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What is climate change adaptation and why is it crucial?

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• Adaptation refers to a wide range of measures to reduce vulnerability to climate change impacts, from planting crop varieties that are more resistant to drought to enhancing climate information and early warning systems to building stronger defences against floods.
• As the impacts of climate change accelerate — including more extreme weather and sea level rise — it is increasingly urgent that countries and communities adapt.
• Adaptation faces challenges including inadequate finance, knowledge gaps, and institutional constraints, particularly in developing countries.
• International agreements such as the Global Goal on Adaptation and the Global Stocktake are key to driving progress. So too are comprehensive National Adaptation Plans.
• Despite constraints, developing countries are among those leading the way on adaptation.

What is climate change adaptation?

Climate change adaptation refers to actions that help reduce vulnerability to the current or expected impacts of climate change like weather extremes and hazards, sea-level rise, biodiversity loss, or food and water insecurity.

Many adaptation measures need to happen at the local level, so rural communities and cities have a big role to play. Such measures include planting crop varieties that are more resistant to drought and practicing regenerative agriculture, improving water storage and use, managing land to reduce wildfire risks, and building stronger defences against extreme weather like floods and heat waves.   However, adaptation also needs to be driven at the national and international levels. In addition to developing the policies needed to guide adaptation, governments need to look at large-scale measures such as strengthening or relocating infrastructure from coastal areas affected by sea-level rise, building infrastructure able to withstand more extreme weather conditions, enhancing early warning systems and access to disaster information, developing insurance mechanisms specific to climate-related threats, and creating new protections for wildlife and natural ecosystems.

Why do we need to adapt? And why is it so urgent?

Scientific studies show that the Earth is now about 1.1°C warmer than it was in the 1800s. This warming is causing widespread and rapid changes in our planet’s atmosphere, ocean and ecosystems. As a result, weather and climate extremes are becoming more frequent in every region of the world. 

According to climate models, without significant climate action, the world is headed for 2.5 to 2.9°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels this century, which is well above the safety limits established by scientists. 

With every fraction of a degree of warming, the impacts of climate change will become more frequent and more intense – and adaptation will become that much harder and more expensive for people and ecosystems. 

The urgency is especially great for developing countries, which are already feeling the impacts of climate change and are particularly vulnerable due to a combination of factors, including their geographical and climatic conditions, their high dependence on natural resources, and their limited capacity to adapt to a changing climate. Adaptation is also particularly important for women and young children, older populations, ethnic minorities, Indigenous Peoples, refugees and displaced persons, who are shown to be disproportionately affected by climate change.

Even in very positive scenarios in which we manage to significantly and swiftly cut greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will continue to impact our world for decades to come because of the energy already trapped in the system. This means cutting down emissions is only one part of our response to the climate crisis: adaptation is needed to limit the impacts and safeguard people and nature.

Climate change threatens the viability of agricultural livelihoods worldwide. Photo: Anesu Freddy/UNDP Zimbabwe

Nature-based solutions, such as planting mangroves, are key to adaptation. Photo: David Estrada/Grupo Creativo Naturaleza Secreta

What are the challenges related to climate change adaptation? 

Efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change face a number of significant challenges.

The first major bottleneck for adaptation action is the availability of and access to finance. In fact, the adaptation finance needs of developing countries are estimated to be 10 to 18 times larger than what is currently available from public sources. 

Finance is needed to drive investment in a range of adaptation solutions, so countries can learn what works and scale up what is most effective. But it is also needed to empower communities – those on the frontlines of climate change – in locally-led, locally-appropriate action. 

Another major challenge is information and knowledge gaps. Accurate climate data is not easily available in many developing countries – localized risk assessments often do not exist – and systems for monitoring, learning and evaluation of adaptation are still fragmented. Without these pieces of the puzzle, it is difficult for governments, communities and the private sector to plan effectively and make sound decisions on where to invest. 

Finally, institutional and governance constraints are a major issue. Challenges of coordination among sectors and levels of government, and lack of specialized knowledge and experience – for example in realizing climate-risk informed planning and investments – are hindering effective adaptation in many countries.  

Climate information is crucial for communities, authorities and policymakers to make sound decisions. Photo: UNDP Malawi

What is the Global Goal on Adaptation?

The Global Goal on Adaptation, often referred to as "GGA”, is a key component of the Paris Agreement. It commits all 196 Parties of the Paris Agreement to enhancing resilience, reducing vulnerability, and supporting adaptation actions.

Its inclusion in the Paris Agreement was significant because it underscores the equal importance of adapting to climate change alongside efforts to reduce emissions. It also recognizes the vulnerability of developing countries to climate impacts and encourages support for their adaptation efforts.

At COP28 in Dubai , as part of the Global Stocktake , world leaders took decisions on the GGA, now named the “UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience.” Countries agreed to global time-bound targets around specific themes and sectors – for example in areas such as water and sanitation, food and agriculture, and poverty eradication and livelihoods – as well as under what’s called the “ adaptation cycle ,” a global framework guiding countries on the steps necessary to plan for and implement adaptation.

These were important steps forward, however there is still a lot of work to be done to accelerate adaptation globally. The targets set need to be more detailed and a clear roadmap for increasing finance towards adaptation needs to be drawn. This includes realizing the goal of doubling adaptation finance by 2025. Developed countries must deliver pledged contributions to the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, the Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund to support the world’s most vulnerable countries. At the same time, all governments must find new innovative sources of finance, including mobilizing the private sector, which has historically favoured mitigation initiatives.

What are National Adaptation Plans and why do they matter?

National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) are comprehensive medium and long-term strategies that outline how a nation will adapt to the changing climate and reduce its vulnerability to climate-related risks. Often, countries will focus their NAPs on key sectors that contribute to their economy, food security and natural resources. 

NAPs are a way for countries to prioritize their adaptation efforts, integrating climate considerations into their national policies and development plans, and mobilizing the required finance by supporting the development of effective financing strategies and directing investments.

NAPs are also crucial because they enable countries to systematically assess their vulnerability to climate change, identify adaptation needs and design effective strategies to build resilience. 

Notably, these plans link closely to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and other national and sectoral policies and programmes.  

Land reclamation is underway in Tuvalu’s capital, Funafuti, to protect communities from sea level rise. Photo: TCAP/UNDP

Automated weather stations provide data crucial for forecasting and early warning. Photo: Jamil Akhtar/UNDP Pakistan

What are some examples of climate adaptation around the world?

There are a great number of countries leading the way in climate change adaptation, many of them showing outsized ambition and innovation, despite limited resources.

In the Pacific, the small island state of Tuvalu has drawn on the best available science – and around 270,000 cubic meters of sand – to reclaim a 780m-long, 100m-wide strip of land to protect against sea level rise and storm waves beyond 2100. This is an important initiative for a low-lying atoll country comprised of only around 26 square kilometres of land. 

Other countries such as Malawi and Pakistan are modernizing the capture and use of climate data and early warning systems, equipping communities, farmers and policy makers with the information they need to protect lives and livelihoods. 

Cuba and Colombia are leading the way on nature-based approaches, restoring crucial ecosystems – mangroves, wetlands and more – to protect against floods and drought. In this process, Colombia is capitalising on the knowledge of its Indigenous Peoples , who have invaluable expertise in adapting to extreme environmental changes.

Bhutan , the world’s first carbon-negative country, and Chad are among the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to finalize National Adaptation Plans. The result of years of meticulous planning and rigorous consultation, the plans are crucial roadmaps for adaptation in the years ahead. In Bhutan’s case, the plan is deeply rooted in the country’s unique ethos of Gross National Happiness.

How does UNDP support countries on climate change adaptation?

For UNDP, adapting to climate change is inseparable from sustainable development and each one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals . Adaptation is therefore a key pillar of UNDP’s support to developing countries worldwide.

Today, UNDP is the largest service provider in the UN system on climate change adaptation with active projects targeting more than 164 million people across more than 90 countries, including 13 Small Island Developing States and 44 Least Developed Countries.

Since 2002, with finance via global funds such as the Green Climate Fund, Global Environment Facility and Adaptation Fund, and hand-in-hand with governments, UNDP has completed more than 173 adaptation projects across 79 countries. This work has contributed to building the resilience of millions of people worldwide. For example, more than 3 million people are now covered by enhanced climate information and early warning systems, more than 645,000 people are benefitting from climate-smart agricultural practices, and 473,000 people have improved access to water.

To learn more about UNDP’s adaptation work, click here .

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Responding to Climate Change

NASA is a world leader in climate studies and Earth science. While its role is not to set climate policy or prescribe particular responses or solutions to climate change, its purview does include providing the robust scientific data needed to understand climate change. NASA then makes this information available to the global community – the public, policy- and decision-makers and scientific and planning agencies around the world.

Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing us today. It involves many dimensions – science, economics, society, politics, and moral and ethical questions – and is a global problem, felt on local scales, that will be around for thousands of years. Carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that is the primary driver of recent global warming, lingers in the atmosphere for many thousands of years, and the planet (especially the ocean) takes a while to respond to warming. So even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse gases today, global warming and climate change will continue to affect future generations. In this way, humanity is “committed” to some level of climate change.

How much climate change? That will be determined by how our emissions continue and exactly how our climate responds to those emissions. Despite increasing awareness of climate change, our emissions of greenhouse gases continue on a relentless rise . In 2013, the daily level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history . The last time levels were that high was about three to five million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch.

Because we are already committed to some level of climate change, responding to climate change involves a two-pronged approach:

• Reducing emissions of and stabilizing the levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (“mitigation”) ;
• Adapting to the climate change already in the pipeline (“adaptation”) .

Mitigation and Adaptation

Mitigation – reducing climate change – involves reducing the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere , either by reducing sources of these gases (for example, the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, or transport) or enhancing the “sinks” that accumulate and store these gases (such as the oceans, forests, and soil). The goal of mitigation is to avoid significant human interference with Earth's climate , “stabilize greenhouse gas levels in a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner” (from the 2014 report on Mitigation of Climate Change from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, page 4).

Adaptation – adapting to life in a changing climate – involves adjusting to actual or expected future climate. The goal is to reduce our risks from the harmful effects of climate change (like sea-level rise, more intense extreme weather events, or food insecurity). It also includes making the most of any potential beneficial opportunities associated with climate change (for example, longer growing seasons or increased yields in some regions).

Throughout history, people and societies have adjusted to and coped with changes in climate and extremes with varying degrees of success. Climate change (drought in particular) has been at least partly responsible for the rise and fall of civilizations . Earth’s climate has been relatively stable for the past 10,000 years, and this stability has allowed for the development of our modern civilization and agriculture. Our modern life is tailored to that stable climate and not the much warmer climate of the next thousand-plus years. As our climate changes, we will need to adapt. The faster the climate changes, the more difficult it will be.

While climate change is a global issue, it is felt on a local scale. Local governments are therefore at the frontline of adaptation. Cities and local communities around the world have been focusing on solving their own climate problems . They are working to build flood defenses, plan for heat waves and higher temperatures, install better-draining pavements to deal with floods and stormwater, and improve water storage and use.

According to the 2014 report on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (page 8) from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, governments at various levels are also getting better at adaptation. Climate change is being included into development plans: how to manage the increasingly extreme disasters we are seeing, how to protect coastlines and deal with sea-level rise, how to best manage land and forests, how to deal with and plan for drought, how to develop new crop varieties, and how to protect energy and public infrastructure.

How NASA Is Involved

NASA, with its Eyes on the Earth and wealth of knowledge on Earth’s climate, is one of the world’s experts in climate science . NASA’s role is to provide the robust scientific data needed to understand climate change. For example, data from the agency’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) , its follow-on mission ( GRACE-FO ), the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), and the ICESat-2 missions have shown rapid changes in the Earth's great ice sheets. The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and the Jason series of missions have documented rising global sea level since 1992.

NASA makes detailed climate data available to the global community – the public, policy-, and decision-makers and scientific and planning agencies around the world. It is not NASA’s role to set climate policy or recommend solutions to climate change. NASA is one of 13 U.S. government agencies that form part of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which has a legal mandate to help the nation and the world understand, assess, predict, and respond to global change. These U.S. partner agencies include the Department of Agriculture , the Environmental Protection Agency , and the Department of Energy , each of which has a different role depending on their area of expertise.

Although NASA’s main focus is not on energy-technology research and development, work is being done around the agency and by/with various partners and collaborators to find other sources of energy to power our needs.

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The Adaptation Principles: 6 Ways to Build Resilience to Climate Change

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Climate risk cannot be reduced to zero, which means governments must take decisive action to help households and businesses manage them.
• A new World Bank report, “The Adaptation Principles: A Guide for Designing Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience”, lays out 6 universal principles to help policymakers plan for adaptation…
• … Along with 26 actions, 12 tool boxes and 111 indicators.

Over the past decades, Uganda made remarkable progress in reducing poverty and boosting socio-economic development. In 1992, some 56 percent of the population was living in poverty. By 2016, that figure had fallen to 21 percent . Yet, the global economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects of climate change are forcing the country to confront new challenges: shocks not only threaten further progress but can reverse hard won successes of the past.

Around 72 percent of Uganda’s labor force works in agriculture – a sector that is highly climate sensitive. Take coffee: Uganda is Africa’s second largest exporter of coffee. Over 17 percent of Uganda’s exports coming from just this high-value crop. Recent droughts, however, are estimated to have destroyed half of all coffee yields. In the coming decades, changing climatic conditions are expected to pose profound challenges to Uganda’s coffee sector : without adaptive measures, only 1 percent of Uganda’s current coffee producing land is expected to be able to continue production. And coffee is just one sector that could face mounting impacts from climate change: around 2.3 million poor people in Uganda also face high levels of flood risk.

In countries around the world, climate change poses a significant risk threatening the lives and livelihoods of people. These risks cannot be reduced to zero, which means governments must take decisive action to help firms and people manage them. Doing so requires planning ahead and putting in place proactive measures that not only reduce climate risk but also accelerate development, and cut poverty, according to a new report, The Adaptation Principles: A Guide for Designing Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience .

