Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change (2010) / Chapter Skim
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4 Managing the Climate Challenge: A Strategy for Adaptation
4 Managing the Climate Challenge: A Strategy for Adaptation
Pages 121-158
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From page 121... ...
. Adaptation requires both actions to address chronic, gradual, long-term changes such as ecosystem shifts and sea level rise, and actions to address natural hazards that may become more intense or frequent.
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From page 122... ...
The continued development of vulnerable areas such as those prone to flooding increases climate risks. Climate changes such as sea level rise and increased storm intensity further exacerbate climate risks, bringing new urgency to these issues.
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From page 123... ...
The vagaries of economic cycles and the associated political volatility make it clear that adaptation efforts need consistent sources of funding over time because "stop-and-go" efforts are far more expensive and far less effective. Mainstreaming adaptation considerations and outcomes into decisions with climate-sensitive consequences (such as reauthorization of laws affecting land and water use, the National Flood Insurance Program, or the Coastal Zone Management Act)
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From page 124... ...
Managing risk in the context of adapting to climate change involves using the best available social and physical science to understand the likelihood of climate impacts and their associated consequences, then selecting and implementing the response options that seem most effective. Because knowledge about future impacts and the effectiveness of response options will evolve, policy decisions to manage risk can be improved if they incorporate the concept of "adaptive management," which implies monitoring of progress in real time and changing management practices based on learning and as a recognition of changing conditions (ACC: Informing an Effective Response to Climate Change, NRC, 2010a; NRC, 2009a; NRC, 2004)
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From page 125... ...
For example, when developing adaptation measures to reduce the impact of sea level rise on damage to coastal areas from floods and hurricanes, key interested parties should include the relevant public- and private-sector agencies concerned with climate change impacts, businesses that will develop technology or approaches to adaptation, those who are vulnerable economically and physically (e.g., adverse health or environmental effects) , and those who will have to pay for adaptation measures and deal with the adverse impacts from global warming.
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From page 126... ...
can be employed to span the range of possible outcomes. Here, the robustness of alternative responses and the potential value of hedging strategies can be explored, but only if the scenarios capture a wide range of changes in key climate variables such as temperature, precipitation, and sea level rise.
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From page 127... ...
. These concerns deserve serious consideration when developing adaptation strategies for addressing the future impacts of climate change.
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From page 128... ...
. "Robust decision making" tests a number of different options and results in a decision path that keeps as many future options on the table as possible (ACC: Informing an Effective Response to Climate Change; NRC, 2010a)
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From page 129... ...
Factors such as fear and anxiety impact judgments of risk, and shortsighted behavior is common, making it particularly important to design adaptation strategies that encourage individuals to take a longer-term perspective in their own best interest (and that of society more generally)
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From page 130... ...
and longterm home improvement loans (to finance adaptation measures) might be combined with initial discounts on annual premiums that are likely to exceed the annual cost of the loan (Kunreuther and Michel-Kerjan, 2009)
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From page 131... ...
Adaptation strategies that impacted multiple stakeholders were identified as possible citywide strategies and forwarded to the full Task Force for further evaluation and development. 1For details, consult http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/html/plan/plan.shtml.
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From page 132... ...
This ensured that the inventories of infrastructure at risk and associated adaptation strategies were based on the same state-of-the-art climate change projections. Two key aspects of an adaptation strategy -- organization and objectives -- are explored in the following sections.
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From page 133... ...
In other circumstances, however, farmers in the region may need to change crops to meet changing climate conditions, because climate change has reduced the productivity of old crops. In still other cases, farming in the region may not remain feasible in the long term, and the land might need to be retired from farming.
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From page 134... ...
It became clear, as a result, that accepting risk as a metrical implied that an adaptation process should create "flexible adaptation pathways" that would allow policy makers, stakeholders, and experts to develop and implement strategies that evolve as climate change progresses. Moreover, it became clear that flexible adaptation pathways can only be constructed on the basis of solid understandings of current and future climate hazards, rigorous evaluations of regulations and design standards, and interactive decision-support tools that help infrastructure managers to plan adaptation strategies.
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From page 135... ...
Identifying Adaptation Options Hence the principle of flexibility: adaptations must perform well under a variety of future climate conditions. This means that adaptive responses must either be able to change to keep pace with different climate conditions or be able to absorb a wide range of climate conditions.
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From page 136... ...
For example, this might involve raising a flood barrier in anticipation of future increases in sea level or storm intensity (Reeder et al., 2009)
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From page 137... ...
A framing tool was designed to assist stakeholders in developing and prioritizing adaptation strategies based on criteria related to factors such as effec tiveness, cost, timing, feasibility, and co-benefits. Together, these process-based tools provided the foundation for the development of climate change adaptation plans for critical infrastructure in the New York City region.
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From page 138... ...
In fact, many adaptation options listed in the previous chapter currently offer more benefits from adaption to other stressors than to climate change, although it is anticipated that such options also increase resilience to changing climate conditions. Adverse Impacts Often overlooked in discussions of adaptation are the potential adverse consequences of adaptation strategies themselves, particularly when they involve engineering solutions.
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From page 139... ...
Limitations on availability of staff or availability of staff with the necessary training, experience, or other credentials to implement adaptations may also add to the cost. Timing of Impacts The timing of climate change impacts can be a factor used to set priorities in planning for and implementing adaptation (although the uncertainties about the rate and magnitude of climate change discussed in Chapter 2 will also affect projections about the timing of impacts)
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From page 140... ...
