IPCC Assessment in depth, Part 9: How is the world adapting to climate change?

The threat that climate change poses to human well-being and the health of the planet is “unequivocal”, says the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this in-depth Q&A series, Carbon Brief unpacks the key findings of the report and the developments since the IPCC’s last assessment. (Read previous section here)

By Carbon Brief

9. How is the world adapting to climate change?

Climate adaptation is far more prominent in the new report than any previous IPCC assessments, reflecting both an expansion of knowledge and heightened urgency.

It states that the goals of climate change adaptation are to “reduce risk and vulnerability to climate change, strengthen resilience, enhance wellbeing and the capacity to anticipate, and respond successfully to change”.

Diverse examples of this in action span the report, including:

• Chapter 2: Planting trees “in the right place” to provide shade for people, livestock, crops and even water sources, which can help to keep temperatures low and maintain fisheries.
• Chapter 3: Restoration of mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrass meadows, which can both remove CO2 from the atmosphere and protect coasts from the impacts of storms and sea-level rise.
• Chapter 4: Farmers in semi-arid areas adapting to changing rain patterns by using irrigation.
• Chapter 5: Taking an agroecological approach to reduce risk in food systems, improve food security and reduce costs.
• Chapter 6: Managing flood risk in cities by installing flood proofing in properties, improving drainage along roads, incorporating nature-based solutions, constructing flood defences and reducing runoff from land upstream.
• Chapter 7: Supporting “safe and orderly movements of people”, protecting migrant rights and facilitating financial flows “between sending and receiving communities”, to adapt to climate migration.
• Chapter 8: Public and private investment in different types of assets, including water and sanitation, education and healthcare, to help make the world’s poorest people more resilient to climate change.

In the 1990s, studies of adaptation were relatively limited, the report says – there was an assumption that curbing greenhouse gases would be effective and timely, meaning there would be little need for societies to adapt.

The WG2 report of the IPCC’s fourth assessment (AR4) – published in 2007 – included one chapter about adaptation, while the AR5 WG2 report expanded this to four. In contrast, AR6 states that its authors have integrated adaptation “comprehensively throughout the report”.

This change has come about as the impacts of climate change have become more apparent and adaptation projects have got up and running, the authors note.

Nevertheless, the report still emphasises that, overall, “the extent of adaptation-related responses globally has been low”. The most common actions are changes to people’s behaviour in Africa and Asia in response to drought, flooding and rainfall, as well as local governments protecting infrastructure and services, such as water supplies.

The report also concludes with high confidence that, barring some measures to deal with flooding and extreme heat, there is “negligible evidence that existing responses are adequate to reduce climate risk”. Furthermore, “major knowledge gaps persist in modelling and analysis” of climate adaptation.

These are all important issues because, as the report notes, even with emission reductions sufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals, “transformational adaptation will be necessary”.

There are numerous targets in place for adaptation, including the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the finance-oriented Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The report also notes that the UN’s overarching Sustainable Development Goals would be difficult to reach without successful adaptation to climate change.

The Paris Agreement itself also includes a “global goal on adaptation”, albeit one that has been described as “unacceptably vague”. A key issue identified in the new AR6 report is that specifying adaptation goals is harder than for mitigation, which can simply be judged by volumes of emissions.

Not only do adaptation actions “span a vast range of activities”, their success depends “more strongly on context”, the report says:

“A different, often more diffuse set of actors are involved, and it is often hard to distinguish what activities count as adaptation.”

With all of these challenges in mind, the report identifies three metrics by which to assess adaptation: effectiveness, feasibility and justice.

Effectiveness is broadly defined as the extent to which a solution reduces climate risk, although it can also include economic benefits and measures of wider societal wellbeing.

Feasibility is the extent to which it is considered possible and desirable, “taking into consideration barriers, enablers, synergies, and trade-offs”.

While previous IPCC reports did not explicitly discuss climate justice in their adaptation chapters, this one explicitly shows “how better outcomes are obtained by choosing just ones”. It states with high confidence that adaptation goals at the international, national and local levels require “engaging with the concepts of equity, justice and effectiveness”.

Climate justice can mean many things to many people, but the report notes that generally “it is common to distinguish between distributive justice, procedural justice and recognition”. These are defined as follows:

• Distributive justice: Adaptation solutions aim to achieve fairness between individuals, states and generations.
• Procedural justice: Such actions should also involve “genuine, not merely formal” participation from people affected, requiring communities to be well-acquainted with climate risks and given a voice in adaptation planning.
• Recognition: This involves “basic respect and robust engagement with and fair consideration of diverse values, cultures, perspectives, and worldviews”. It is closely tied with the first two and without it actors “may not benefit” from them.