“Adaptation cannot be an afterthought to development. Instead, by integrating it into policy thinking up front, governments can catalyze robust economic development while also reducing vulnerability to climate change,” says Lead Economist, Stéphane Hallegatte , who co-authored the report with Jun Rentschler and Julie Rozenberg, all of the World Bank.

The report lays out six universal “Principles of Adaptation and Resilience” and 26 concrete actions that governments can use to develop effective strategies. To support the development and design of these actions, it also includes 12 toolboxes with methodologies and data sources that can ensure that strategies are evidence-based.  

1. Build resilient foundations with rapid and inclusive development

Poverty and the lack of access to basic services—including infrastructure, financial services, health care, and social protection—are strong predictors of vulnerability to climate change . To put it another way: the poorer communities are, the more climate change will affect them. No adaptation strategy can be successful without ensuring high-vulnerability populations have the financial, technical, and institutional resources they need to adapt.

2. Help people and firms do their part.

It’s critical to boost the adaptive capacity of households and firms: many already have incentives to adapt, but they need help overcoming obstacles, ranging from a lack of information and financing, to behavioral biases and imperfect markets. Governments can make information on climate risks available, clarify responsibilities and liabilities, support innovation and access to the best technologies , and ensure financing is available to all especially for solutions that come with high upfront costs. And they will also need to provide direct support to the poorest people, who cannot afford to invest in adaptation but are the most vulnerable to experiencing devastating effects of climate change .

3. Revise land use plans and protect critical infrastructure.

In addition to direct support to households and businesses, governments must also play a role in protecting public investments, assets, and services. Power and water outages and transport disruptions are estimated to cost more than $390 billion per year already in developing countries. But if countries have the right data, risk models, and decision-making methods available, the incremental cost of building the resilience of new infrastructure assets is small—only around 3 percent of total investments. Urban and land use plans are also important responsibilities of the public sector, and they influence massive private investments in housing and productive assets, so it is vital these adapt to evolving long-term climate risks to avoid locking people into high-risk areas.

4. Help people and firms recover faster and better.

Risks and impacts cannot be reduced to zero. Governments must develop strategies to ensure that when disasters do occur, people and firms can cope without devastating long-term consequences, and can recover quickly. Preparation such as better hydromet data , early warning and emergency management systems reduces physical damage and economic losses—for example, shuttering windows ahead of a hurricane can reduce damage by up to 50 percent. The benefits of providing universal access to early warning systems globally have been repeatedly found to largely exceed costs, by factors of at least 4 to 10 . And then, financial inclusion, such as access to emergency borrowing, and social protection are essential ways to help firms and people get back on their feet. Adaptive social protection systems , which can be rapidly scaled up to cover more people and provide bigger support after a disaster, are particularly efficient, but they rely on delivery and finance mechanisms that have to be created before a crisis occurs.

5. Manage impacts at the macro level.

Coping with climate change impacts in one economic sector is already complicated. Coping with climate change impacts in all sectors at once requires strategic planning at the highest levels. Through many impacts in many sectors ---  from floods affecting housing prices to changes in ecosystems affecting agriculture productivity --- climate change will affect the macroeconomic situation and tax revenues. Some impacts on major sectors (especially exporting ones) can affect a country’s trade balance and capital flows. And spending needs for adaptation and resilience need to be added on top of existing contingent liabilities and current debt levels to create further pressure on public finances. The combination of these factors may result in new risks for macroeconomic stability, public finances and debt sustainability, and the broader financial sector. Governments will need to manage these risks . Because of the massive uncertainty that surrounds macroeconomic estimates of future climate change impacts, strategies to build the resilience of the economy, especially through appropriate diversification of the economic structure, export composition and tax base, are particularly attractive over the short term.

6. Prioritize according to needs, implement across sectors and monitor progress.

Governments must not only prioritize actions to make them compatible with available resources and capacity; they must also establish a robust institutional and legal framework , and a consistent system for monitoring progress. The main objective of an adaptation and resilience strategy is not to implement stand-alone projects: it is to ensure that all government departments and public agencies adopt and mainstream the strategy in all their decisions, and that governments continuously monitor and evaluate the impact of their decisions and actions, so they can address any challenges and adjust their actions accordingly.

The report provides a range of practical tools that can help governments implement adaptation strategies. For instance, economic analysis methodologies can help to select the most important interventions, and budget tagging methods can ensure spending is consistent with expectations. A set of 111 indicators is also provided to enable governments to track progress toward greater resilience, to identify areas that are lagging behind, and to prioritize effective measures. It also sheds light on how the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic crisis can affect the design of an adaptation and resilience strategy, recognizing how it has changed the development landscape in all countries.

The impacts of climate change are already here and fast increasing and there is no silver bullet to prevent them. Proactive and robust actions ahead of time, however, can go a long way to helping people and communities so that when a natural disaster strikes, not only are they better prepared to respond, but hard-won development gains are not lost.

Join us on Tuesday, December 1 2020, for a discussion on the main findings of this report .

“The Adaptation Principles: A Guide for Designing Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience” was produced with financial support from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery .

• Report: The Adaptation Principles - A Guide for Designing Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience
• Infographic: The Adaptation Principles at a Glance

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• Open access
• Published: 18 October 2021

Research for climate adaptation

• Bruce Currie-Alder   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3224-4136 1 ,
• Cynthia Rosenzweig 2 ,
• Minpeng Chen 3 ,
• Johanna Nalau 4 ,
• Anand Patwardhan 5 &
• Ying Wang 6  

Communications Earth & Environment volume  2 , Article number:  220 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Climate-change adaptation
• Climate-change impacts
• Developing world
• Environmental studies

An Author Correction to this article was published on 28 October 2021

This article has been updated

Adaptation to climate change must be ramped up urgently. We propose three avenues to transform ambition to action: improve tracking of actions and progress, upscale investment especially in critical areas, and accelerate learning through practice.

Ongoing climate impacts are outpacing global mitigation efforts. The reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that extreme events are increasing in frequency, intensity, and duration throughout the world. We have entered a climate beyond the range experienced in human history and we must learn to live in that emerging reality. As a result, adaptation needs to ‘increase ambition’ in the terminology of the upcoming 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow.

Adaptation is the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects. Regardless of how quickly societies decarbonize, global temperatures are already more than 1 °C above the 1850-to-1900 baseline and will continue to rise through mid-century and very likely beyond. 2021 is a year of record-breaking extremes from massive heatwaves and wildfires in the United States and Canada, to deadly floods in China and Germany. In the coming decades, climate change will go on to affect the lives, health, and livelihoods of billions of people. Along with the need to accelerate mitigation, an equally important goal of COP26 is to protect people and nature by increasing ambition for adaptation. We must seize the opportunity for research to enhance its usefulness and usability in order to rapidly upscale adaptation action, now needed more than ever.

Here we outline opportunities for research to accelerate adaptation, based on consultations and interviews with representatives of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the secretariats of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), United Nations University (UNU), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and the Green Climate Fund (GCF), that is, the organizations that convene the World Adaptation Science Programme (WASP) 1 .

We identify three promising opportunities for progress. First, the Paris Agreement mechanisms to raise ambition, such as the global stocktake, requires research to establish what adaptation is being undertaken, whether it is effective, and if it is adequate in the face of a rapidly changing climate. Secondly, we need to ensure the resilience of—and resilience through—multilateral, domestic, and private investment. This will require research to make risk visible in decisions, to identify scalable and transferable practices, and to look ahead to how such investments perform into the future. Thirdly, research must accompany adaptation actions by communities and professionals, through creative and interactive co-production to enable learning by doing.

Informing the global stocktake

The global stocktake is mandated under Article 14 of the Paris Agreement with the purpose of assessing collective progress on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and the means of implementation, in the light of equity and the best available science. A global goal on adaptation is described under Article 7 as enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change. The first stocktake is expected in 2023 and will reoccur every 5 years.

One particular challenge for measuring actions and progress is the wide diversity of climate and socioeconomic conditions as well as of adaptation strategies undertaken by countries and communities around the globe. The knowledge base that underpins the global stocktake needs to embrace the heterogeneity that exists at the national level, and at the same time synthesize information so that global progress can be assessed. Connecting the global goal on adaptation with the myriad of practical actions on the ground, and tracking them through time, is no simple task.

We need practical, and transparent ways of assessing adaptation, underpinned by clear definitions and consistent terminology. At one level, we heard an aspiration for metrics and indicators to monitor and assess progress towards the global goal on adaptation, in a manner that enables comparison across locations and over time. Yet such efforts also raise conceptual issues regarding what counts as adaptation, what constitutes effectiveness, how to respect the diversity of local contexts, and how do they differ from climate-resilient development 2 , 3 , 4 .

Adaptation scholarship is growing in volume and sophistication, the sheer number of articles grew more than five-fold over the most recent decade. Techniques such as systematic literature reviews and machine learning promise to offer new perspective on the state of knowledge and breadth of experience 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 . Such efforts also reveal places where evidence is less readily available, whether due to lack of research or that experience is shared in local languages. This provides a rich opportunity to place increasing focus on locations where evidence is weaker, assessing and synthesising experience-based knowledge from grey literature and making practitioner experience more visible at the global scale.

Guiding climate finance

The Adaptation Gap Report estimates that the annual costs of adaptation in developing countries could range from US$140 billion to US$300 billion annually by 2030 and rise from US$280 billion to US$500 billion by 2050 9 . Addressing these costs will require a drastic increase in the flows of public and private finance. Research needs to make the business case for funding adaptation, demonstrate the returns on investment, and ensuring its delivery where it is most needed. Unlocking finance depends on prioritizing among diverse options to invest in adaptation, assessing the synergies and trade-offs between climate action and development objectives.

Actors differ with respect to what counts as useful information and in what form. Some agencies have in-house units that scan and distill the academic literature, but others require more tailored advice on project proposals. Multilateral, national, and private sources of finance all have distinct knowledge needs, risk appetites, and ways of using evidence. For example, three-quarters of global climate finance is deployed in the country in which it is sourced 10 . In the near-term, research can work with climate finance to strengthen the evidence base and appetite for adaptation-based investment. Even the relatively large Green Climate Fund still relies heavily on grant finance for adaptation and has only two approved projects that leverage private sector funding 11 .

We note some frustration regarding the burden of proof placed upon prospective adaptation investments, the requirement to provide detailed climate scenarios on specific impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks in order to receive funding. Adaptation planning and project proposals are based on understanding the specific climate hazards, the livelihoods and assets at risk, and how investment will address those hazards and create value. Scenarios can also examine how a project might fare under a range of potential climate futures, thus anticipating limits to adaptation or avoiding maladaptation. While logical enough in principle, preparing such a climate justification can become burdensome if information must be continuously redone. Streamlined approaches are needed that are founded on climate science but that can be updated as the climate system and its impacts evolve.

Our discussions also identified instances where proposals were not funded due to a lack of historical climate data. Data collection is essential to strengthen the case for adaptation, in tandem with research that collates, curates, and archives the data so that both short-term and long-term learning can ensue.

Guiding climate finance requires rigorous science as well as sending the right signals to the market and removing barriers to investment. Ultimately research has a role in ensuring all financial flows are compliant with the Paris Agreement are supported by robust evidence, not merely those flows dedicated to assisting developing countries. The research community can help local people, policymakers, farmers, and urban planners make informed decisions by co-developing climate risk information, vulnerability assessments, and adaptation pathways.

Learning through practice

Rapid climate change is now upon us. This requires ongoing engagement among research, policy and practice. Policy and action cannot wait for the slow cycle of research-to-publication-to-recommendation. This decisive decade demands embedded approaches to research, that accompany the pursuit of massively scaled-up climate action. A renewed paradigm of solution- and action-oriented research is emerging. COP26 will see the launch of a new Adaptation Research Alliance to catalyze increased investment in action-oriented research driven by end-user needs.

Research must be integrated into practice: from problem definition to solution implementation, from program design to evaluation. There are, however, multiple barriers—social, economic, political, and institutional—to embracing action research within adaptation. We need to speak to the distinct styles of communication and the incentives that motivate research and policy communities. Research is often painstakingly careful and cautious, whereas policy and practice need timely advice and are deeply grounded in political and practical considerations.

Our interviews tapped into tremendous enthusiasm for adaptation research that is embedded in action. There is an openness for research to accompany implementation of adaptation plans, to catalyze learning from the results of practice, to rapidly scale up what works and let go of what is not effective. Specific expectations raised include the potential for research to facilitate cost-effective action, to provide practical guidance and toolboxes that can be easily accessed and used, and to go further to demonstrate outcomes in practice. Researchers need to understand the decisions practitioners are facing, the information that they need, and contexts in which they operate. This does not mean making research subservient to the pursuit of climate action, but rather to bring its critical eye to refining and enhancing that practice.

Three ways to facilitate action

We have highlighted opportunities for research to inform the global stocktake, guide climate finance, and learn 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.

Increasing ambition for adaptation to the climate crisis requires collaboration and change in both the world of science and the world of policy and practice. Policymakers and practitioners need to engage more with researchers, just as researchers need to engage more with policymakers and practitioners. This deeper integration between research and society is beginning to emerge, as scientists are striving much harder to make their findings usable and useful, and policymakers and practitioners are engaging much more directly with the research community. These are the efforts that will elevate adaptation ambition and action across the globe.

Change history

28 october 2021.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00302-8

World Adaptation Science Programme. http://wasp-adaptation.org.

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Bruce Currie-Alder

Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Cynthia Rosenzweig

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Minpeng Chen

Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Johanna Nalau

University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

Anand Patwardhan

United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya

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B.C. and C.R. conducted the interviews and wrote the paper. All authors (B.C, C.R, M.P.C, J.N., A.P. and Y.W.) contributed to data interpretation, and provided inputs and edits throughout the process.

