Frontiers in Climate Change Adaptation Science: Advancing Guidelines to Design Adaptation Pathways
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PROGRESS IN THE SOLUTION SPACE OF CLIMATE ADAPTATION (E GILMORE, SECTION EDITOR)
Frontiers in Climate Change Adaptation Science: Advancing Guidelines to Design Adaptation Pathways Alexandre K. Magnan 1,2
&
E. Lisa F. Schipper 3 & Virginie K. E. Duvat 1
Accepted: 26 October 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Purpose of Review This paper discusses three scientific frontiers that need to be advanced in order to support decision-makers and practitioners in charge of operational decisions and action on the design and implementation of concrete adaptation policies and actions. These frontiers refer to going beyond the (1) incremental vs. transformational and (2) maladaptation vs. adaptation dichotomies and to advancing knowledge on (3) adaptation measures’ effectiveness and roles in designing context-specific adaptation pathways. Recent Findings Dealing with adaptation to climate change on the ground often means answering three obvious but critical questions: what to do, where and when? These questions challenge the scientific community’s capacity to link conceptual advances (e.g. on transformative adaptation) and ground-rooted needs across sectors and regions (on solutions, governance arrangements, etc.). Summary We argue that the three abovementioned frontiers represent the most burning challenges to the Adaptation Science community to help addressing climate-related societal needs. We also demonstrate that they are intertwined as moving one frontier forward will facilitate moving the others forward. Keywords Adaptation to climate change . Incremental . Transformational . Maladaptation . Measures’ effectiveness
Introduction Together, the recently released special reports [1–3] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) convey two clear messages. First, climate change-related risks to humankind and ecosystems will increase exponentially until societies implement workable solutions, both for avoiding the unmanageable by tackling the source of anthropogenic climate change (mitigation) and for managing the unavoidable part of climate impacts (adaptation). The Special
This article is part of the Topical Collection on Progress in the Solution Space of Climate Adaptation
Report on Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate shows, for example, that the risk from sea-level rise (SLR) to low-lying coastal areas can be reduced by both mitigation and adaptation, even in the case of territories that are at the frontline of climate change impacts [4]. In urban atoll islands, for instance, the risk by 2100 can be reduced from high1-to-very high2 to moderate3-to-high by moving from a still intense to a stringent global greenhouse gas emission scenarios. In addition, implementing adaptation at its maximum potential in urban atoll islands can help reduce the risk from high-to-very high to high under an intense emission scenario and from moderate-to-high to close to moderate in the case of a stringent emission scenario. Second, the IPCC special reports conclude that making the science policy interfac
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