challenges such as climate change. The major framing device for these developments is the notion of ‘citizen–consumers’, which positions individual ecological responsibilities alongside consumer choice logics in a Neo-liberal socio-economic framework. In the environmental social sciences, there have been recent moves to interpret the citizen–consumer through adopting a social practices approach, which advances the notion that in understanding environmental commitments, a deeper appreciation of underlying norms, values, identity politics and consumption is required to uncover the complex processes that lead to environmental practices in specific contexts. This paper argues that whilst these approaches have considerable utility in tracing the normalisation of established and discrete environmental practices in particular contexts, the issue of climate change represents an independent and over-arching discursive conflict between new and embedded practices that challenges the ability of citizen–consumers to act as agents for change. Accordingly, the data presented in this paper suggest that climate change can be seen as an unsettling and dynamic issue that generates discursive conflict in its own right around fundamental issues of knowledge, responsibility, scale and place. The paper therefore argues that a new and more critical perspective is required within environmental social science to understand (conflicting) discourses of sustainable living between the ‘passive’ normalisation of conventional environmental practice and the ‘contested’ ambiguities of climate change.     

Regional cooperation in widening energy access and also mitigating climate change: Current programs and future potential

Access to energy can significantly contribute to the development of the living standards of the energy poor. Also if the provision of access to energy is sustainable, i.e. via renewable energy sources, there is an added benefit of contributing to mitigation of climate change. Currently, the percentage of population with access to energy varies significantly between countries and across regions. This is due to the nature of national socio-economic situations and energy resource availability in differing settings. This article addresses issues and hindrances to energy access in regional contexts and also examines, in particular, the prospects of how regional cooperation initiatives linked with climate change mitigation objectives could assist in widening energy access. Existing relevant regional cooperation initiatives that may be upscaled or used as models to widen access to modern energy services are evaluated. Findings are that regional cooperation initiatives linked with climate change mitigation can potentially facilitate widening energy access. However, in order to realise such potential, synergies from regional cooperation that are indirectly linked to energy and wider climate change mitigation programs should be harnessed. Recommendations are made for development of sustainable energy programs in energy deprived regions that will also mitigate climate change impacts.