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Currie-Alder, B., Rosenzweig, C., Chen, M. et al. Research for climate adaptation. Commun Earth Environ 2 , 220 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00294-5

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CLIMATE CHANGE:

Adapting to a new normal

Kevin C. Urama, Adamon N. Mukasa, and Anthony Simpasa

Bogolo J. Kenewendo

Turning political ambitions into concrete climate financing actions for Africa

Acting Chief Economist and Senior Director of the African Development Institute, African Development Bank

Principal Research Economist, Macroeconomic Policy, Forecasting and Debt Sustainability Division, African Development Bank

Lead Economist, Country Economics Department, and Acting Manager, Macroeconomic Policy, Forecasting and Debt Sustainability Division, African Development Bank

One of the main targets of the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( COP27 ) in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, was “ to accelerate global climate action through emissions reduction, scaled-up adaptation efforts and enhanced flows of appropriate finance .” While the breakthrough agreement on a new “Loss and Damage” Fund for vulnerable countries is a welcome development, progress on climate finance leaves much to be desired. This is worrisome for African countries.

Recent reports on climate change such as the African Economic Outlook 2022 and the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have reiterated that the climate crisis is likely to worsen, especially in Africa, and that the time for action to avert the impending catastrophe is now. World leaders have missed (again) the opportunity to move from mere political commitments and ambitions to concrete actions.

Africa’s climate paradox

As the late Kofi Annan perfectly put it, all continents are in the same boat when it comes to addressing climate change. However, individual regions and countries are not equally responsible for global environmental problems. This principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities is at the core of climate justice and just energy transition.

Africa’s case is especially concerning. The continent is the least polluting region 1 of the world but faces a disproportionate burden from the impact of climate change. Between 1850 and 2020, Africa’s contribution to global emissions remained below 3 percent 2 and yet, it lost about 5 percent to 15 percent annually of GDP per capita growth between 1986 and 2015. About 70 percent of the used global carbon budget is accounted for by just the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and China (Figure 35a). An average African had a carbon footprint of just 0.95 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2eq) in 2020, well below the 2.0 tCO2eq required to achieve the net-zero transition target. On the other extreme, an average American had a carbon footprint of up to 14 tCO2eq, fifteen times higher than that of an average African (Figure 35b).

From climate finance commitments to reality and at scale

The $100-billion promise , 3 made by developed countries since 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen, has still not been achieved. According to the OECD , [OECD.2022. “Climate Finance Provided and Mobilised by Developed Countries in 2016-2020.”] climate financing provided and mobilized by developed countries reached $83.3 billion in 2020, some $16.7 billion below the target. Indeed, a 2020 report commissioned by the United Nations concluded the only realistic scenario is that the $100-billion target will be out of reach in the short- to medium-term.

Africa’s share of global climate finance—provided and mobilized by developed countries for developing countries—increased by only 3 percentage points on average during 2010 to 2019, from 23 percent ($48 billion) in 2010–2015 to 26 percent ($73 billion) in 2016–2019 (Figure 36). This means that Africa benefited from $18.3 billion a year from 2016–2019, far behind Asia, which benefited $27.3 billion a year, over the same period. Yet, Africa accounted for about 40 percent of all countries eligible to benefit from this support, compared with only 20 percent for Asia. In addition, between 2010 and 2019, debt instruments (mostly loans) accounted for about two-thirds of all climate finance channeled to Africa, out of which two-fifths were on non-concessional terms.

Climate finance inflows to Africa are dwarfed by the enormity of resources needed for Nationally Developed Contributions (NDCs), estimated to range from about $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion between 2020 and 2030, or $118.2 billion to $145.5 billion per year over this period. Under the current climate finance trends, Africa’s annual financing gap could thus reach an estimated average of $108 billion per year until 2030. This climate injustice needs urgent attention.

Mobilizing more climate finance for Africa is within the reach of the global community. For instance, between January 2020 and September 2021, the global community mobilized about $17 trillion through various fiscal measures in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost $15.3 trillion (or 90 percent of these fiscal measures) was mobilized by G-20 economies. This demonstration of political will and innovative use of fiscal policy rules to address the global threat posed by COVID-19 is commendable. Like COVID-19, climate change is a global commons problem but perhaps with even longer-term and systemic impacts.

Why Africa deserves more in climate financing

Mobilizing climate finance to avert the growing climate catastrophes in developing countries calls for similar political will and collective action. To this end, an important milestone is for the international community and developed countries to step up to the plate in mobilizing and providing the requisite climate resources to developing countries.

“Ultimately, climate change is a global commons problem. Climate solutions will not be sustainable unless all actors play their part. The climate challenge cannot be addressed if any country fails to meet its Nationally Determined Contributions.”

Achieving this will require significant reform of the current global climate finance architecture , 4 to ensure that the most vulnerable countries (especially in Africa), effectively harness climate resilience opportunities. The structure, flow, and scale of the global climate finance architecture, as currently designed, is misaligned with climate vulnerability. For example, as illustrated in Figure 36 above, more resilient and less vulnerable regions receive more climate finance, in per capita terms, than their less resilient but more vulnerable counterparts. Moreover, the climate finance architecture is modelled to mirror the current global financial architecture that is risk averse and discriminatory against fragile economies. The loose definition of climate finance has also led to proliferation of various climate finance instruments, including debt instruments. The latter exacerbates debt vulnerabilities in countries where climate impacts are already constraining fiscal health.

There is thus need for a clearer definition of climate finance, better coordination among existing global climate finance facilities, dedicated climate initiatives, as well as enhanced harmonization of funding requirements that can channel climate finance flows to the most climate-vulnerable countries. While African countries do have their part to play, the principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities requires that the most polluting countries bear the greatest burden of climate financing.

Ultimately, climate change is a global commons problem. Climate solutions will not be sustainable unless all actors play their part. The climate challenge cannot be addressed if any country fails to meet its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

And the world cannot expect Africa to implement its NDCs if the expected climate finance flows to fund the conditional NDCs, are not made available. Should the current trends continue, it is certain that Africa will not achieve its NDCs by 2030. By implication, the global community will not be able to reach the Paris Climate Accord.

The charge due to custodians of the world’s lungs

United Nations Climate Change High-Level Champions’ Special Advisor Former Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Botswana

It is time to rebalance the scales in Africa’s favor when it comes to climate finance. The African continent is home to 16 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s remaining rainforests 5 —yet Africa attracts only 3.19 percent of global climate finance ($30 billion of $940 billion global climate flows), and the pledges to accelerate adaptation and mitigation financing of $100 billion by 2020 in developing countries are yet to fully materialize. 6 Climate finance can be a catalytic tool for fiscal stability, especially for African countries that are struggling with economic recovery, amid multiple global shocks.

However, for African countries and non-state actors to attract increased climate finance and play a greater role in structuring the green financial architecture, Africa must position itself as a worthy investment destination for climate finance focused on long-term development issues. To achieve this, I propose a few key areas of focus for policymakers. First, countries must have green investment plans, and second, it is critical to bring the private sector to the table and to give it space to innovate. In addition, policymakers should use public finance to de-risk private investment and have a regulatory environment that enables doing business with variable financing tools. Lastly, developed countries must deliver on the pledges already made without any further and new conditionalities to spur green development for a common 1.5 degrees future.

“Of the great rainforests in the world, only the Congo rainforest has enough standing forest left to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases.”

African Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), that is countries’ action plans to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts, should be accompanied by national investment strategies that prioritize green infrastructure and natural resource protection. These can create a green development pathway that promises economic growth opportunities, industrialization, and jobs, propelling Africa past a more traditional, less green infrastructure and development approach.

Country platforms should also encompass the private sector, so that there is a cohesive approach as to who will invest where, and who is best placed to tackle the varying aspects of mitigation and adaptation and protection. A good example of this approach on leveraging the private sector is the proposal by members of the “ Nairobi Declaration on Sustainable Insurance ” that identified the African insurance sector as a key climate mitigation and adaptation agent; and re-affirmed its triple role of risk manager, risk carrier, and investor through commitment to a Africa climate risk management fund. This fund will cover $14 billion worth of climate and nature-related risks such as floods, droughts, and tropical cyclones through innovative insurance products and solutions. These kind of innovations by the private sector are in line with what the Paris Agreement envisioned.

Second, debt-for-climate swaps and carbon markets should be rolled out more broadly as part of the solution to debt crises which plague a long and growing list of African nations. This effort starts with valuing Africa’s wealth in the totality of its nature assets. Nature has become the world’s most important commodity, and its protection is paramount for the world’s survival. According to the World Resources Institute, of the great rainforests in the world, only the Congo rainforest has enough standing forest left to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases . 7

Commercializing such nature assets, and making sure they attract fair value and benefit neighboring communities, is a key feature of the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) 8 —an initiative that has created a roadmap for developing African voluntary carbon markets, with the aim to accelerate and scale carbon credit production on the continent. The initiative proposes to leverage an advanced market commitment (AMC), which in essence is an upfront guarantee from buyers and multiple corporations, to purchase African carbon credits. This AMC will help send a strong demand signal and incentivize appetite for good quality and innovative credits. There is huge potential in making carbon markets work to attract more climate finance.

Third, there is need for gender-informed investing to enhance climate adaptation and resilience. At its core, this means acknowledging climate action as a development issue; recognizing that the climate crisis is not “gender-neutral,” and that women and girls are disproportionately affected; and finally, that the devastating impacts of extreme climate occurrences cause more economic scarring to the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies. 2xCollaborative has developed a gender-lens investing toolkit that can, and should be, widely used to promote gender-lens climate finance to businesses and adaptation projects, involved or led by women.

We cannot afford the current architecture of global green finance to perpetuate existing disparities in those it serves. It is time for African countries to unite, strategically position themselves, and demand that the world does more to deliver climate finance for the continent; it promises great return for all, and it is what is due to the custodians of the “lungs of the world.”

• 1. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2021. “Climate Change 2021: The Physi-cal Science Basis.” Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• 2. AfDB.2022. “African Economic Outlook 2022”. African Development Bank.
• 3. Jocelyn Timperley. 2021. “The broken $100-billion promise of climate finance — and how to fix it.”
• 4. Charlene Watson, Liane Schalatek, and Aurélien Evéquoz. 2022. “The Global Climate Finance Architecture.”
• 5. World Bank Africa Region. 2017. “Forests in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges & Opportunities.” The Program on Forests (PROFOR).
• 6. Naran, Baysa. 2022. “Global Landscape of Climate Finance: A Decade of Data: 2011-2020.” Cli¬mate Policy Initiative.
• 7. Harris, Nancy and David Gibbs. 2021. “Forests Absorb Twice as Much Carbon as They Emit Each Year.” World Resources Institute.
• 8. ACMI is a joint initiative of GEAPP, SE4All, UNECA and supported by the UN Climate Change High Level Champions.

By Gracelin Baskaran

Gracelin Baskaran explains how climate vulnerability is deepening debt challenges in sub-Saharan Africa and how policymakers can manage it.

By Yacob Mulugetta

Yacob Mulugetta considers how African countries can insert themselves into green manufacturing value chains.

By U. Rashid Sumaila

U. Rashid Sumaila urges investment in a sustainable and inclusive African blue economy.

By Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez and Jamal Saghir

Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez and Jamal Saghir discuss sustainable climate adaptation investment strategies for Africa.

By Mahmoud Mohieldin

Mahmoud Mohieldin makes the case for increasing climate finance flows to Africa.

By John Mulligan

John Mulligan explains how the gold industry can help confront the challenges and opportunities of a changing climate in Africa.

Next Chapter

07 | Africa's Cities Realizing the new urban agenda

Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent in 2023

On January 30, AGI hosted a Foresight Africa launch featuring a high-level panel of leading Africa experts to offer insights on regional trends along with recommendations for national governments, regional organizations, multilateral institutions, the private sector, and civil society actors as they forge ahead in 2022.

Africa in Focus

What should be the top priority for Africa in 2023?

BY ALOYSIUS UCHE ORDU

Aloysius Uche Ordu introduces Foresight Africa 2023, which outlines top priorities for the year ahead and offers recommendations for supporting Africa at a time of heightened global turbulence.

Foresight Africa Podcast

The Foresight Africa podcast celebrates Africa’s dynamism and explores strategies for broadening the benefits of growth to all people of Africa.

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Climate Adaptation

Climate change is here. Beyond doing everything we can to cut emissions and slow the pace of global warming, we must adapt to climate consequences so we can protect ourselves and our communities. The fallout varies depending on where you live. It might mean fires or floods, droughts, hotter or colder days or sea-level rise.

What can you do?

There are many ways to adapt to what is happening and what will happen. Individuals can take some simple measures. You can plant or preserve trees around your home, for instance, to keep temperatures cooler inside. Clearing brush might reduce fire hazards. If you own a business, start thinking about and planning around possible climate risks, such as hot days that prevent workers from doing outside tasks.

Everyone should be aware of the possibly greater potential for natural disasters where they live and what resources they have in case these happen. That might mean purchasing insurance in advance, or knowing where you can get disaster information and relief during a crisis.

Gearing up for big changes

Given the scale of climate change, and the fact that it will affect many areas of life, adaptation also needs to take place on a greater scale. Our economies and societies as a whole need to become more resilient to climate impacts. This will require large-scale efforts, many of which will be orchestrated by governments. Roads and bridges may need to be built or adapted to withstand higher temperatures and more powerful storms. Some cities on coastlines may have to establish systems to prevent flooding in streets and underground transport. Mountainous regions may have to find ways to limit landslides and overflow from melting glaciers.

Some communities may even need to move to new locations because it will be too difficult to adapt. This is already happening in some island countries facing rising seas.

Spending now saves lives and reduces costs later on

If all of this sounds expensive, it is – but the important thing to remember is that we already know a lot about how to adapt. More is being learned every day. Further, investing in adaptation makes a lot more sense than waiting and trying to catch up later, as many countries have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. Protecting people now saves more lives and reduces risks moving forward. It makes financial sense too because the longer we wait, the more the costs will escalate.

Think about this. Globally, a $1.8 trillion investment in early warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, improved agriculture, global mangrove protection along coastlines and resilient water resources could generate $7.1 trillion through a combination of avoided costs and a variety of social and environmental benefits. Universal access to early warning systems can deliver benefits up to 10 times the initial cost. And if more farms installed solar-powered irrigation, used new crop varieties, had access to weather alert systems and took other adaptive measures, the world would avoid a drop-off in global agricultural yields of up to 30 per cent by 2050. (Click here for more action facts on adaptation.)

