Towards adaptation pathways for atoll islands. Insights from the Maldives
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ESSAY
Towards adaptation pathways for atoll islands. Insights from the Maldives Alexandre K. Magnan 1,2 & Virginie K. E. Duvat 2 Received: 22 November 2019 / Accepted: 16 April 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Coastal areas host a significant part of the world population and of humankind’s adaptation needs in the face of effects of climate change, especially sea-level rise and ocean warming and acidification. Atoll islands illustrate frontline situations due to their biophysical (low elevation, small land area, 360°-exposure to waves, limited natural resources and fragile ecosystems) and human (high population densities in urban environments, low level of development, limited technical and financial capacities) characteristics. In these contexts, it is urgent to understand the space for societal adaptation and based on this, identify robust and context-specific adaptation strategies. This essay builds on the hypothesis that, given the nature of atoll islands, understanding the way and extent to which local human-driven disturbances affect the reef-island system’s capacity to provide coastal protection services, is a relevant entry point. Using the case of the Maldives, we propose to combine five types of adaptation into a generic adaptation pathway, and apply it to atoll island types going from no to highly disturbed environments. This work highlights two major conclusions: first, that diverse island profiles require different adaptation pathways; second, that in contexts under high human pressure, the window of opportunities for diversified adaptation strategies is closing fast. Keywords Atoll islands . Ocean change . Adaptation pathways . Path-dependency
Introduction The IPCC Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate brings evidence on the increasing and accelerating effects of climate change on the physics and chemistry of the global ocean, leading to ocean warming, acidification and deoxygenation, and sea-level rise (IPCC 2019). Expected consequences are huge for ecosystems and human societies, especially in tropical areas. Keystone ecosystems
Communicated by Debbie Ley Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01691-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Alexandre K. Magnan [email protected] Virginie K. E. Duvat [email protected] 1
IDDRI, Sciences Po, 27 rue Saint-Guillaume, 75007 Paris, France
2
LIENSs, University of La Rochelle & CNRS, La Rochelle, France
such as warm-water coral reefs will face high to very high risks by the end of this century, even under a low greenhouse gas emission scenario (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2018; Bindoff et al. 2019), and more ecosystems including mangroves and sandy beaches will reach such risk levels in case of higher emissions (Bindoff et al. 2019). What is at stake, among other things, is the undermining of the coastal protection service delivered by the reef-shore system (see Box 1), which m
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