Adaptation toClimate Change in the context of Sustainable Development

Background Paper

Adaptation to Climate Change inthe context of SustainableDevelopment

Introduction

limate change is one of the all-encompassing globalenvironmental changes likely to have deleterious effects onnatural and human systems, economies and infrastructure. The risksassociated with it call for a broad spectrum of policy responses andstrategies at the local, regional, national and global level. TheUNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on ClimateChange) highlights two fundamental response strategies: mitigationand adaptation. While mitigation seeks to limit climate change byreducing the emissions of GHG (greenhouse gases) and by enhancing‘sink’ opportunities, adaptation aims to alleviate the adverse impactsthrough a wide-range of system-specific actions (Fussel and Klein,2002).Albeit both mitigation and adaptation measures must be pursuedto tackle the climate change problem and to create an effective andinclusive international climate change regime, more attention hasbeen devoted to mitigation in the past, both in scientific research andpolicy debate. Sensitivity to the issue of adaptation has grown overthe last couple of years, particularly after the IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) TAR (ThirdAssessment Report). Adaptation has now emerged as an urgent policypriority, prompting action both within and outside the climate changenegotiations (Parry

et al

. 2005).

Background

Conventional approaches to understanding climate change werelimited to identifying and quantifying the potential long-term climateimpacts on different ecosystems and economic sectors. While usefulin depicting general trends and dynamic interactions between theatmosphere, biosphere, land, oceans and ice, this top–down, science-driven approach failed to address the regional and local impacts of climate change and the local abilities to adapt to climate-inducedchanges.