Claire Dunn reflects on how to adapt to climate change and what we can do better.
32 T here used to be a line of thought that investing in adapting to climate change is admitting defeat. Mitigation should be the only focus — cutting emissions is where it’s at and working out how to live with them as they rise is giving up. It’s been said that adaptation is tantamount to betraying ecosystems and other species — humans might consciously adapt but what about the rest of the planet? Would that we could turn the clock back and have more time to curb carbon emissions to sustainable levels without needing adaptation. But that’s an adaptation we haven’t yet developed.
The most credible climate sources suggest warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. It will now be hard to limit the rise below 2 degrees Celsius, with every fractional increase in warming correlating to more extreme climate events, and more global hardship as a result. We need a fall in emissions by 45% by 2030 vs 2010 to limit the rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, yet recent UN reports predict emissions are likely to increase by 9%. Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to climate change will be disproportionately affected.
Globally, there is growing public discourse on climate adaptation, with strong engagement from agriculture (new cultivars, water management and land use diversification) and land management (greening projects, disaster management and wetland restoration). With floods in Dubai, devastating storms in Libya and wildfires engulfing huge regions of Canada, Russia, Australia and the USA, climate impacts are making regular headlines and that’s likely to continue. The insurance industry is increasingly pricing based on climate risk, as the costs of not doing so become ever more real. The sector could do more to drive adaptation, and the insurers who become most adept at rewarding customers who best assess and respond to climate risk will stand to benefit. However, a gap remains between the costs of adaptation and the finance required to make it happen, often with political will as a missing ingredient. It’s hard for climate mitigation to compete with education and healthcare for scarce resources when building flood defences may not be completed within a politician’s time in office.
In our increasingly uncertain environment, we can’t wait and hope that politicians will make the right decisions or that corporations will do the right thing. Our most powerful sustainable adaptation may be how we think as individuals. Each of us needs to get better at understanding how our small scale, collectively global scale decisions impact climate mitigation and adaptation.
“Our most powerful ECO / Think may have as much if not more clout than our behaviour at the ballot box every four or five years. So do both. It can be hard to pick through the greenwash or hold politicians to their promises but the quality of the dialogue is improving. We need that to accelerate and be vocal in demanding good climate information from those we support with our vote or our spend. All of us have an impact. Let’s use our impact wisely, holding up the low income global communities and non-human species and ecosystems as we do.
sustainable adaptation may be how we think as individuals.” Our purchasing decisions have an impact. Energy Performance Certificates were largely ignored by UK homebuyers when they were mandated to be provided from 2007. One advantage of rising energy prices is that renters and home buyers now care how much their homes cost to run, which often closely correlates with their climate impact. This is part mitigation, part adaptation. The thermal behaviour of a building matters more when our climatic events are becoming more extreme. Every good or service we consume has an impact. Looking to spend our money on organisations who have the most sophisticated approaches to climate feels like it 33
