Ian Burton

From impacts assessment to adaptation priorities: the shaping of adaptation policy

Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adaptation has recently gained importance, yet adaptation is much less developed than mitigation as a policy response. Adaptation research has been used to help answer to related but distinct questions. (1) To what extent can adaptation reduce impacts of climate change? (2) What adaptation policies are needed, and how can they best be developed, applied and funded? For the first question, the emphasis is on the aggregate value of adaptation so that this may be used to estimate net impacts. An important purpose is to compare net impacts with the costs of mitigation. In the second question, the emphasis is on the design and prioritisation of adaptation policies and measures. While both types of research are conducted in a policy context, they differ in their character, application, and purpose. The impacts/mitigation research is orientated towards the physical and biological science of impacts and adaptation, while research on the ways and means of adaptation is focussed on the social and economic determinants of vulnerability in a development context. The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the national adaptation studies carried under the UNFCCC are broadening the paradigm, from the impacts/mitigation to vulnerability/adaptation. For this to occur, new policy research is needed. While the broad new directions of both research and policy can now be discerned, there remain a number of outstanding issues to be considered.

Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “reasons for concern”

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [United Nations (1992) http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf. Accessed February 9, 2009] commits signatory nations to stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that “would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) with the climate system.” In an effort to provide some insight into impacts of climate change that might be considered DAI, authors of the Third Assessment Report (TAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified 5 “reasons for concern” (RFCs). Relationships between various impacts reflected in each RFC and increases in global mean temperature (GMT) were portrayed in what has come to be called the “burning embers diagram.” In presenting the “embers” in the TAR, IPCC authors did not assess whether any single RFC was more important than any other; nor did they conclude what level of impacts or what atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases would constitute DAI, a value judgment that would be policy prescriptive. Here, we describe revisions of the sensitivities of the RFCs to increases in GMT and a more thorough understanding of the concept of vulnerability that has evolved over the past 8 years. This is based on our expert judgment about new findings in the growing literature since the publication of the TAR in 2001, including literature that was assessed in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), as well as additional research published since AR4. Compared with results reported in the TAR, smaller increases in GMT are now estimated to lead to significant or substantial consequences in the framework of the 5 “reasons for concern.”

Knowing better and losing even more: the use of knowledge in hazards management

Abstract Although loss of life from natural hazards has been declining, the property losses from those causes have been increasing. At the same time the volume of research on natural hazards and the books reviewing findings on the subject have also increased. Several major changes have occurred in the topics addressed. Emphasis has shifted from hazards to disasters. There has been increasing attention to vulnerability. Views of causation have changed. Four possible explanations are examined for the situation in which more is lost while more is known: (1) knowledge continues to be flawed by areas of ignorance; (2) knowledge is available but not used effectively; (3) knowledge is used effectively but takes a long time to have effect; and (4) knowledge is used effectively in some respects but is overwhelmed by increases in vulnerability and in population, wealth, and poverty.

VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTIVE RESPONSE IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE AND CLIMATE CHANGE

The paper explores the distinction between climate and climate change. Adaptation to current climate variability has been proposed as an additional way to approach adaptation to long-term climate change. In effect improved adaptation to current climate is a step in preparation for longer term climate change. International programs of research and assessment are separately organized to deal with natural disasters and climate change. There is no scientific concensus so far, that extreme events have changed in frequency on a world-wide basis, although some regional changes have occured. It is extremely unlikely that significant shifts in the means of weather distrbutions will take place without shifts in the tails. In some situations it may make more sense to focus on adaptation to extreme events and the tails of distributions. In other circumstances adaptation to the norms is the logical focus. The relationship between normal climate and climate change is examined in terms of single and complex variables and phenomena. It is proposed that the research communities studying adaptation to extreme events and adaptation to climate change work more closely together, perhaps in a newly organized joint research program.

The Growth of Adaptation Capacity: Practice and Policy

Countries can strengthen their capacity for adaptation to climate change and variability and develop appropriate public policy. Six reasons for developing and adopting adaptation strategies now are provided. Adaptation to extreme events (natural hazards) can reduce long-term vulnerability to climate change. A framework for identifying and classifying adaptations is presented and applied to the adaptation options described in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. It is found that some major categories of adaptation, such as insurance, disaster assistance, and changes of land use and location, receive little or no attention.

Achieving Adequate Adaptation in Agriculture

This paper reviews the prospects for adaptation in world agriculture in the face of climate change. The record of experience from previous decades demonstrates a considerable capacity to adapt and there is general optimism that successful adaptation will be maintained. There are some grounds for concern because of the uncertainty surrounding global climate projections and the probability of considerable regional variation in impacts. While world production may not be adversely affected, the prospects are not so encouraging for low latitude agricultural regions, in part because of lower capacity to adapt. Attention has focused on the farming community itself as the place where adaptation takes place, but now the processes of globalization are placing adaptation more in the hands of agri-business, national policy makers, and the international political economy. The continued success of adaptation rests more heavily on actions at the national level in the context of changing technology and world trade liberalization. An adaptation policy framework is suggested as a vehicle to help understand and facilitate adaptation in this changing context.

