Four reasons for concern about adaptation to climate change
Four reasons for concern about adaptation to climate change Journal Article
Environment and Planning A
- Author(s): Adger, W. N., Barnett, J.
- Published: 2009
- Publisher: Pion Ltd
- Volume: 41
Abstract: Four reasons for concern about adaptation to climate change Human-induced climate change is real and is likely to drive increasingly dramatic changes in environments in this century and beyond. So, given the necessity to adapt to the impacts of these climate changes, key issues arise as to the feasibility, cost, and social distribution of the burden of these adjustments at multiple scales. The scale of the human challenge on climate change was portrayed vividly in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report of 2001, in the form of five `reasons for concern' about climate impacts: the risk to unique and threatened ecosystems; the risk of extreme weather events; the distribution of impacts; the scale of aggregate impacts; and the risks of large-scale discontinuities. An iconic diagram, known as the `burning embers', showed that these five reasons for concern become critical as global mean temperature increases beyond 28C of global average warming. The IPCC made this assessment in 2000. At that time emissions and projected future emissions already meant that the earth was committed to increased risk of irreversible change in some ecosystems. But the risk of `large-scale discontinuities', such as significant deglaciation of West Antarctica's ice sheet, were not thought to become significant until perhaps 3 ^ 48C of global average warming over 1990 averages. The burning embers diagram was widely publicised and republished. It came to summarise the IPCC results on the impacts of climate change and contributed to global public concern over climate change. In 2009 a group of authors involved with the IPCC updated the `reasons for concern' framework (Smith et al, 2009). This update uses new knowledge about the sensitivity of environmental systems to climate change, and new models of potential thresholds and irreversibilities in the earth system. The authors show that that the sensitivity of systems at risk is now greater, and so the risk of large-scale disruption is higher than before for any given level of mean temperature rise. This assessment is backed by similar assessments of tipping elements in earth systems (Lenton et al, 2008). The Smith et al (2009) reasons for concern analysis implies that adaptation will stave off the worst excesses of such impacts up to a point. We agree with this assessment in principle, but have our own reasons for concerns about the ability to adapt to such impacts and the likelihood of sustainable adaptation. We explain below four reasons for concern about adaptation: contractions and uncertainties in the window of opportunity for adaptation; the difference between adaptive capacity and adaptive action; the risk of maladaptation; and misguided measures of loss.