, considered vulnerabilities of this region to a combination of sea level rise, more intense storm activity, and land subsidence. According to this report, the region is likely to see apparent sea level rise (actual sea level rise plus land subsidence)
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From page 141... ...
Using cost-effectiveness analysis to evaluate adaptation alternatives is appropriate if the objectives or benefits of adaptations are clear and consistent. In many cases, however, there can be multiple benefits of different adaptation measures, making it difficult to
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From page 142... ...
BCA can be particularly limited in analyzing benefits and costs over many generations, as may be the case when analyzing the impact of climate change adaptations. Adaptation measures for reducing the consequences of climate change normally involve an up-front investment cost that provides benefits over a number of years.
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From page 143... ...
Due to the uncertainty associated with the nature of climate change over the next 30 to 100 years, it is important to undertake sensitivity analyses to see how robust specific adaptation measures are to different scenarios regarding the nature of climate change. If the net expected benefits or the B/C ratios are positive over a wide range of plausible scenarios, then these adaptation measures would be viewed as desirable.
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From page 144... ...
(See Box 4.8 for a discussion of innovative risk-management approaches for the National Flood Insurance Program.) Box 4.5 is devoted to a discussion of the challenges involved in characterizing uncertainty with sufficient clarity that risk-analysis and risk-profiling techniques can be applied in ways that enable one to evaluate the relative attractiveness of different adaptation measures.
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From page 145... ...
could thus be used as a complement to BCA or DA in evaluating the relative attractiveness of different adaptation measures with respect to decisions at a societal level (BCA) or by specific interested parties (DA)
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From page 146... ...
Uncertainties regarding future emissions and concentrations of GHGs and aerosols are derived from imprecise understanding of exactly how the world will develop socially, politically, economically, and technologically. Uncertainties regarding future emissions of GHGs are often viewed as qualitatively different from the uncertainties associated with the physical climate system, and there is considerably greater controversy associated with quantifying uncertainties of emissions pathways since they involve quantifying uncertainties in very complex interactions of future world societies (CCSP, 2009c; Parson et al., 2007)
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From page 147... ...
Considerable effort has gone into developing means of quantifying the known uncertainties regarding future climate change on various temporal and spatial scales. These have included simple ranges of results from climate models (e.g., the range 2.7–8.1°F [1.5–4.5°C]
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From page 148... ...
If an adaptation measure was under way or planned and fully funded, stakeholders were instructed to take into account the benefits gained from those measures when conducting this exercise. Instances were also considered where updated measures not explicitly related to climate change adaptation were already under way within an organization or agency that would provide ancillary benefits for climate change adaptation.
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From page 149... ...
Locating adaptation strategies that emerged from the evaluation process in a matrix that contrasts urgency with cost is the final step before an overall strategy for responding to climate change is brought into general budgeting and investment conversations.
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From page 150... ...
• There is limited knowledge and experience with adaptation in the context of climate change among decision makers, resulting in a need for "learning by doing" and deliberately testing new approaches. The prospect of a nonsta tionary future climate system results in a need to design policies, monitoring activities, and processes that accommodate adaptive management.
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From page 151... ...
• A short-term perspective among policy makers, which limits the capacity to address problems such as sea level rise, needs to be replaced by consideration of both short- and long-term benefits as well as multigenerational equity. There is a tendency to discount the future at a much higher rate than would be used in benefit-cost analyses (Loewenstein and Prelec, 1992)
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From page 152... ...
This can be a politically challenging topic to address because it involves admitting that adaptation strategies may not or cannot meet the objectives under all conditions. Contingency plans for such outcomes should be developed, although much research is needed on how to develop such plans.
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From page 153... ...
There is a major role for institutional innovation in adaptation. Box 4.8 suggests ways that the National Flood Insurance Program could be modified to reflect the risks associated with climate change while at the same time encouraging adaptation measures.
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From page 154... ...
The risks associated with losses from hurricanes and flooding may be higher than current estimates if there is an increase in the intensity of hurricanes or a higher-than-anticipated sea level rise caused by climate change during the next 10 or 20 years. Pursuing risk-based premiums could dissuade development of hazard-prone areas, but it could have high, unexpected costs for those already living in these locations.
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From page 155... ...
Two possible complementary measures for dealing with this problem could be long-term contracts and well-enforced building codes. LongTerm Contracts for Encouraging Adaptation Two types of long-term contracts could encourage individuals to invest in adaptation measures: long-term flood insurance and long-term loans.
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From page 156... ...
Recent developments -- the emergence of scientific consensus on causes and long-term trends in climate change; evidence that climate change impacts are already under way; realization that greater changes are coming, even if their timing and magnitude remain uncertain; and recognition that the past is no longer a reliable guide for the future -- have validated the need for adaptation planning to manage risk. The existing barriers to adaptation illustrate that, without a well-integrated, comprehensive planning process and an adaptive risk-management approach, the United States is ill prepared at this time to efficiently and effectively deal with climate change impacts.
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From page 157... ...
Conclusion: Governments, individuals, and organizations that are or may be affected by climate change need to begin to adapt by assessing their current and future vulnerabilities and developing adaptation strategies and plans. New York City provides an excellent example of ways to structure a public process for setting adaptation priorities and of the vital role of leadership in managing such processes.
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From page 158... ...
A D A P T I N G T O T H E I M PA C T S O F C L I M AT E C H A N G E o Costs to implement the adaptations; o Overcoming barriers to adoption of the adaptations; and o Limits to adaptation: At what magnitude of climate change would the adaptations become ineffective? • A plan for monitoring and evaluation of the adaptations in order to facili tate adaptive management of risks, learn from experience, and build adap tive capacity.
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