Opportunities to Ramp Up Climate Adaptation

As highlighted in the 2021 IPCC report, extreme events are increasing in frequency, intensity, and duration worldwide, and we must learn to live with them. 

The COP26 and the UNFCC in Glasgow also call for ‘increased ambition’ in climate adaptation.

An article from Communications Earth and Environment, ‘Research for climate adaptation,’ proposes three avenues to accelerate climate adaptation.

According to the authors, regardless of how quickly societies decarbonise, global average temperatures are already 1°C above pre-industrial levels and will continue to increase through 2050 and beyond.

2021 has also seen record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires in Northern America and deadly floods in China and Germany. Other climate change impacts will continue to affect billions of people worldwide, especially vulnerable communities.

Authors define adaptation as adjusting to actual or expected climate change and its effects.

They outline opportunities for research to accelerate climate adaptation based on consultations and interviews with representatives of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the secretariats of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations University (UNU), and international funding organisations.

The authors have identified three promising opportunities for climate adaptation.

• The first is to establish a global stocktake of the climate change adaptation and mitigation being implemented and whether it is effective or adequate to meet the climate change challenges.
• Second, investing in climate adaptation and resilience in critical areas.
• Third, accelerate learning through practice.

“These three opportunities are all part of the overall shift in adaptation research to move beyond identifying climate risks and vulnerability towards providing a full suite of the knowledge required to implement solutions and improve outcomes in the light of equity and the best available science.” (Currie-Alder, Rosenzweig, Chen, et al, 2021)

Collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and practitioners should increase as scientists strive to make their research usable and as policymakers and practitioners engage more with the research community.

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