e-book

Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change

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This report presents the findings of the Committee on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change, one of four concurrent panel efforts within the America’s Climate Choices committee study. It was our assignment to identify the opportunities and challenges associated with adaptation, to identify and evaluate the available options and lessons learned within the United States and elsewhere, and to make recommendations regarding U.S. adaptation efforts.

Adapting to climate change is a relatively new topic for U.S. citizens, who have only recently become fully aware of the implications of changes in the Earth system that will result from having more heat trapped in the oceans and the atmosphere. In recent years, some states, cities, and sectors have begun to make plans to adapt to current and anticipated changes in the climate system. Some “early adopters” have focused primarily on limiting greenhouse gases (GHGs). Others, however, are also addressing ways to limit impacts of the anticipated changes, recognizing that regardless of efforts to limit emissions, adaptation is required now and will become even more important in the coming decades. Although planning for adaptation is still in its infancy, there is a groundswell of interest in moving forward quickly to avoid future impacts of climate
change.

Advising the nation on how to prepare for the impacts of climate change is especially daunting in a country with so much geographic and economic diversity and so many private- and public-sector decision makers. The challenges associated with multiple regions, sectors, scales, and time frames have made this a difficult assignment, and in the end, our panel has concluded that is not possible to provide a list of actions to be taken now to adapt in each region and sector. As has been noted by many researchers and practitioners, adaptation is fundamentally implemented at local and regional levels and needs to consider the socioeconomic and political factors. Priorities regarding “what to do” need to be set in decision contexts relative to other important priorities faced by society and resource managers. Vulnerability associated with climate change is based on underlying social and ecological stresses, and these stresses tend to vary dramatically from place to place. Degrees of vulnerability are not directly connected to wealth, but certainly a lack of financial capacity is highly correlated with a reduced number of options for adaptation. In this report, our panel emphasizes that adaptation decisions need to be made in the context of promoting long-term sustainability objectives, including social, economic, and ecological welfare rather than focusing only
on the short-term outcomes that may be more politically and economically expedient.

Despite this place-based framework, our panel shares the perspective that adaptation needs to be addressed in a coordinated way and that there is a need to involve the federal government in this coordination. Furthermore, there is a need to acknowledge the implications of our adaptation and GHG-reduction decisions on national security and to be prepared for the potential impacts of decisions taken by other countries. This assignment has been both challenging and exhilarating for other reasons as well. Although dozens of new publications on adaptation have emerged during the year that we have worked on this effort, on balance there is very little published literature about the effectiveness of alternative approaches to adaptation to impacts of climate change, and in particular very few estimates of cost that are useful in the context of
the wide variety of U.S. decision processes. The exhilarating part of this effort has been the opportunity to meld a variety of kinds of knowledge into a truly integrated document that benefits from a balance between social and physical science and practical experience.

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Ketersediaan

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Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

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Penerbit

New York : National Academy of Sciences., 2010

Deskripsi Fisik

292 pages, 7 x 10, PAPERBACK (2010)

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

978-0-309-14591-6

Klasifikasi

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Tipe Isi

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Tipe Media

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Tipe Pembawa

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Edisi

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Subjek

LINGKUNGAN HIDUP

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

agus

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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