The report states that two key concepts – “adaptation gaps” and “limits to adaptation” – frame its assessment of existing adaptation efforts:

“Within the limits, adaptation gaps can be closed by increased and more successful adaptation actions. Beyond the limits, only mitigation can close adaptation gaps.”

Understanding of the size of the current adaptation gaps remains limited, but the report states with high confidence that “significant adaptation gaps exist”, citing a lack of sufficient adaptation finance as one driver of this.

The report acknowledges that research into adaptation generally has seen a major increase over the past few years.

One study cited shows an annual average increase of 28.5% in climate change adaptation publications between 1978 and 2020, with the greatest increase in publications occurring over 2006-10 – up 540% from the previous five years.

Adaptation research during the 1990s and 2000s was “primarily academic”, but in recent years as adaptation projects have got underway around the world, the report says it “now includes a proliferation of on-the-ground experience”.

Investigation of the topic has also spread from looking at “engineered and technical options” to social, institutional and governance dimensions as well, it adds.

The figure below is based on a review of 1,682 scientific publications over 2013-19 reporting on adaptation-related responses. The darker the colour, the more publications have been undertaken for that sector and climate hazard.

Nations have been encouraged to monitor and evaluate their adaptation plans, partly through the Paris Agreement’s global stocktake, which will take place every five years starting in 2023.

However, the report finds that despite advances in wider understanding of adaptation, overall monitoring and evaluation of adaptation projects remain a blind spot.

It highlights that such long-term activities are “much less common than adaptation assessment prior to implementation”. This is an issue as long-term evaluation allows for an understanding of what works and what does not.

The report states with medium confidence that one-third of nations have “undertaken steps” to monitor and evaluate adaptation efforts, “fewer than half of these are reporting on implementation”.

One review, cited in the report, found that only 2.3% of nearly 1,700 articles identified by the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative provided evidence of risk reduction following implementation of adaptation projects.

Beyond peer-reviewed scientific papers and other evidence that has traditionally fed into the IPCC process, the new report also emphasises the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge. It concludes with high confidence that such approaches “can help diversify knowledge that may enrich adaptation policy and practice”:

“Indigenous peoples have been faced with adaptation challenges for centuries and have developed strategies for resilience in changing environments that can enrich and strengthen current and future adaptation efforts.”

The report also considers what governments and other relevant organisations need to do to make adaptation happen.

It finds that adaptation efforts “require strong, usually multi-level governance systems”, spanning multiple levels of jurisdiction and decision-making, including at global, regional, national and local levels.

The report also states that “mainstreaming” adaptation into existing governance can support transformative adaptation and expand the “solution space” – defined as “the space within which opportunities and constraints determine why, how, when and who adapts to climate risks”. One example is urban planners considering adaptation in their city plans from the outset.

Finance is also a key issue identified in the report, highlighted as a “crucial enabling condition and shaper of the solution space”. It notes that the potential return on investment is large, suggesting that a $1.8tn investment in measures including early warning systems, global mangrove protection and climate-resilient infrastructure would yield $7.1tn in benefits.

However, the report also repeats a common refrain, which came to a head at the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, that “the current public and private financial flows to adaptation are much smaller than needed”. It states with high confidence that just 4-8% of climate finance has gone to adaptation efforts in recent years.

According to Climate Home News, adaptation finance proved to be one of the more contentious topics during negotiations over the SPM. While the US reportedly objected to the emphasis on adaptation finance, the final document includes several references to it, including the “essential” need for “enhanced mobilisation” and access.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported that the US, Australia, France and Ireland resisted a request by India to include specific numbers illustrating the shortfall in adaptation finance in the final SPM.

All sections:

1. What is the IPCC report?
2. How is climate change affecting land ecosystems?
3. What impact is global warming having on marine life?
4. How is climate change affecting the world’s water?
5. What does the IPCC report say about impacts on food and agriculture?
6. What risks does climate change pose to the world’s cities?
7. What does the report say about public health, conflict and migration?
8. How does climate change affect poverty and progress towards the sustainable development goals?
9. How is the world adapting to climate change?
10. What the latest IPCC report says about carbon fee and dividend

Authors:

Aruna Chandrasekhar holds an MSc in environmental change and management from the University of Oxford. She previously worked as a freelance journalist for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Scroll and Caravan.

Daisy Dunne holds a BSc in biology from the University of Bristol and a science journalism MA from City, University of London. She was The Independent’s climate correspondent from November 2020 to 2021. Prior to this, she was Carbon Brief’s science writer from 2017 to 2020.

Josh Gabbatiss covers climate and energy policy. Josh holds a BSc in zoology from the University of Bristol. He previously worked as science correspondent at The Independent and prior to that was a freelance journalist for a variety of scientific publications including New Scientist and BBC Earth.