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Adaptation needs and options

About: The article was published on 2015-01-01. It has received 357 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Adaptation (computer science).
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change : ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate is ensured.

794 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes, and apply concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this sociopolitical process.
Abstract: This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities – and thus the potential for transformational adaptation – can be supported.

541 citations

14 Jun 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, Abd Elgawad et al. discuss the sea level rise and its implications for low lying islands, coastlines and communities in the Middle East and Asia.
Abstract: Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute 4-1 Total pages: 139 1 Chapter 4: Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities 2 3 Coordinating Lead Authors: Michael Oppenheimer (USA), Bruce Glavovic (New Zealand), Tuhin Ghosh 4 (India) 5 6 Lead Authors: Amro Abd-Elgawad (Egypt), Rongshuo Cai (China), Miguel Cifuentes-Jara (Costa Rica), 7 Rob Deconto (USA), John Hay (Cook Islands), Jochen Hinkel (Germany), Federico Isla (Argentina), 8 Alexandre K. Magnan (France), Ben Marzeion (Germany), Benoit Meyssignac (France), Zita Sebesvari 9 (Hungary), AJ Smit (South Africa), Roderik van de Wal (Netherlands) 10 11 Contributing Authors: Maya Buchanan (USA), Gonéri Le Cozannet (France), Catia Domingues 12 (Australia), Virginie Duvat (France), Tamsin Edwards (UK), Miguel D. Fortes (Philippines), Thomas 13 Frederikse (Netherlands), Jean-Pierre Gattuso (France), Robert Kopp (USA), Erwin Lambert (Netherlands), 14 Elizabeth McLeod (USA), Mark Merrifield (USA), Siddharth Narayan (US), Robert J. Nicholls (UK), 15 Fabrice Renaud (UK), Jonathan Simm (UK), Jon Woodruff (USA), Poh Poh Wong (Singapore), Siyuan Xian 16 (USA) 17 18 Review Editors: Ayako Abe-Ouchi (Japan), Kapil Gupta (India), Joy Pereira (Malaysia) 19 20 Chapter Scientist Maya Buchanan (USA) 21 22 Date of Draft: 20 April 2018 23 24 Notes: TSU Compiled Version 25 26

529 citations

14 Nov 2019
TL;DR: The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change : ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate as mentioned in this paper, is the most relevant work to ours.
Abstract: The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change : ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate

339 citations

10 Jul 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the rationale for the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events in the near future, discuss recent findings on meteorological extremes and summarize their effects on ecosystems and identify gaps in current ecological climate change research.
Abstract: Climate change will increase the recurrence of extreme weather events such as drought and heavy rainfall. Evidence suggests that modifications in extreme weather events pose stronger threats to ecosystem functioning than global trends and shifts in average conditions. As ecosystem functioning is connected with ecological services, this has far-reaching effects on societies in the 21st century. Here, we: (i) present the rationale for the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events in the near future; (ii) discuss recent findings on meteorological extremes and summarize their effects on ecosystems and (iii) identify gaps in current ecological climate change research.

288 citations

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a review of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability is presented, focusing on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale.
Abstract: This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

4,612 citations

Book
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an appropriate way to examine the economics of climate change, given the unique scientific and economic challenges posed, and suggest implications for emissions targets, policy instruments, and global action.
Abstract: �Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are exter nalities and represent the biggest market failure the world has seen. We all produce emissions, people around the world are already suffering from past emissions, and current emissions will have potentially catastrophic impacts in the future. Thus, these emissions are not ordinary, localized externalities. Risk on a global scale is at the core of the issue. These basic features of the problem must shape the economic analy sis we bring to bear; failure to do this will, and has, produced approaches to policy that are pro foundly misleading and indeed dangerous. The purpose of this lecture is to set out what I think is an appropriate way to examine the economics of climate change, given the unique scientific and economic challenges posed, and to suggest implications for emissions targets, policy instruments, and global action. The sub ject is complex and very wide-ranging. It is a subject of vital importance but one in which the economics is fairly young. A central challenge is to provide the economic tools necessary as

3,162 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Nov 1995-Nature
TL;DR: In this article, climate change economics attends to this issue by offering theoretical insights and empirical findings relevant to the design of policies to reduce, avoid, or adapt to climate change, which has yielded new estimates of mitigation benefits, improved understanding of costs in the presence of various market distortions or imperfections, better tools for making policy choices under uncertainty, and alternate mechanisms for allowing flexibility in policy responses.
Abstract: Global climate change poses a threat to the well-being of humans and other living things through impacts on ecosystem functioning, biodiversity, capital productivity, and human health. Climate change economics attends to this issue by offering theoretical insights and empirical findings relevant to the design of policies to reduce, avoid, or adapt to climate change. This economic analysis has yielded new estimates of mitigation benefits, improved understanding of costs in the presence of various market distortions or imperfections, better tools for making policy choices under uncertainty, and alternate mechanisms for allowing flexibility in policy responses. These contributions have influenced the formulation and implementation of a range of climate change policies at the domestic and international levels.

2,783 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors outline a set of normative evaluative criteria for judging the success of adaptation at different scales and argue that elements of effectiveness, efficiency, equity and legitimacy are important in judging success in terms of the sustainability of development pathways into an uncertain future.
Abstract: Climate change impacts and responses are presently observed in physical and ecological systems. Adaptation to these impacts is increasingly being observed in both physical and ecological systems as well as in human adjustments to resource availability and risk at different spatial and societal scales. We review the nature of adaptation and the implications of different spatial scales for these processes. We outline a set of normative evaluative criteria for judging the success of adaptations at different scales. We argue that elements of effectiveness, efficiency, equity and legitimacy are important in judging success in terms of the sustainability of development pathways into an uncertain future. We further argue that each of these elements of decision-making is implicit within presently formulated scenarios of socio-economic futures of both emission trajectories and adaptation, though with different weighting. The process by which adaptations are to be judged at different scales will involve new and challenging institutional processes.

2,691 citations