Priority must go to the most vulnerable

While the case for adaptation is clear, some communities most vulnerable to climate change are the least able to adapt because they are poor and/or in developing countries already struggling to come up with enough resources for basics like health care and education. Estimated adaptation costs in developing countries could reach $300 billion every year by 2030. Right now, only 21 per cent of climate finance provided by wealthier countries to assist developing nations goes towards adaptation and resilience, about $16.8 billion a year.

Wealthier countries are obligated to fulfil a commitment made in the Paris Agreement to provide $100 billion a year in international climate finance. They should make sure that at least half goes to adaptation. This would be an important symbol of global solidarity in the face of a challenge we can only solve if everyone in the world works together.

Watch leading Indian environmentalist Sunita Narain , who reminds us that we know how to make our communities safer, and we must act, as a matter of justice.

What have countries agreed to do?

All Parties to the Paris Agreement committed to strengthening the global response to climate change by increasing the ability of all to adapt and build resilience, and reduce vulnerability. See more details here .

At COP26, counties adopted the Glasgow Climate Pact , which calls for a doubling of finance to support developing countries in adapting to the impacts of climate change and building resilience. Glasgow also established a work programme to define a global goal on adaptation, which will identify collective needs and solutions to the climate crisis already affecting many countries.

Since 2011, under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a number of countries have developed National Adaptation Plans. Check if your country has one and what it says. Or get the latest updates on how countries are elaborating plans as part of national development strategies.

Making it happen

A number of efforts are underway to help people adapt to climate change. One is the global Adaptation Fund , which finances pioneering initiatives in developing countries. You can see if your country has a project . And watch how adaptation works for fisher people in Peru , who are combining traditional knowledge and technology to protect their livelihoods.

Watch  as small farmers in  Costa Rica  develop climate-smart and resilient methods to adapt to floods and droughts, improving water and food security. Or  take a journey  to  India’s  Himalayan region where marginalized communities are managing climate pressures on water through practices such as spring rejuvenation, rainwater harvesting, drip irrigation and sprinklers. 

Kiribati , a small island developing State that is highly vulnerable to climate change, has been among the earliest adopters of climate adaptation. It is improving the management of fisheries to safeguard livelihoods and food security and stepping up early warning systems for disasters.

In Ghana , women farmers are adapting to increasingly erratic rainfall by diversifying their livelihoods. With new skills, they are producing agricultural products such as soy milk and shea butter that fetch higher prices in local markets. Farmers in Bosnia and Herzegovina have adjusted crop choices to deal with droughts, such as by moving from apples to warmer weather peaches.

In the Maldives , declining rainfall and hotter summers have required constructing larger rainwater tanks and desalination facilities to process sea water, while setting up systems to carefully track water use and trigger early warnings of dry periods. Sri Lanka is repurposing an ancient system of water tanks to keep water flowing to farms and homes.

Many solutions to climate change lie in nature. Learn more about ecosystem-based adaptation and six ways that nature can protect us.

For an example of so-called nature-based solutions, find out how communities in Djibouti are staying safe by building flood walls. They are also restoring mangrove forests , which protect against sea-level rise, provide food for people and offer a haven for plants and animals. In Viet Nam , coastal farmers have turned from collecting increasingly scarce marine resources such as snails and crabs to developing beekeeping linked to mangrove restoration.

In Albania , one of the countries in Europe hardest hit by coastal erosion, restoring vegetation on the Kune-Vain Lagoon protects shoreline communities . It also helps sustain a globally recognized corridor for migrating birds.

It might seem like nature-based solutions are mostly for the countryside. But cities are also boosting resilience by turning to nature. In El Salvador , the capital, San Salvador, aims to become a “sponge city” by restoring surrounding forests to limit landslides and floods, and improving drainage in ways that mimic natural streams and rivers.

In the United States , the coastal city of Miami is raising street levels and developing green infrastructure , tandem with ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Explore more

The Adaptation Gap Report chronicles slow progress in climate adaptation, for reasons that include a lack of finance, and showcases nature-based solutions. Seven lessons on adapting to climate change draws on experiences to date.

How can the world save 23,000 lives and gain $162 billion in benefits a year? By improving weather forecasts, early warning systems and climate information. See the Hydromet Gap Report .

Adapt Now , from the Global Commission on Adaptation, details benefits from adaptation to urge action by governments, businesses, investors and community leaders. The Economic Case for Nature shows how protecting ecosystems can avoid trillions in losses to national economies.

A practical guide to climate-resilient buildings offers tips for construction, especially in communities with few professionally trained architects and engineers.

One more consideration is closing the digital divide to generate more and better data and predict climate risks in time.

Read up on the science

The IPCC’s  report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability  assesses the impacts of climate change, looking at ecosystems, biodiversity, and human communities at global and regional levels. It also reviews vulnerabilities and the capacities and limits of the natural world and human societies to adapt to climate change. The World Adaptation Science Programme links researchers, policymakers and practitioners to create and share knowledge that can shape adaptation policy and action. Recent briefs cover issues like adapting across borders and so-called “high-end” climate change, where temperatures climb so high that climate consequences would be even more extreme.

Join the global movement

Check out the Race to Resilience for 4 billion people by 2030. Better yet, be ambitious, create an initiative and apply to join the drive for a safer world.

To help heal the planet, be part of the mobilizing around the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration , which aims to prevent, halt and reverse environmental degradation in the next 10 years. Share the word on climate action with the UN’s digital assets .

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Climate resilience and adaptation to climate change

Page about why adapting to climate change matters, what the EU is doing, EU mission on a climate resilient Europe and related links

Why adapting to climate change matters

In our daily lives, resilience and adaptation help us overcome major challenges and turn problems into effective solutions. Similarly, adaptation to climate change is about  adjusting to a warmer world, in order to protect people, nature, our prosperity and way of life. 

The climate emergency and biodiversity crises in Europe and around the world is a call to all of us to join forces and act in new and innovative ways. Adaptation to climate change requires to understand, plan and act in a way that  not only reduces the negative impacts of climate change but also creates new opportunities to become safer and more resilient.  

Climate change is one of the biggest threats currently facing humanity. The Earth has already warmed by 1.1°C since the late 19 th century.  This is already affecting every region of the world, causing more frequent and intense extreme events such as heatwaves or droughts, changing rainfall patterns, melting ice and affecting habitats. Some consequences of climate, such as sea-level rise, will continue to unravel for centuries to millennia.

Every bit of warming matters and climate action has never been as urgently needed as today. Limiting global warming requires immediate and deep cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases (a mitigation strategy).

However, mitigating climate change will not be enough. In addition, we will have to adapt to the unavoidable impacts.

Without action today, adaptation will be costlier and more difficult for the next generations.

Responding to these challenges will require better knowledge and scientific breakthroughs in various domains ranging from technologies, solutions and services for adaptation in areas such as:

• drought-resilient crops
• water saving technologies
• satellites for environmental observation
• rapid progress in adaptation science and climate analytics as a basis for state-of-the-art climate information
• scaling up of digital tools to take our adaptive capacities to the next level

This will need to go hand in hand with societal transformation and large-scale behavioral change promoting climate-friendly lifestyles.

What is the EU doing?

The European Climate Law underlines the importance of stepping up adaptation efforts, including through more decisive action on climate proofing, resilience building, disaster risk prevention and preparedness.

Additionally, the Commission published in February 2021 a new, more ambitious EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change that sets out its vision on how Europe can become ready to face climate disruptions by 2050. The strategy is based on 4 key principles: smarter, faster and more systemic adaptation, together with an enhanced international action on adaptation.

The strategy will step up Europe’s preparedness for current and future climate events in an attempt to avoid detrimental and potentially catastrophic impacts to our economy, environment and society.

Mission on adaptation to climate change

To deliver on the Adaptation Strategy, the EU has also launched in 2021 the EU mission on adaptation to climate change . The goal of the mission is to support at least 150 regions and local authorities to become climate resilient by 2030. It will achieve this by testing and up-scaling innovative solutions, creating the right conditions for transforming our societies, and providing demonstrations of deep climate-resilience.

Mission goals

• prepare Europe to deal with climate disruptions, and help all citizens, communities and regions to better understand, prepare for and manage climate risks such as heatwaves, forest fires, droughts, floods, storms and diseases
• accelerate the transition to the future we want, supporting European communities and regions in co-creating a vision and innovation pathways. Develop solutions and enabling conditions for transformative adaptation within safe planetary boundaries
• build deep resilience by scaling up actionable solutions that bring about transformations in society by demonstrating deep resilience across a number of European communities and regions

More details in the report:  A climate resilient Europe

Even stopping all greenhouse gas emissions would not stop the climate impacts that are already occurring, and which are likely to continue for decades.

Even in a best-case scenario of sustained emissions’ reduction, there will still be large stresses on multiple economic and natural systems.

Adaptation will be necessary in agriculture, biodiversity, coastal areas, disaster risk reduction, energy, finance, forestry, health, infrastructure, marine and fisheries, transport, urban, water management and many others.

Managing these in a holistic way will require better models for climate change impacts, sustained efforts for technological and socio-economic innovations and mobilisation of finance.

By helping us understand how the climate system works and how it will change over time, climate science is fundamental for making informed and wise decisions about reducing emissions and adapting to a changing climate.

Building on the release of the IPCC Working Group II report "Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability", this brochure puts a spotlight on and celebrates the contribution of EU-funded projects to pushing the boundaries of world-class adaptation science as a key ingredient towards climate resilient development and just transition for all.

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Perspective article, lessons from the pacific islands – adapting to climate change by supporting social and ecological resilience.

• 1 The Nature Conservancy (United States), Arlington, TX, United States
• 2 The Nature Conservancy (Micronesia), Kolonia, Micronesia
• 3 Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany
• 4 The Nature Conservancy (Australia), Brisbane, QLD, Australia
• 5 Nature Conservancy Manus, Manus, Papua New Guinea

By necessity, Pacific Islands have become hubs of innovation, where climate strategies are piloted and refined to inform adaptation efforts globally. Pacific Island ecosystems are being degraded by pollution, overfishing, and unsustainable development. They also increasingly face severe climate impacts including sea-level rise, changing temperature and rainfall patterns. These impacts result inchanges in food and water security, loss of identity, climate-induced migration and threats to sovereignty. In response, communities in the region are leading climate adaptation strategies, often combining traditional practices and cutting-edge science, to build the resilience of their communities and ecosystems in the face of increasing climate risk. For example, communities are implementing resilient networks of marine protected areas using the best available science and strengthening tribal governance to manage these networks, experimenting with salt and drought tolerant crops, revegetating coastlines with native salt-tolerant plants, revitalizing traditional wells, and implementing climate-smart development plans. Often these efforts contribute to local development priorities and create co-benefits for multiple sustainable development goals (SDGs). These community efforts are being scaled up through provincial and national policies that reinforce the critical role that ecosystems play in climate adaptation and provide a model for the rest of the world. While adaptation efforts are critical to help communities cope with climate impacts, in some cases, they will be insufficient to address the magnitude of climate impacts and local development needs. Thus, there are inherent trade-offs and limitations to climate adaptation with migration being the last resort for some island communities.

Introduction

The Pacific Islands are facing devastating impacts of climate change including increasing droughts and water scarcity, coastal flooding and erosion, changes in rainfall that affect ecosystems and food production, and adverse impacts to human health ( IPCC, 2014 , 2018 ).

Overpopulation, pollution and overuse of natural resources (e.g., overfishing and intensive land and water use), and unsustainable development and mining are also degrading island ecosystems ( Burke et al., 2011 ; Hills et al., 2013 ; Balzan et al., 2018 ). While the Pacific Islands are often described as highly vulnerable to climate change and lacking adaptation options ( Pelling and Uitto, 2001 ), such descriptions disregard the ways in which Pacific Islanders are leading climate action and combining their own systems of knowledge with western science to implement locally relevant climate solutions ( Barnett and Campbell, 2010 ; Mcleod et al., 2018 ). The lack of appreciation for Pacific climate leadership is exacerbated by biases in climate research that prioritize western science and technological solutions over other systems of knowledge ( Jasanoff, 2007 ; Alston, 2014 ). It is critically important for global climate policy and national governments to recognize and support community efforts to build resilient communities and ecosystems through ecosystem-based adaptation strategies that are rooted in traditional knowledge and reinforced and supported by climate science, traditional leadership structures, and sustainable climate solutions.

Pacific Island leaders, along with leaders from other Small Island Developing States (SIDS), have been instrumental in shaping climate policies and the Paris Climate Agreement ( UNFCCC, 2015 ). They called for a loss and damages clause that allows islands to assess and quantify impacts of cyclones and weather-related events and were vocal advocates to limit warming of global mean temperature to 1.5°C. The recognition that warming of 1.5°C or higher increases the risk associated with irreversible damages such as the loss of entire ecosystems has just been articulated in the latest IPCC report ( IPCC, 2018 ). Despite their minimal contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions ( Hoad, 2015 ), many SIDS included ambitious mitigation targets in their national climate plans (i.e., Nationally Determined Contributions, NDC) to raise collective ambition to reduce GHG emissions globally ( Ourbak and Magnan, 2018 ).

Pacific Islanders are also leading climate action at the local level, implementing strategies to help communities and ecosystems to be more resilient to climate change. The region provides important opportunities for testing and refining adaptation responses at scale. The Pacific Islands are home to species found nowhere else on earth and are incredibly diverse, in terms of their ecosystems, geography, and demographics. Pacific Islanders have lived with natural environmental impacts for thousands of years and have adapted practices to accommodate periods of environmental fluctuations. Although the pace of environmental and climatic changes has increased, many communities are implementing climate-smart agriculture and are revitalizing traditional practices that utilize drought-tolerant species and the benefits of nature, such as using seaweed as compost to make soil more fertile, using palm fronds to shade plants during droughts, and planting vegetation to reduce flooding and erosion along coastlines. They are also combining these traditional practices with new scientific advancements such as the development of salt-tolerant and heat-tolerant crops and community-led GIS mapping of breadfruit trees vulnerable to climate impacts in the Marshall Islands. Communities are revitalizing traditional wells, establishing new protected areas and improving the management of existing protected areas, and developing climate-smart development plans that incorporate ecosystem-based adaptation.

However, ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) efforts initiated by Pacific Island communities have largely been ignored in the peer-reviewed literature. Ecosystem-based adaptation is defined as combining biodiversity and ecosystem services into an adaptation and development strategy that increases the resilience of ecosystems and communities to climate change through the conservation, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems ( Colls et al., 2009 ). Researchers have highlighted the need for reflexive insights, including lessons and challenges implementing EBA projects, given the increased attention it has received in global and national climate discourse ( Doswald et al., 2014 ). Key benefits of EBA have been identified including: (1) securing water resources to help communities cope with drought (2) food and fisheries provision; and (3) buffering people form natural hazards, erosion, and flooding ( Munang et al., 2013 ).

Therefore, this paper presents local EBA examples that demonstrate how Pacific Island communities are leading the implementation of sustainable climate solutions and reinforcing the critical role of ecosystems in climate adaptation. We include examples that address the primary benefits of EBA including water security, food security, and coastal protection. We present examples of EBA projects that were implemented across Micronesia and Melanesia from 2015 to 2018. The EBA project s included a partnership among communities, local governments, and conservation NGOs (The Nature Conservancy, The Micronesia Conservation Trust, other local conservation partners across the Pacific). We discuss these EBA activities, identify barriers to implementation, and highlight the importance of supportive national policies and political will to reinforce and scale up these efforts.

Revitalizing Traditional Wells

Oneisomw (formerly Oneisom) is an island located in Chuuk State lagoon in the Federated States of Micronesia. It has a population of 638 inhabitants (2010 Census of Population and Housing) that is already experiencing the impacts of climate change. Villages are primarily located along the shoreline and are affected by coastal flooding during typhoons and high tide events. The communities rely on a combination of water tanks, aquifers, streams, and wells but freshwater security is threatened by drought and saltwater intrusion. Human impacts are also adversely affecting these freshwater sources and the coastal environment (e.g., pollution from dump sites, waste from pig pens, inadequate sanitation systems, erosion from unpaved pathways, solid waste dumping, and sediment runoff from inland clearing). To improve water security and reduce impacts in the coastal environment, Oneisomw residents have rehabilitated traditional water wells by cleaning them, planting vegetation buffer strips around wells and streams to stabilize degraded banks and reduce sedimentation and installing concrete covers over the wells to reduce trash and other pollutants from entering the wells. They also developed agreements with landowners who had wells to allow others to access water during drought. This approach was presented during a national mayor’s summit in 2018 and other communities have requested support to implement these actions to improve water security in their municipalities.

Such local actions need to be reinforced by the implementation of state and national water policies that promote watershed management and provide the foundation for the sustainable use and conservation of water resources (e.g., Pohnpei State Water Policy passed in 2018). This need was articulated at a stakeholder workshop in Pohnpei in 2017 that brought together local leaders, land-owners, and others who utilize the watershed area. While traditional leaders endorsed the process of managing the watershed sustainably, lack of cooperation and planning was noted along with the need to integrate State water management regulations into a national water policy framework to ensure a consistent flow of funds to manage the watershed and protect the full suite of ecosystem services.

Implementing Climate Smart Agriculture

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is defined as an integrated approach to managing cropland, livestock, forests and fisheries that aims to support food security under the new realities of climate change through sustainable and equitable transitions for agricultural systems and livelihoods across scales ( Lipper et al., 2014 ). It is designed to increase productivity (i.e., produce more food and boost local incomes), enhance the ability of communities to adapt to climate change and weather extremes, and decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from food production ( Steenwerth et al., 2014 ). When implemented in an island context, CSA can also support benefits to coastal ecosystem (e.g., by reducing sediment into the coastal zone through taro swamps, reducing pressure on wild-caught fisheries, reducing pollutants from fertilizers; Clarke and Thaman, 1993 ; International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD], 2017 ).

Communities across the Pacific are revitalizing traditional farming practices, based on agroforestry, to increase food security and reduce vulnerability to climate impacts, and they are also experimenting with salt and drought-tolerant crops ( FAO, 2010 ; Mcleod et al., 2018 ). Traditional farming practices include shading crops with palm leaves, maintaining trees around plants to provide shade, composting using seaweed. Some coastal fishing communities (e.g., Ahus, Papua New Guinea) have historically relied on fishing for food security and are now working with local NGOs, women’s groups and government agriculture officers to plant household gardens. Ahus is off the coast of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and has a population of more than 700 residents. Observed climate impacts include sea-level rise, reduced marine protein sources, saltwater inundation of water wells, coastal erosion, storm surges, droughts, heavy rains, ocean acidification and coral bleaching. With support from the government and NGOs, Ahus has introduced new farming practices that are designed to improve food security, the health of the marine environment, and provide an important source of income for local households ( Tara, 2018 ). These include the introduction of growing food crops including greens, tomatoes and cabbages, composting in very sandy soils, raised gardens and local water collection in drums and small tanks. Women’s groups, in partnership with local conservation NGOs and agricultural extension officers have led trainings on farming methods such as the use of organic fertilizers and pesticides, raised beds to improve soil quality and eliminate saltwater intrusion, and the diversification of crops. These farming practices are being replicated and scaled through the provincial women’s network Pihi Environment and Development Forum (PEDF). Benefits have included changing and improving the diet of Ahus families, increased cash income for women selling produce at market and to local restaurants, food security especially when bad weather prevents fishing, better community cohesion as people shared ideas and produce.

Low cost aquaculture projects are also being implemented in Ahus, such as clam farming techniques from Palau that have been adapted to local conditions to provide food security and reseed local reefs with clam larvae to re-establish the local wild population. Community members in Tamil, Yap built a nursery utilizing traditional composting techniques and including food crops and plants to revegetate coastal areas vulnerable to erosion (e.g., Nipa Palm). The nursery reduces reliance on coastal fisheries that are being depleted, increases the diversity of food sources, improving community health, and reduces the impact of coastal erosion.

Implementation of Protected Areas

Tamil is a municipality on the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. It includes twelve villages with a total population of about 1200 people living in 848 households (Office of Statistics, Budget and Economic Management, Overseas Development Assistance, and Compact Management, 2011). The community has experienced flooding, erosion, and drought driven by climate change, in addition to saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources and taro patches. Water security is further impacted by poor water management, high dependence on the watershed, and lack of alternative water sources as many local wells are degraded or contaminated by waste and sedimentation from erosion. The community noted the following ecological impacts: declines in coral health, seagrass beds, and reduced fish populations due to increased sedimentation in the coastal environment and pollution run-off driving algal increases (LEAP 2017). To improve water security and coastal ecosystem health, the community declared their first Watershed Protected Area in 2017 (320 acres of watershed protected by traditional council members and recognized by state law). The Tamil watershed provides water to over half of the population of Yap, and its protection provides greater resiliency to and recovery from wildfires, and designates the area as a water conservation zone to increase water security in times of drought.

Similarly, in the island of Chuuk, the community of Oneisomw agreed to implement a locally managed marine area (LMMA) to reduce threats facing coral reefs (e.g., controlling dynamite fishing and overfishing, coral and sand removal, commercial harvesting). The LMMA supports seasonal or permanent closures and fishery management through the traditional management system ( mechen ). Based on the traditional mechen system, Oneisomw coral reef “owners” initiated an agreement to collectively enforce seasonal or longer closures of reef areas, based on scientific knowledge and community inputs, to ensure access to coral reef resources for future generations. The LMMA is the first marine protected area for the newly passed Protected Area Network (PAN) legislation. In 2018, the community initiated the process to develop their first land-based protected area by signing a memorandum of understanding with well owners to maintain healthy watersheds. The land-based protected area will reduce pollution and runoff around water sources and will include revegetation with green buffers to help maintain water quality. The next step is for the community to produce a management plan that will integrate a ridge-to-reef approach, which will help to design one of the first Ridge-to-reef protected areas in the country. These collective efforts support the FSM’s climate adaptation commitment to the UNFCCC and demonstrate that western and traditional natural resource management methods can be complimentary and mutually beneficial in meeting conservation and human wellbeing goals. They also show how local ideas addressing local needs in the FSM can help to support the ambitious targets of the Paris Agreement.

Climate-Smart Development Plans

Melekeok State is located along the east coast of the main island of Palau. The population includes about 300 residents (about 90 households) and the State is also host of the capitol building of the Palau national government. Most of the homes and infrastructure (e.g., elementary school, State office, retirement center) are located along the coast within 5 meters of the high-water mark, thus highly vulnerable to flooding and erosion due to storm impacts and sea-level rise ( ADB, 2012 ; Melekeok State Government, 2012 ). For example, Typhoon Bopha in 2012 caused significant damage to the community. In response to climate impacts and projections of future impacts, Palau developed a national climate change policy ( Government of Palau, 2015 ) which identifies the need for building ecosystem and community resilience. Additionally, the Melekeok community developed a climate-smart guidance document ( Polloi, 2018 ) due to their high dependence on their terrestrial and marine ecosystems ( Brander et al., 2018 ; Förster, 2018 ) in partnership with the Melekeok State government and conservation NGOs (e.g., the Nature Conservancy, Micronesia Conservation Trust).

The climate-smart development document provides guidance for updating current infrastructure, designated upland lease development for migrating vulnerable community members and infrastructure away from the coast, and recommendations to make future development less vulnerable to climate impacts. A key focus is to ensure that new development and refinement of existing structures are climate smart and do not cause environmental damages that threaten water quality and the marine ecosystem. For example, the state residential lease/housing program incorporates sustainable designs and approaches to support the resiliency and enhancement of ecosystem services. The residential lease agreement requires individuals to revegetate bare soils to reduce run-off and sedimentation into the coastal system, minimize stormwater flow to promote water infiltration and support water supply, install water catchment systems to reduce vulnerability to drought, and include renewable energy systems (e.g., solar panels) through existing national loan programs. In addition, new permits for land use, the development of residential areas, and commercial developments require measures that support water security and erosion control (e.g., hedge rows and filter strips to mitigate soil erosion). Melekeok State leadership is also considering legislation for climate proofing new residential houses that would require new houses to use hurricane clips in the construction.

These innovations in Palau provide a model for how to develop climate-smart development that also include benefits to the coastal and marine ecosystem. To upscale implementation and enforcement at national level, policies are needed that support sustainable financing mechanisms. Access to loans for building new homes should be provided under the condition of complying with guidance for climate-smart homeowners, similar to the Energy Efficiency Subsidy Program of the National Development Bank of Palau. Such policies could enhance the upscaling of adaptation strategies and their inclusion in local and national infrastructure development programs.

Challenges to Implementing Adaptation Strategies

A number of challenges threaten the success of local community-based adaptation projects including the remoteness of some islands, lack of capacity to implement and sustain projects, lack of governance and the way that impact is measured.

Remoteness of Islands

Logistical, technological, and weather-related obstacles are common in remote islands in the Pacific, causing delays to material-dependent projects. High costs of transportation and certain goods divert spending from on-the-ground implementation. Distance from markets can also limit economic growth. Such issues can lead to decreased interest in the region from international conservation supporters and investors. However, the logistical challenges and high costs related to often remote locations of islands is also a factor driving the development of local solutions for climate adaptation that build on local traditional knowledge. While some of the solutions are specific to the needs of islands, they inspire innovative approaches that can be applied in other areas.

Lack of Technical and Financial Capacity

Pacific Island countries face a number of capacity constraints (e.g., financial and project management, climate modeling and spatial analysis, and infrastructure maintenance; Dornan and Newton Cain, 2014 ). Sustained capacity in the local NGOs also is a challenge; as talented youth rise through the ranks of conservation programs, they are often recruited into higher-paying government or private sector jobs or seek opportunities abroad. Such staff turnover problems hinder long-term conservation projects by causing significant portions of funding sources to be repeatedly used toward capacity development. Local adaptation projects supported by external sources of funding (e.g., climate grants) often end when the grant is over, if there is not sufficient local capacity to continue the project. Finally, lack of technical capacity is also a challenge.

For example, enforcement of marine resource harvesting regulations requires expensive investments in equipment (e.g., boats and surveillance technologies) and advanced training. Enforcement funding is often gleaned from the end of project budgets, as expenditures such as staff time, materials, and planning commonly absorb substantial amounts of initial funding. Technical capacity for climate resilient agriculture is limited, and on-going support is often needed to address emerging threats (e.g., new garden pests in Ahus, Papua New Guinea).

Complex land tenure structures commonly follow traditional or tribal governance systems which can conflict with Western judicial laws and processes, making governance approaches ineffective. This can deter climate financing from large international organizations who require stringent contract-based agreements such as land transfers and easements for protected areas. Nevertheless, traditional tenure and knowledge systems can inform sustainable adaptation strategies and must be considered in the design of adaptation policies. Hence there is the challenge of ensuring compatibility between traditional and western governance systems. The recently established Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP) under the UNFCCC can help to bridge these institutional challenges and ensure local traditional knowledge is considered in the provision of adaptation finance.

Measuring Impact

Many Pacific islands have small populations and small land masses. If donors prioritize their support based on the total number of hectares protected/restored or the total number of people who benefit from a given intervention, Pacific Island projects may not be selected for funding. However, the strong dependence on island communities on their ecosystems for food, livelihoods and traditional practices, provides opportunities for demonstrating how climate adaptation projects can result in direct benefits to both ecosystems and human wellbeing. Additionally, regional commitments to conservation and sustainability such as the Micronesia Challenge can be an important mechanism to scale conservation efforts by providing enabling conditions to better cope with climate change. Initiated by a coalition of regional governments and endorsed at an international level with sustainable funding and technical support for implementation, the Micronesia Challenge serves as a model for other regions. Indeed, it inspired the development of the Caribbean Challenge, Western Indian Ocean Challenge, and the Coral Triangle Initiative.