Reconciling national and global priorities in adaptation to climate change : With an illustration from Uganda

Many developing countries, especially in Africa, contribute only very small amounts to the world total of greenhouse gas emissions. For them, the reduction of such emissions is not a priority, and the more important issue is to find ways to reduce their vulnerability to the projected climate change which is being imposed upon them largely as a result of emissions from developed countries. This priority does not accord with the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions. This paper reports upon studies in Uganda designed to help in the development of a national adaptation strategy, and addresses the need to reconcile such a strategy with the global priority accorded to mitigation and with national economic development priorities. Some features of a national climate change adaptation strategy are identified and questions are raised about the need for an international regime to facilitate and support adaptation.

Adaptation Options Strategies for Hazards and Vulnerability Mitigation: An International Perspective

The broad objective of this special issue of Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change is to address some of the gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the policies, programs, and measures that might be applied to natural hazards and their impacts in an era of climate change. Given the global impacts of climate change and world-wide pattern of increasing losses from natural hazards we necessarily adopt an international perspective. The specific goals of the special issue are to: (a) encompass experiential aspects, emphasizing current practice of mitigation and its associated measures, and their results; and (b) explore primary or root causes of alarming shifts in human and economic costs of environmental extremes. Special emphasis is placed on how human activities are playing a key role in enhancing vulnerability to NTEE (nature-triggered environmental extremes), quite independently from the anthropogenic causes of climate change. The goals are also (c) to examine costs, risks, and benefits (of all kinds including social, political, ecological) of mitigation, and adjustment and adaptation measures; and (d) analyze policy implications of alternative measures. These components are expected to make significant contributions to policy considerations – formulation, implementation and evaluation. There is much uncertainty about the rate of climate change; however, the fact of increase of the atmospheric temperature in the last century is no longer a subject of scientific or policy debate. Due to such changes in the geophysical parameters, certain types of nature-triggered environmental extreme events are likely to continue to increase. How global warming will affect regional climates and pertinent variables is not well known, limiting our ability to predict consequential effects. This factor poses serious constraints against any straightforward policy decisions. Research findings of the work of this volume reaffirm that human dimensions, specifically our awareness and decision-making behavior, are powerful explanatory factors of increasing disaster losses. Disaster mitigation through addressing human, social, and physical vulnerability is one of the best means for contributing to ‘climate change adaptation plans’, and sustainable development goals. Recent lessons from various countries have depicted that the formulation of mitigation strategies cannot be exclusively top-down as it requires social, political, and cultural acceptance and sense of ownership. An interactive, participatory process, involving local communities, produces best expected outcomes concerning mitigation, preparedness, and recovery. An emerging consensus is that there is a need to move towards the ‘mission’ of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction which aims at building disaster resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, social, economic and environmental losses due to natural hazards and related technological and environmental disasters. Sharing of best practices and lessons globally is certain to produce more efficiency and understanding in policy and decision making.

Clarifying the Attribution of Recent Disaster Losses: A Response to Epstein and McCarthy

—HANS VON STORCH Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany he December 2004 issue of BAMS contains an article warning of the threats of abrupt climate change (Epstein and McCarthy 2004, hereafter EM04). The article seeks to raise awareness of the risks of an abrupt change in climate related to human influences on the climate system, but, in doing so it repeats a common factual error. Specifically, it identifies the recent growth in economic damages associated with weather and climate events, such as Hurricanes Mitch and Jeanne and tornadoes in the United States, as evidence of trends in extreme events, arguing “the rising costs associated with weather volatility provide another derived indicator of the state of the climate system . . . the economic costs related to more severe and volatile weather deserves mention as an integral indicator of volatility.” Although the attribution of increasing damages to climate changes is but one of many assertions made by EM04, the repetition of this erroneous claim is worth correcting because it is not consistent with current scientific understandings. The rising costs of disasters are important, and so too is human influence on climate. Policy makers should, indeed, pay attention to both issues. But a robust body of research shows very little evidence to support the claim that the rising costs associated with weather and climate events are associated with changes in the frequency or intensity of events themselves.1 Instead, the research that has sought to explain increasing disaster losses has found that the trend has far more to do with the nature of societal vulnerability to those events. This conclusion is borne out in literature from the natural hazards community (e.g., Mileti 1999; Tierney 2001) and the societal impacts of the climate community (e.g., Glantz 2003; Changnon et al. 2000), and is consistent with the findings of the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Houghton et al. 2001; McCarthy et al. 2001).

Trends in smoke concentrations before and after the clean air act of 1956

Claims made on behalf of the Clean Air Act of 1956 are examined in the light of longterm data on smoke concentrations from Kew. If the trends observed prior to 1956 are extrapolated to 1970/71, the result appears to be not greatly different from what has been observed and credited to the operation of the Act. Short-term records from three cities (Norwich, Brighton and Plymouth) without major smoke-control programmes also show significant declines in mean winter smoke concentrations. None of the evidence examined lends much support for the claims made for the success of the Clean Air Act.