What is Adaptation?

The science of climate change is unambiguous. There is broad scientific consensus that climate change is already a serious challenge and it is likely to happen more quickly than was expected to some years ago. With it comes a decrease in food security, less predictable availability of fresh water, and adverse health effects. Climate change is undermining development and increasing the burdens on the poorest people in the world, who are often hardest hit by weather catastrophes, desertification, and rising sea levels, but who have contributed the least to the problem of global warming. Helping the most vulnerable countries and elements of societies is thus an increasing challenge and duty for the international community, especially because adaptation to climate change requires significant resources in addition to what is already needed to achieve internationally agreed-on development objectives such as the Millennium Development Goals.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines adaptation in their 4th Assessment report as “adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities.”

The IPCC further distinguishes between the types of adaptation as follows: anticipatory vs. reactive, private vs. public, and autonomous vs. planned.

According to the IPCC:

• Anticipatory adaptation is adaptation that takes place before impacts of climate change are observed
• Autonomous adaptation is adaptation that does not constitute a conscious response to climatic stimuli but is triggered by ecological changes in natural systems and by market or welfare changes in human systems.
• Planned adaptation is adaptation that is the result of a deliberate policy decision, based on an awareness that conditions have changed or are about to change and that action is required to return to, maintain, or achieve a desired state.