Scaling Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Through Supportive National Policies and Innovative Financing

Ecosystem-based adaptation actions that support human wellbeing and healthy ecosystems require financing and supportive policies to ensure their implementation, sustainability, and scaling across the region. Such policies must be continually evaluated and refined to ensure that they continue to address local needs in response to change social, ecological, and climatic conditions and must be developed in concert with traditional knowledge. For example, marine protected areas in Manus, Papua New Guinea work best when they reflect the latest science on fish movements and aggregation sites and also follow local tribal boundaries to enable clans to manage their customary land and seas as part of the protected area. This means that local tribes set the rules for their marine protected area that enable species sustainable and address local needs. Thus, in some communities (e.g., Ahus, Papua New Guinea), it is important to strengthen tribal governance and local institutions to mobilize resources and management of adaptation projects. Methods to do so include incorporating climate change into existing ward plans, aligning ward plans with existing provincial and government policies and plans and adapting these plans over time to address changing conditions.

Learning exchange between local, state and national governments are an important mechanism to discuss the challenges communities are encountering in adapting to climate change and to refine current policies with new scientific and local knowledge. They also can highlight gendered impacts of climate change and the differential capacities for adaptation. For example, women in some Pacific Islands are not entitled to land rights due to customary laws and practices which may limit their ability to grow food and resettle in areas less vulnerable to climate impacts. Therefore, policies are needed that consider these gendered impacts (e.g., addressing land ownership inequity as climate change is reducing the available land in some places such as Papua New Guinea; Mcleod et al., 2018 ).

Innovative financing for ecosystem-based adaptation includes the development of tools (e.g., green fees, payment for ecosystem services) and new partnerships with the private sector. For example, water utilities and other businesses that utilize nature for profit can be incentivized to protect the environment. Utilizing payment schemes, such as payments for ecosystem services, creates financial mechanisms to ensure that water is clean, sustainable, and generates new sources of revenue for watershed protection.

The examples above demonstrate positive steps taken by local communities and partners to implement EBA projects in small islands states, yet there is little systematic information on the large-scale effects of these measures for building climate resilience across the region. While some island communities can build resilience to climate change, others will face the limits of adaptation and use migration as a last resort for adapting to climate change impacts. Assessments that identify and predict where adaptation limits are likely to occur and who is most likely to be affected are essential to better plan for climate impacts ( Dow et al., 2013 ). Further, scientific assessments that provide evidence for the effectiveness of the EBA projects are lacking, especially those that include controls to assess the impacts of interventions and provide plausible counterfactual arguments regarding causal mechanisms ( Reid, 2011 ; Munroe et al., 2012 ). Research is also needed to highlight social, ecological, and economic opportunities for upscaling ecosystem-based adaptation and to assess the contribution of adaptation to enhancing island resilience to climate change. Current assessments tend to focus on quantifying biophysical and socio-economic benefits but fail to make the link to management and policy options that enable the implementation of local adaptation options ( Hills et al., 2013 ). In addition to research needs, there is the need for combining traditional with more recently introduced governance systems. Cross-regional exchanges and capacity building can foster the development of innovations that tackle the challenge of including local traditional knowledge and address the needs of island communities. Furthermore, platforms and partnerships that bring together leaders of traditional governance systems with representatives of Western governance systems can help to overcome barriers between different institutional systems and encourage the implementation of holistic community- and ecosystem-based adaptation approaches.

Author Contributions

EM conceived of and developed the manuscript with contributions from MB-A, JF, CF, BG, RJ, GP-K, MT, and ET. JF, CF, GG, BG, RJ, GP-K, MT, and ET collected the data that supported the analysis.

This study is an outcome of a project that is financially supported by the Nature Conservancy and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). This study is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and the BMU supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : small island developing states (SIDS), climate change, Pacific Islands, vulnerability, adaptation, ecosystem-based adaptation

Citation: Mcleod E, Bruton-Adams M, Förster J, Franco C, Gaines G, Gorong B, James R, Posing-Kulwaum G, Tara M and Terk E (2019) Lessons From the Pacific Islands – Adapting to Climate Change by Supporting Social and Ecological Resilience. Front. Mar. Sci. 6:289. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00289

Received: 15 January 2019; Accepted: 17 May 2019; Published: 18 June 2019.

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Copyright © 2019 Mcleod, Bruton-Adams, Förster, Franco, Gaines, Gorong, James, Posing-Kulwaum, Tara and Terk. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Elizabeth Mcleod, [email protected]

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The report’s prediction of an imminent and unavoidable “societal collapse” from climate change had a striking and immediate effect on many of its readers. Andrew Medhurst, a longtime banker, cited it as one of four factors that made him leave his job in finance to become a radical climate activist. Joy Carter, the head of a British university, moved immediately to incorporate it into her curriculum.

Alison Green, then an academic, printed it out and passed it out at executive meetings at her university. Galen Hall, now a researcher in the climate and development lab at Brown University, said that it led him to question the value of the climate activism to which he had been committed.

Other high-profile papers, like “Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene,” also from 2018, and Timothy Lenton’s overview of tipping points , published in Nature the following year, have galvanized the climate movement. But this self-published paper, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating the Climate Tragedy,” had a different, more personal, feel.

The paper’s central thought is that we must accept that nothing can reverse humanity’s fate and we must adapt accordingly. And the paper’s bleak, vivid details — emphasizing that the end is truly nigh, and that it will be gruesome — clearly resonated.

“When I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life,” wrote the author, Jem Bendell. “With the power down, soon you wouldn’t have water coming out of your tap. You will depend on your neighbors for food and some warmth. You will become malnourished. You won’t know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed before starving to death.”

Since publication, much of the way the science is summarized in the paper has been debunked by climatologists. But even if the math doesn’t add up, does that make the dark conclusion any less meaningful?

The most active Deep Adaptation forum is on Facebook , though believers can gather on other platforms, including LinkedIn. The forums were established by Mr. Bendell, 48.

“I had about 800 unsolicited emails in my inbox,” Mr. Bendell said, recalling the time shortly after publication. “I decided I’d launch a forum so all these 800 people could talk to each other.”

The forums were established for people who felt wide-awake after reading the paper. Psychologists who wanted to change their practices to help those who had been uprooted by climate change; retired bankers in New York who wanted to introduce Mr. Bendell to their networks; single mothers who couldn’t stop crying when they looked at their young children.

Despair was an immediate pitfall. Because the groups attracted people who believed that human extinction was imminent, many talked about suicide. (Forum rules on Facebook bar the “discussion of suicide methods”; other rules bar discussion of climate news, asking participants to focus instead on how to adapt.)

“It did have an uncomfortable cult kind of feel about it,” said Ms. Green, now the executive director of Scientists Warning. She left the forum because she didn’t feel qualified to counsel someone considering suicide.

But despair wasn’t all that bound Deep Adaptation’s more dedicated adherents. David Baum, a 60-year-old Seattle mystic, “latched on to the spiritual implications.”

“Jem has the most massive intellectual bandwidth I have ever encountered,” he said. “He is one of the best writers alive today. And he has coped magnificently with unexpected celebrity based on a very difficult role that he is being asked to play.”

Mr. Bendell, who is a professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria in England, said: “My own conclusion that it is too late to prevent a breakdown in modern civilization in most countries within our lifetimes is not purely based on an assessment of climate science.”

“It’s based on my view of society, politics, economics from having worked on probably 25 countries across five continents, worked in the intergovernmental sector of the U.N., been part of the World Economic Forum, working in senior management in environmental groups, being on boards of investment funds,” he said. “You know, I’ve been a jack-of-all-trades.”

Others took comfort in the certainty of Mr. Bendell’s assessment. There was little of the unknown associated with usual scientific forecasting. Even those who thoroughly disagree understand that appeal.

“It’s really difficult to look at those probability distributions and know what to do,” said Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “I personally just want to be told, ‘This is what will happen. This is what you should do right now.’”

Mr. Bendell said that full apprehension of the extent of the climate crisis is naturally deeply shocking. That, he said, was why the forums needed to exist, as well as why he created the retreats he began hosting in 2019.

For the first retreat, a “safely held and gently facilitated space” to be held on Mount Pelion in Greece, Mr. Bendell emphasized that the focus would be on the inner lives of the participants.

“The focus is on inner adaptation rather than policies for reducing the harm from societal collapse,” he wrote .

The retreat cost 520 euros to 820 euros, depending on the participant’s choice of lodging. Mr. Bendell said he didn’t take any money from it personally because “I don’t need it. And it will complicate my tax affairs.”

Shu Liang, 42, the head of a Dutch climate action organization called Day of Adaptation, attended. She had a marvelous time, bonding closely with other attendees, with whom she has kept in touch.

“It was quite a rejuvenating experience” she said.

Ms. Liang described the morning exercises. In one, she said, a mini-shrine was set up in the middle of the room, adorned with objects including a rock and a piece of driftwood. Participants were asked to hold the objects and talk about what they represented. For Ms. Liang, the rock represented the burden of having to work on climate change.

In another exercise, participants were given a set of archetypes — including the warrior, the leader and the caregiver — and asked to choose one that they’d like to embody in a time of crisis.

A third exercise, designed in part by Mr. Bendell, was called “Death to the Experts.” Participants wrote down words that they associated with experts and threw the papers into a fire.

Mr. Bendell said that this exercise was intended to diminish the cultish aspects of his own authority. “We realized that people who are coming all the way to a retreat from around the world that I’m hosting are coming because of the fact that I’m doing it,” he said. “And yet we wanted to emphasize that I’m not the person who can tell you how to make sense of this.”

Earlier this year, Emily Atkin, an environmental journalist who had not even heard of Deep Adaptation — let alone read it — wrote about a repeating cycle she’d observed.

“The phenomenon is some dude who is really smart in some other way, and has expertise in something else, perhaps stumbles upon climate change, takes about one month to a year to think about it — and then decides that all of a sudden they have the solution that nobody else has thought about,” she said, asked to explain the pattern in an interview. “And they don’t consult with a diverse array of experts before releasing it. They do reporting that confirms their own biases.

“And then they put out a product that uses very strong language, stronger language than the evidence that they have justifies, to paint a picture that the reason we haven’t solved this is because everyone has been wrong. No one has thought of their great idea yet. And the idea is, honestly, usually that we’re screwed.”

One criticism that emerged of Deep Adaptation more specifically was that this vague forthcoming disaster that Mr. Bendell was describing was already happening to many people — just not yet to the Western academics, bankers and journalists whose interests he had piqued.

Justine Huxley, the chief executive of St. Ethelburga’s Center for Reconciliation and Peace in London, said that the paper had strongly influenced the center’s work, but that some reality needed to be taken into account.

“The first thing that we did was really try and weave climate justice in how we teach it,” she said. “Because I think there was a real danger in the early days of the Deep Adaptation movement starting up was that it kind of looks like a bunch of privileged white people coming to terms with a reality that half of the global south is already living in the middle of.”

Another criticism that emerged was that the central fatalism of Deep Adaptation was based on misunderstood science. According to these critics, if you strip away the misconceptions, there’s room for the hope that Mr. Bendell has cast aside.

After his self-publication, the paper attracted criticism by climate scientists. (The paper was submitted to and rejected by a peer-reviewed sustainability journal. Mr. Bendell has framed the rejection almost as an advertisement of his paper’s provocation and import. He compared it to submitting a paper that says dental health is pointless to a journal of dentistry.)

Gavin Schmidt, a colleague of Dr. Marvel’s at the NASA Goddard Institute, corresponded with Mr. Bendell directly about his concerns. Mr. Bendell wrote a blog post about that experience in February . He ended with: “None of the conclusions from the climate science section of the paper need to be retracted.”

Dr. Marvel reviewed some of the science in the paper more recently and said that it was filled with errors and misconceptions. For instance, Mr. Bendell writes that the loss of the reflective power of ice in the Arctic is such that even a removal of a quarter of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions of the last three decades would be outweighed by the damage already done.

Dr. Marvel said that this represents a basic misunderstanding. Though ice melting represented a feedback loop, she said, in which an effect of the climate becoming warmer itself contributed to further warming, there was a conflation in Mr. Bendell’s thought between that feedback loop and a so-called tipping point.

“It’s not an example of a tipping point,” she said. “This is something that is well understood. You make it warm. You get rid of ice. You make it cold. You get ice.”

Mr. Bendell provided a list of other scientists who supported him. He said climatology was too big a field for Dr. Marvel or Mr. Schmidt to be able to assess his claims knowledgeably and recommended against “establishment figures in climatology” altogether.

“You shouldn’t be talking to Kate Marvel or whatever,” he said. “Just actually go and look at the stuff yourself.”

As it happens, someone did.

Galen Hall, the 23-year-old Brown University researcher, was studying at Oxford when Deep Adaptation was published. He had joined Extinction Rebellion, a group of British climate activists, and became friends with a fellow member, Tom Nicholas, a doctoral candidate in computational physics. The paper had a profound effect on both of them, and on their network. A friend of Mr. Nicholas’s dropped out of university, believing that his studies were futile.

Mr. Nicholas had become familiar with Deep Adaptation when he started to hear the paper’s worldview parroted by activists.

“I basically noticed undercurrents of things I thought were scientifically dodgy being repeated again and again within Extinction Rebellion circles,” he said. “And then when I read Deep Adaptation paper I was like, ‘Ah, that’s where all of this is coming from.’”

Mr. Hall and Mr. Nicholas, 26, came to believe that Deep Adaptation was wrong to teach people that the struggle was already lost. In the fall of 2019, they decided to write a rebuttal.

“The fundamental battle in climate change right now is whether or not we can understand it as a primarily political struggle — rather than a scientific or natural struggle — and then win that struggle,” Mr. Hall said. “Deep Adaptation or fatalism in general is just one way of depoliticizing it because it puts everything up to inhuman forces.”

In July, with Colleen Schmidt, who is 24 and has a degree in environmental biology from Columbia — and who acted as their de facto editor — they published a paper.

“I would call it a hit piece on the paper and by implication, the framework and the movement,” Mr. Bendell said. “It was quite upsetting, and I wasn’t sure how best to respond.”

About two weeks after Mr. Hall, Mr. Nicholas and Ms. Schmidt published their paper, Mr. Bendell released a second version of his Deep Adaptation paper.

