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Delegates from around the world are preparing for the
UN climate change talks that kick off in Mexico at the end of
the month. While debate over emissions targets continues to rage
in the wake of last year’s talks in Copenhagen, there is one
area where nations agree: we’re going to have to adapt.
Yet despite the newfound interest in adaptation, it
remains unclear if adaptation is possible or what challenges we
will face. A study released last week in the prestigious
scientific journal Global Environmental Change, led by Dr
Berrang-Ford at McGill University, sheds light on these
questions. Posing the question, Are we adapting to climate
change?, the study highlights that adaptation is already
taking place and is possible but is piecemeal and ad hoc in
nature.
“Human beings will have to adapt to climate change, but there is
little evidence of a coherent strategy for adaptation efforts.
A strategy or framework for adaptation is clearly needed at
international to local levels,”
says Dr. Lea Berrang Ford, Assistant Professor of Geography at
McGill University. “While we have highly developed methods and
frameworks for assessing greenhouse gas emissions within the
climate change debate, our ability to track and monitor
adaptation is underdeveloped. In the face of the climate changes
scientists say we’re already locked into, this is a problem. If
we’re to adapt successfully, we have to start taking action
now.”
“Most scientific work on adaptation looks at prescriptions or
takes a theoretical approach, looking at what needs to be
done,” explains the study’s co-author Dr. James Ford. “In
this study we actually looked at what has been done to
adapt.” The authors will continue to refine their study’s
methodology in order to track adaptation progress over time.
“We wanted to take a snapshot of what adaptation is actually
occurring, so we developed a technique to rigorously track
adaptation progress. One big surprise was that there are fewer reports of adaptation
taking place in North America than there are in Africa,” says
Ford. However, Ford notes that there is more attention shifting
to adaptation and that more reports are now being published that
were not ready in time to be included in the McGill review.
“If we are to adapt to climate change, then we need to consider
how this can be accomplished as seriously as we debate
mitigation," says Berrang Ford. “What does adaptation look like?
Where are our time and money best spent with respect to
adaptations? What targets should we aim for?”
“We should be talking not just about 'Should we mitigate and who
should pay?' but also 'How do we move forward with the changes
that we are locked into?' and 'Can we identify new environmental
and economic opportunities through adaptation?'”
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