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Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation:

What's the difference, and how do they relate to each other?

Discussions about society's response to climate change have revolved primarily around the subject of mitigation. Increasingly, however, the problem of adaptation to an already changed climate is entering the picture as well. And the relationship between the two modes of action is becoming a topic of concern and debate.

The Kyoto Protocol, which brought climate change to the world political stage in the early 1990s, focused squarely on mitigation: efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming. The treaty offered a global framework to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide and methane that are increasing the atmosphere's ability to trap and store heat. Since that time, mitigation has been the focal point of many crucial and often contentious issues: How can emissions be reduced? How much should they be reduced, and how rapidly? Which countries have the greatest obligation to reduce emissions? Will reduction efforts be effective? How much will reductions cost, and who should pay for them? Even in the wake of the blockbuster reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007, the lion's share of attention to the question of how to respond to climate change has focused on the pressing issue of mitigation.

During decades of debate over whether the climate is changing and whether humans are responsible, little was done to slow the pace of GHG emissions globally. Although the IPCC's 2007 reports kept the focus primarily on mitigation, however, the panel also significantly advanced discussion of another urgent issue that has gotten far less attention: climate change adaptation, or how to protect society and ecosystems against the impacts of the changes in climate that are already "in the pipeline," so to speak.

GHG emissions over the past century have set in motion changes in the global climate system that cannot now be stopped. Even if emissions are dramatically reduced in the next several years (which few observers consider likely), the impacts of climate change prompted by historical GHG emissions inevitably will be felt for generations to come - and in some places these impacts will be severe. One of the IPCC's 2007 reports concentrated on the need for communities and nations to prepare for, and take steps to protect against, a broad range of impacts: rising sea levels; more frequent and intense heat waves; more frequent and intense storms and heavy precipitation events; more frequent, intense, and widespread drought; worsened urban air quality (due to increased smog formation in hot weather); and changes in patterns of diseases such as malaria.

Efforts to mitigate climate change are crucial, IPCC and many scholars now argue, but so is adaptation. Climate change that is now unavoidable means communities across the planet will face large-scale hazards unprecedented in modern history; and in the absence of serious adaptation programs these hazards will pose serious threats to health, safety, economic integrity, ecological integrity, and in some cases societal stability.

The need for widespread, coordinated mitigation programs presents extraordinary political, economic, and technological challenges. The need to simultaneously adapt to climate alterations that cannot be prevented compounds the challenge.

As policy experts, decision makers, urban planners, and others attempt to address this dual challenge, they also must think clearly about how mitigation relates to adaptation. An important clue lies in the origin of the need to adapt: Humankind's failure to prevent excessive GHG emissions in the 20th century has resulted in today's need to prepare for inevitable climate change. By extension, today's ongoing failure to cease excessive GHG emissions will necessitate more extensive adaptation to even greater climate change in the future. Every year that humans continue extensive reliance on fossil fuels means the adaptation challenge will become more difficult, more disruptive, more expensive, and ultimately less effective. In the absence of solid, pervasive efforts to mitigate, adaptation would be an open ended - some would say absurd - proposition.

Because the challenge of mitigation will be even more enormous if decision makers unintentionally allow their adaptation efforts to undermine it, some analysts argue that adaptation should be carried out principally in ways that avoid increasing emissions of GHGs. If humanity is to avoid its adaptation efforts getting in the way of its mitigation efforts, they suggest, it must approach the dual mitigation/adaptation task strategically, concentrating as much as possible on section A in the diagram above.

The diagram somewhat simplistically depicts the relationship between mitigation and adaptation:

- In section A, the sweet spot, activities simultaneously serve the purposes of both mitigation and adaptation (for example, urban tree planting captures carbon from the atmosphere and cools nearby dwellings during heat waves).

- In section B, tactics such as reducing vehicle miles traveled serve the purpose of mitigation but neither help nor hurt adaptation.

- In section C, adaptation tactics such as improved storm warning systems neither help nor hurt mitigation.

- In section D, mitigation measures undermine adaptation efforts (use of biodiesel to reduce use of fossil fuel results in poorer air quality than might have existed).

- In section E, adaptation measures undermine mitigation (installation of air conditioning to combat heat waves increases electricity use and thus raises GHG emissions at a power plant burning coal or natural gas).

Extensive adaptation measures in E would be especially problematic, and even adaptation in C would need to be avoided if it diverts resources or distracts attention from mitigation. It is important, therefore, that adaptation today be carried out largely in a way that is compatible with mitigation - and hence help reduce the need for (and the costs of) adaptation later.

Policy makers always need to beware of potential side effects. To make climate change adaptation efficient and effective in the long run, adaptation programs undertaken today should whenever possible be designed to avoid compromising mitigation. Otherwise adaptation programs will, ironically, tend to make long-run adaptation more difficult. And whenever possible, both mitigation and adaptation should be undertaken in ways that serve both purposes simultaneously.

Jeff Howard
School of Urban & Public Affairs, University of Texas at Arlington
December 2008

Source: Climate Change Economics

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