“This paper appears to have an iconic status amongst some people who criticize others for anticipating societal collapse,” he writes. “Therefore, two years on from initial publication, I am releasing this update.”

The stark statement that had opened the original paper was altered. Once, it had said its purpose was to provide readers “with an opportunity to reassess their work and life in the face of an inevitable near term social collapse due to climate change.” Now, to emphasize that the idea remains unproven, it reads “in the face of what I believe to be an inevitable near-term societal collapse.” Mr. Bendell added a sentence stating plainly that the paper does not prove that inevitability.

As the summer of 2020 ended, he announced on his blog that he would be stepping back from the Deep Adaptation forum, a decision he said he’d been planning for a year.

In this quiet, he is working on a new paper. In it, he said, he plans to explain exactly how the coming catastrophe of our society will play itself out, describing the starvation and mass death that so many anticipate.

The three young people who wrote the paper rebutting Deep Adaptation agree that the climate crisis has already resulted in horrific loss and that it will continue to exact a heavy toll. But they also believe that governments around the world can still make a difference and should be held to account, instead of being lulled into inaction by despair.

“ We’ve lost some things,” Ms. Schmidt said. “We could lose everything. But there is no reason not to try and make what can work, work.”

“Even if you somehow knew that the chance of success was small,” Mr. Nicholas said, “you would still be morally obligated to try your best to limit the damages and to keep working.”

Jonah Engel Bromwich is a courts reporter for The New York Times metro desk. More about Jonah E. Bromwich

Billions are needed for climate adaptation – now some frontline communities are deciding how the money gets spent

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Katherine Browne has received funding from the US Department of Education (Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Abroad fellowship), US State Department (Fulbright Fellowship), the University of Michigan, and Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development (FORMAS).

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As global temperatures continue to rise, the ramifications of climate change – from more frequent and severe extreme weather events to rising sea levels and ecosystem disruptions – are becoming increasingly evident around the world. But their effects are not evenly distributed, often hitting vulnerable communities the hardest.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Katherine Browne, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, and Margaret Angula, a senior lecturer at the University of Namibia, about a UN pilot programme in Namibia that’s trialling a new approach to financing climate adaptation. The project aims to empower local communities by putting decision-making and funding directly into their hands, allowing them to build resilience to climate change.

Climate adaptation describes the process of adjusting to the impacts of climate change to minimise risks and take advantage of new opportunities. It is a crucial aspect of addressing the climate crisis, especially for communities that are already facing significant challenges.

One of the world’s biggest mechanisms for financing climate adaptation projects is the UN’s Green Climate Fund (GCF). However, challenges such as limited funding and unequal distribution have so far hindered the effectiveness of climate finance like this, underscoring the need for more decentralised funding models. As Browne explains:

There’s a recognition that the money the UN has been providing is not reaching the communities that need it most – so-called frontline communities.

She’s been analysing an ongoing US$200m GCF pilot programme that’s trying to combat this by involving local communities directly in the way the projects are designed and run. The objective is to ensure that resources reach the communities that are most hit, and reflect their local priorities. Namibia, one of the countries most vulnerable to rising temperatures, is among the countries to have received funding through this pilot programme.

Angula, who is working with Browne to assess how equitably this climate finance is being distributed to communities across Namibia, emphasises the importance of community-led adaptation efforts. Examples from Namibia illustrate the diverse ways in which communities are using the funding to adapt to climate change: from drilling solar-powered borehole pumps for water access to investing in firefighting equipment to prevent the spread of wildfires. According to Angula:

[The programme] worked well for communities that have a level of awareness and knew what they were doing. The community came up with a project idea and how the money was spent.

Browne thinks community-led adaptation programmes like these show “a lot of promise”, but admits there are limits to the amount of funding that can be distributed through these models. “It shouldn’t be the whole approach,” she says, “but I think it will grow to be a bigger part of the approach.”

Listen to Browne and Angula on The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also features an introduction from Kofo Belo-Osagie, commissioning editor at The Conversation in Nigeria.

A transcript of this episode will be available shortly.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written by Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. Stephen Khan is our global executive editor, Alice Mason runs our social media, and Soraya Nandy does our transcripts.

You can find us on Instagram at theconversationdotcom or via email . You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s free daily email here .

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed , or find out how else to listen here .

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International summit on climate change to bring California, New York governors to the Vatican

May 11, 2024 Catholic News Agency The Dispatch 41 Print

Rome Newsroom, May 11, 2024 / 12:38 pm (CNA).

The Vatican’s latest bid to tackle climate change will bring together politicians and researchers from around the world for a three-day conference next week, featuring a series of roundtable discussions and culminating in the signing of a new international protocol that will be submitted to the United Nations.

The joint summit, “From Climate Crisis To Climate Resilience,” will be held at the Vatican from May 15-17 at the Casina Pio IV, the seat of the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences, which sits in the Vatican Gardens.

The conference—organized by the two pontifical academies—brings together policymakers, civic leaders, researchers and lawmakers from the United States and other countries, including Italy, Kenya and Sweden.

This year’s U.S. invitees include Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, as well as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

“Massachusetts deeply values our close relationship with Italy and the Vatican City State, and we see this trip as an excellent opportunity to strengthen ties and strategize on future opportunities for collaboration,” Healey said in an official press release from the Massachusetts governor’s office.

Healey will deliver a keynote address titled “Governing in the Age of Climate Change” on the first day of the summit, while Newsom and Hochul will both deliver addresses on the second day.

“This year holds unprecedented significance for democracy and the climate, two intertwined issues which will define our future,” Newsom said last month.

“With half the world’s population poised to elect their leaders amidst a backdrop of escalating political extremism, and global temperatures hurtling towards alarming new heights, the stakes could not be higher,” the California governor said.

“There is no greater authority than moral authority — and the Pope’s leadership on the climate crisis inspires us all to push further and faster. “

Pope Francis has made environmental protection and social stewardship one of the defining themes of his pontificate, dedicating two encyclicals to the moral imperative of combatting anthropogenic climate change.

The conference will also include mayors from some of Europe’s largest cities, including the mayors of Rome, Paris, and London, as well lawmakers from Asia and Africa, researchers and academics from the world’s leading universities, and representatives from international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

The summit participants will be received in an audience with Pope Francis on Thursday, May 16.

Each day of the summit is centered around a different conceptual framework and is organized by a series of different panels and roundtable discussions.

The summit’s program explains that participants will discuss and deliberate policy recommendations geared towards “climate resilience,” by utilizing a three-pronged strategy, which includes “mitigation efforts,” “adaptation strategies,” and “societal transformation.”

“Climate Resilience requires cross-disciplinary partnerships among researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs and trans-disciplinary partnerships between science and community leaders, including faith leaders, NGOs, and the public. Mayors and Governors form the core of such transdisciplinary partnerships,” the official program of the summit states.

The program notes that one of the main outcomes of the summit will be the drafting of a “Planetary Climate Resilience” protocol in which all participants will be “cosignatories.”

The protocol will be “fashioned along the lines of the Montreal Protocol” and will “provide the guidelines for making everyone climate resilient,” the program states.

Afterwards the document will be “submitted to the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] to take it forward to all nations.”

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40 Comments

What an unbelievable joke.

Politicians going half way around the world to talk about a supposed global climate crisis?

Right. Like they’re experts at anything.

Anything at all.

I know a guy who parks cars at an upscale restaurant. He should go because he drives all those cars.

And I know an elderly lady who’s always cold because she weighs about 85 pounds. She should go.

It’s ridiculous.

These clowns think human sexuality isn’t binary but the earth’s endlessly variable climate is.

The only people stupider than the governors of California and New York are the gentlemen with big red noses and whoopee cushions at the Dark Vatican who invited them.

Do I sound annoyed? Resentful? Angry even?

Jesus deserves so much, much better.

The Dark Vatican has more business addressing proper ballet technique, or the real story behind Fatty Arbuckle, or the history of trepanning.

Clowns addressing clowns addressing clowns.

I feel your hate.

I do not feel his hate but I sure feel his pain.

Perhaps the most apt image for the Franconian Papacy – a circus – replete with clowns, sideshows, bearded women, sword swallowing, sleight of hand, chimeras, dumbbell-lifting, house of horrors, and all orchestrated by the ringmaster himself- Bergoglio 1st.

So, they fly in all these imbeciles to talk about depletion of the ozone using vast amounts of fossil fuels to do so. As with Covid, the people are easily fooled by these clowns who hold the reins of power. Not to fear, though, the center is not holding and Deep State is falling apart as we speak.

The only way that many of the proposed climate change measures will become reality is if everyone becomes wealthy, and I don’t think that will ever happen. And considering how few children are being born in the U.S. and considering how many American high school graduates are entering college (assuming that they actually set down their phones and come out of their bedrooms) to major in “human studies” or “equality issues”–well, there won’t be enough scientists and engineers to do any research that might change the entire outlook on climate change!

I think many (especially young people) in the U.S. are under the influence of the “celebrities,” especially actors and musicians, along with gamers and online “personalities” with unknown qualifications. My daughter (a practicing Catholic!) has worked in “show biz” all her life and earns a good living. She is very intelligent and earned a Masters’ degree–but her knowledge of science is quite limited, and she freely admits that! I think it’s sad when someone who pretends to be other people (or robots, animals, ghosts, fairy tale characters, etc.) or who tells us how to win at online games has so much influence over real-life people as they dispense “fantasy science” and somehow manage to convince us that it’s “real science.”

Brilliantly said, Sharon.

Powerful ignorance. Drill baby, drill!

How is drilling ignorance? I don’t know about you but my vehicle runs on gas & so do most people’s. Even if every single vehicle went electric it still requires a source to provide that energy. CA has experienced power brown-outs. Can you imagine that many people all drawing current to charge their cars & trucks- which is what the CA powers that be are promoting for the future? Having varied sources of energy including oil seems prudent. And we have good sources of that in the US.

The vatican continues inviting morally corrupt people to Rome. “Nothing to see here”?

Birds of a feather…

Nauseating.

I proudly displayed the American flag in front of my house for more than twenty years. After the 2020 election, I took it down, and I haven’t raised it since. I had to face the facts and acknowledge that we are America in name only. I think it’s time Catholics did the same. The Vatican is no longer remotely Christian and you might as well admit it. The bands still play and the marchers still march, but the poiēma is nowhere to be found. Life means nothing without it.

Punctuating the silliness of this is the notion that the Vatican will now cooperate with the pro-abortion UN to promote this stuff!

Donations to the Vatican fund these boondoggles, providing a megaphone for morally bankrupt bigwigs. How is it charity to pay for such activities?

I did not agree with climate lethality, but as a Catholic I will opt on the side of caution.

NASA: The vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97 percent – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. Most of the leading science organizations around the world have issued public statements expressing this, including international and U.S. science academies, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a whole host of reputable scientific bodies around the world.

There seems to be a major world-wide scientific effort to bring forward the message. I am no scientist, but I am a Catholic father, grandfather and a RHINO.

God gave us this marvelous finite home. We cannot ignore that our pollution is not a source of climate issues.

https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/

Don’t be deceived, Morgan.

Opt on the side of rationality. Do a little research.

Start with this website:

https://globalwarmingdeception.com/

Then proceed to my text that follows.

It’s disturbing to me that Bergoglio is weighing in on “climate change” when he clearly knows absolutely nothing about climate science.

Here are a few brief points about climate change that people should know.

• The earth’s climate is changing. Indeed, the climate has always changed. Look at a graph of the earth’s average temperature that goes back a few million years. It looks like a yo-yo. Yet life on earth has always adjusted. It’s what life does. Devastating the economies of entire nations in an impossible quest for an unchanging climate is needlessly imposing misery on humanity. Yet climate alarmists like Bergoglio — or Varmaloff — never even say how they came up with the idea that the earth’s climate is generally stable.

• A 1.5-degree warming of the climate in a century is hardly the “existential threat” that the warmists claim. Think of the people now living 60 miles south of your home. That’s what your hometown will be like after a century of warming. What is their lifestyle like with a climate that’s 1.5 degrees warmer than yours? Is their town an uninhabitable hell-on-earth? Are they bursting into flames atop thousand-foot-high sand dunes? No? You might want to think about that.

• Carbon dioxide is not a poison. It’s not a pollutant. It’s a necessity for life on earth. Indeed, carbon is the molecule of life. In eons past, the earth did experience significantly higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we have now. The difference then? Plants thrived, food was plentiful and large mammals literally covered the earth, from pole to pole. In sum, more carbon dioxide equals more plants equals more animals equals a better, less stressful life for all. It’s hardly the “existential threat” that Bergoglio and the rest of the climate stooges claim.

• The “scientists” we keep hearing about who are sounding the climate alarm are meteorologists — weathermen. Their climate hysteria is based on computer programs that are not validated. They are closed loops with no way to account for all of the parameters that determine climate now, let alone decades from now. (Such as solar activity, the earth’s magnetic field, etc.) These are the same types of computer programs that predicted that the deaths from COVID-19 would be exponentially higher than what actually came to pass. Lowering all of humanity’s living standards based on such flimsy computer modeling is diabolical.

• Much is made about the “consensus” of scientists who warn about global warming in their publications. All this proves is that the left controls the print media as effectively as they control the broadcast media. Have you seen ‘Scientific American’ lately? No? You should take a look.

• There are indications that the sun may be entering a period of relative dormancy, as it did for a few hundred years, starting in the fourteenth century. The inactive sun meant less energy released, which led to the Little Ice Age in America and Europe. Rivers and canals in northern Europe froze, vineyards were destroyed, cereal production in Ireland was devastated, and famine hit France. (Interestingly, the cold also caused hardwood trees to grow denser and harder, leading to the remarkable tone of Stradivarius’ string instruments.)

I could go on and on. And on.

For example, about the indications that the earth’s magnetic field may now be in the process of flipping. This will affect how much of the sun’s energy strikes the earth. The problem is, the last time such a thing took place — an event known as the Laschamp excursion — was more than 40,000 years ago. So information on how earth’s climate was affected is hard to come by.

Anyway, it is quite clear that Bergoglio knows next to nothing about the climate. What’s surprising is that he has the audacity to offer such a definitive statement about a field that is totally unknown to him.

On second thought, maybe it was inevitable.

My dear fellow, how do you know that the Pope knows nothing about climate change? He is a very smart man with Jesuit training and discipline and has access to well versed academics; and as a head of state (his other hat) he has an obligation to speak out on secular matters. Apart from that, even if global warming IS a natural phenomena we do have an obligation to keep our planet clean and non toxic. All kinds of pollution cause serious health problems and we have a moral obligation to address them. “Drill, baby drill “ is not the answer. Big business should not dictate morality.

Nor should fanatics who will not tolerate other opinions and/or facts that dare to question.

Abortion is the most important environmental challenge we face. Women’s wombs are the most endangered sites on planet earth. There, humans are dying by the tens of thousands every day because of an assault on the wombs of women. There is no true environmentalism as long as abortion continues. Let’s do something about an environmental problem that’s immediate and easily remedied.

Anyway, it is quite clear that brineyman knows next to nothing about the climate.

MICHAEL CRICHTON on climate change:

“Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horse manure? Horse pollution was bad in 1900; think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

“But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900.

“Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, the Internet, interferon….

“Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it.”

I stand with morganD. There is an elephant (no politics intended) in the room and we must look at it. It’s too big to go away and we must face the fact that we have not always been good stewards of our planet. Politics, business and greed (products of our common fallen nature) have brought problems that we must face and determine if we can and should do something about them. All sides must grow up and be willing to soberly consider ALL research and determine where we really stand and take necessary measures to address any REAL problems. All this mud slinging and name calling is very immature and counterproductive. Let’s at least have enough common decency to allow those who we disagree with as being sincere. After all it is possible to be sincerely wrong. It’s even possible that we may be wrong. Since we humans tend to exaggerate and misinterpret things, we must learn to put things in perspective and be more objective. In all things we are obligated, as Christians to show love and respect.

James, you sound like a sweet guy, but I fear you may be slightly naive.

Let me just ask you this.

Wherever did you get the idea that the “normal” state of the climate is stable?

Have you ever seen a graph depicting the temperatures on earth throughout its history? It looks like a yoy-yo.

Climate stability is a delusion.

And so the climate crisis is a delusion.

The Green New Poverty is a threat to humanity — and there’s absolutely no reason for it.

I make several points about the climate discussion in a post above. Here’s one more.

The scientific “consensus” includes only meteorologists — never the scientists who study the sun, heliologists.

And yet the sun is the source of the great majority of the earth’s heat.

The fact is, heliologists cannot reliably predict the sun’s solar output beyond about a decade into the future.

In fact, until the recent massive solar storm, the sun’s output has been somewhat reduced in recent years.

Until you see heliologists sounding the alarm about global warming, you can pretty much write it off as an issue.

I’ll own up to being naive, but I don’t think I am stupid or yet senile (although I’m going on 85😢) . I do however think that we must be seriously concerned about the footprints we are making on the environment. This is quite apart from the question of whether or not we are causing global warming. We know that we ARE causing serious pollution problems. Our oceans are full of junk which will not break down easily. Dangerous atomic waste is all over. Toxic gases are in the air etc. etc. Many on the political right have lumped all issues together and brand all environmentalists as leftist radicals. To be environmentally Globalist is not the same as being a politically globalist. Pollution does not stop at boarders. We can not be isolationists, we must work together as nations. Man Is the problem. The animals live and leave the planet as they found it with seemingly less brain power. We were given brains but don’t seem to use them very well. Yes, I own up to being naive and perhaps even stupid! God bless, my friend. 😇

Pollution & waste are one thing. Climate change narratives are another. You can do something constructive about pollution & waste that doesn’t involve a political agenda. Conservatives should conserve nature & be stewards of God’s Creation. Cardinal Sarah said that Creation itself is a silent word of God. That’s good enough for me. 🙂

James, please. The oceans are NOT full of junk. Atomic waste is not everywhere. It is just such overstatement and hyperventilating that causes skepticism about the alarmist claims. Yes, there are problems. But remember, from the dawn of humanity human beings arrogantly thought they were the cause of every natural event, especially disasters … like not offering sacrifices to the right god, spraying deodorant into their armpits, shooting rockets into the sky (remember that, James? How often did we hear that in the 60’s?). As for our pope, he does have authority over bishops concealing sex abuse, the creep Rupnik, a church going off the rails in Germany … he should do his job first, and then he can “witness” to how everyone else isn’t doing theirs. And he doesn’t need to fly in celebrities and heads of state to get it done. Stop it with the photo ops and virtue signaling … by the way, I thought he famously said “Who am I to judge?”

As everyone knows, “Aliens Cause Global Warming,” just as Michael Chrichton said at Stanford 21 years ago:

https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf

And besides consenting-scientists “picking our pockets,” we have “Vadigun-Clericalists-in-the-McCarrick-Cult,” led by the Pontiff Francis, doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist State and its Marxist-American-politicos like boy-wonder-Gavin-Newsome.

And isn’t it true that our galllant-un-Eminence-McCarrick, while he was doing his decades-long gig as a “false shepherd,” was traveling back-and-forth to the homicidal Chinese state (the world’s biggest polluter and yet somehow also the world’s biggest solar panel monetizer), somehow managed by his “independent financial means” to afford his frequent flying back-and-forth to Peking for some 20 years, first discharging the many duties that we know all NJ Bishops are bound to do, and somehow “getting stuck” with the same Chinese Communist State junkets, despite lying his way into the Archbishop of Washington job, with the help of the utterly corrupt, Chinese Communist toadies of the “Vadigun-Secretariat-of-State.”

McCarrick, Newsome, the Pontiff Francis, three peas in the same phony pod, and all three capable of switching jobs, without it making any difference.

“There’s no such thing as “consensus science.” (Michael Chrichton)

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/michael-crichton-explains-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-consensus-science/

Planet Earth is thirsting for tender care, love, and respect. It’s time for fellow-mortals to do their bit.

I trust that you will not be driving a car in the future nor taking any form of transportation that relies on fossil fuel. Because if you do, you would be ignoring your own admonition to the rest of us which would be hypocritical.

I think that line was written by Secretary Xi, and farmed out for political consumption.

Yes, there is some change in climate; human activities definitely play a part in it. Yet I do not believe it is the Pope’s business. His business is the change of the spiritual climate.

Alas, what is going on now is a fulfilment of the prophecy of Vladimir Soloviev’s ‘A short story of the Antichrist’. I urge all Roman Catholics to read it. It is a wonderful piece of work and very instructive. Here is the test: http://www.wittenberg2017.us/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/a_short_tale_of_the_anti-christ_-_by_vladimir_soloviev.pdf

(Vladimir Soloviev was an Eastern Orthodox religious philosopher, visionary, and philocatholic – some argue he became a Roman Catholic.)

But Anna, it IS the Pope’s business. He is both the head of State (the Vatican) and head of Church. This is confusing to many people. It’s not an ideal situation and perhaps won’t last much longer, but it is the way things are now and he may as well use the bully pulpit as long as he can. We should be happy that he has some say and credibility in secular matters. Very few secular leaders have ANY moral credibility these days. Think about how much St. John Paul did!

James, the sooner the Vatican is denied recognition as a temporal entity, the better for the Church’s mission.

Isn’t any Bishop’s main job to save souls in all he does?

When years past on one round trip from NY to the SW I was startled that the top of majestic stratovolcano Mt Taylor NM, was shaved off by uranium excavation, water in many places throughout the SW both federal property and reservation areas was contaminated by excessive mining [even oil conglomerates Philips, Exxon with their vast wealth turned to include mining], that former pristine trout fishing brooks and lakes [including upstate NY] were affected I knew then it was a moral issue that had to be addressed. And it’s our Catholic Church that addresses moral issues. Insofar as global warming the evidence is clear, whether it’s naturally cyclic or not. Industrial air pollutants, besides cows breaking wind [if it’s an issue are we going to neglect humans] causes a dramatic increase in UV rays and its effect on humans. “The link between air pollution, UV irradiation and skin carcinogenesis has been demonstrated within a large number of epidemiological studies. Many have shown the detrimental effect that UV irradiation can have on human health as well as the long-term damage which can result from air pollution, the European ESCAPE project being a notable example. In total, at present around 2800 different chemical substances are systematically released into the air. This paper looks at the hazardous impact of air pollution and UV” (National Library of Medicine). What impressed me were the incredibly long lines of retired veterans and their families who moved to the SW showing up at the SW VA that I served for carcinoma treatment. Many will say climate is a distraction that belongs attention elsewhere because personal morality is more important. Agreed that the latter holds priority. Although it’s also said that many of us can also chew gum and walk at the same time.

Bergoglio is pushing all the right butyons of the transhumanist globalists elite. He recently endorsed the blessing of homosexual couples. Now he is fully aboard the global warming wagon. Of course he does not condemn China, whose abuse of the environment is far worse than anything done in the West; just as he kept silent about what China has done with the Catholic Church there, or with Falon Gong or with the Uyghurs. It is less risky to attack the U.S.

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Reimagining Romeo and Juliet: a Cinematic Journey through Time and Genre

This essay about the diverse cinematic interpretations of Romeo and Juliet, from the classical elegance of Zeffirelli’s Verona to the modern-day chaos of Luhrmann’s urban jungle. It explores how filmmakers have reimagined Shakespeare’s timeless tale, showcasing the range of artistic interpretations and creative experimentation across different genres and time periods. From traditional adaptations to bold departures, each film reflects the cultural zeitgeist and artistic vision of its creators while preserving the enduring themes of love, tragedy, and the immortal words of William Shakespeare.

How it works

The tale of Romeo and Juliet, etched into the annals of literary history by the quill of William Shakespeare, has captivated audiences for centuries with its timeless depiction of love and tragedy. As the sun sets over Verona, the stage is set for a myriad of cinematic interpretations, each breathing new life into the age-old story. From the cobblestone streets of Renaissance Italy to the neon-lit avenues of contemporary urban landscapes, filmmakers have embarked on a journey of artistic exploration, weaving the threads of Shakespeare’s narrative into the fabric of diverse cinematic tapestries.

Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation stands as a monument to classical elegance, its sepia-toned vistas and opulent costumes transporting viewers back to the opulence of the Elizabethan era. Against this backdrop of tradition and heritage, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey embody the star-crossed lovers with an intensity that echoes through the ages, their performances imbuing the tale with a haunting poignancy. Zeffirelli’s meticulous attention to detail and fidelity to the original text ensure that his adaptation remains a timeless masterpiece, revered by purists and romantics alike.

In a departure from tradition, Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation catapults Romeo and Juliet into the frenetic whirlwind of modernity, transforming Verona into a pulsating metropolis teeming with life and energy. Against the backdrop of Verona Beach, a kaleidoscope of color and chaos, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes ignite the screen with a fiery chemistry that blazes with the intensity of youth and passion. Luhrmann’s audacious fusion of Shakespearean verse with contemporary sensibilities revolutionized the genre, propelling the timeless tale into the 21st century with a vibrant energy that resonates with audiences to this day.

But the journey of Romeo and Juliet does not end there, for the story has proven itself to be as adaptable as it is enduring, traversing the boundaries of time and genre with effortless grace. Carlo Carlei’s 2013 adaptation, while more subdued in its approach, captures the essence of Shakespeare’s text with a reverence and authenticity that pays homage to its classical roots. Against a backdrop of sweeping landscapes and ornate palaces, Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld breathe new life into the iconic roles, their performances imbuing the tale with a sense of timeless romance and tragedy.

Yet, perhaps the most daring reinterpretations of Romeo and Juliet lie beyond the confines of traditional cinema, in the realm of alternative genres and creative experimentation. In Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ 1961 musical adaptation, “West Side Story,” the streets of New York City become the battleground for a modern-day feud between rival gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. Against this backdrop of urban turmoil, Tony and Maria, the Romeo and Juliet of the streets, find themselves torn between loyalty and love, their tragic tale unfolding amidst the pulsating rhythms of Leonard Bernstein’s iconic score.

And who could forget the whimsical world of “Gnomeo & Juliet,” where Shakespeare’s tale is reimagined through the eyes of garden gnomes and animated flora? Against a backdrop of colorful gardens and whimsical landscapes, James McAvoy and Emily Blunt breathe life into the star-crossed lovers, their performances infused with a playful charm that delights audiences of all ages. In this enchanting tale of forbidden love and warring neighbors, the timeless themes of Shakespeare’s original are given a fresh and imaginative twist, reminding us that love knows no boundaries, not even those of the garden fence.

In conclusion, the cinematic journey of Romeo and Juliet is a testament to the enduring power of Shakespeare’s storytelling, transcending time and genre to capture the hearts and imaginations of audiences around the world. From the classical elegance of Zeffirelli’s Verona to the modern-day chaos of Luhrmann’s urban jungle, each adaptation offers a unique interpretation of the timeless tale, reflecting the cultural zeitgeist and artistic vision of its creators. Yet, amidst the myriad of cinematic tapestries that adorn the silver screen, one truth remains constant: the timeless appeal of love, tragedy, and the immortal words of William Shakespeare.

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Reimagining Romeo and Juliet: A Cinematic Journey Through Time and Genre. (2024, May 12). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/reimagining-romeo-and-juliet-a-cinematic-journey-through-time-and-genre/

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Reimagining Romeo and Juliet: A Cinematic Journey Through Time and Genre . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/reimagining-romeo-and-juliet-a-cinematic-journey-through-time-and-genre/ [Accessed: 14 May. 2024]

"Reimagining Romeo and Juliet: A Cinematic Journey Through Time and Genre." PapersOwl.com, May 12, 2024. Accessed May 14, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/reimagining-romeo-and-juliet-a-cinematic-journey-through-time-and-genre/

"Reimagining Romeo and Juliet: A Cinematic Journey Through Time and Genre," PapersOwl.com , 12-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/reimagining-romeo-and-juliet-a-cinematic-journey-through-time-and-genre/. [Accessed: 14-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Reimagining Romeo and Juliet: A Cinematic Journey Through Time and Genre . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/reimagining-romeo-and-juliet-a-cinematic-journey-through-time-and-genre/ [Accessed: 14-May-2024]

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