User:Matthias Süßen/Climate Change Adaptation

Climate change adaptation is a response to the impacts of climate change. The conceptualisation of the term depends on the theoretical or political perspective of the beholder. In general, it is defined as action that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of social and biological systems to occuring and expected changes. Even if emissions are stabilized relatively soon, global warming and its effects should last many years, and adaptation would be necessary to the resulting relatively rapid and intense changes in climate conditions. Adaptation is especially important in developing countries since those countries are predicted to bear the brunt of the effects of global warming. That is, the capacity and potential for humans to adapt (called adaptive capacity) is unevenly distributed across different regions and populations, and most countries of the Global South generally have less capacity to adapt. Furthermore, the degree of adaptation correlates to the situational focus on environmental issues. Therefore, adaptation requires the situational assessment of sensitivity and vulnerability to environmental impacts. The adaptation challenge grows with the magnitude and the rate of climate change.

Effects of global warming
The projected effects for the environment and for civilization are numerous and varied. The main effect is an increasing global average temperature. The average surface temperature could increase by 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 1.67 to 5.56 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century if carbon emissions aren't reduced. This causes a variety of secondary effects, inter alia, changes in patterns of precipitation, rising sea levels, altered patterns of agriculture, increased extreme weather events, and the expansion of the range of tropical diseases.

Potential effects include sea level rise of 110 to 770 mm (0.36 to 2.5 feet) between 1990 and 2100, repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, and the spread of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.

A summary of probable effects and recent understanding can be found in the report made for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report by Working Group II. This 2014 contribution of Working Group II detailing the impacts of global warming has been summarized for policymakers.

Relation to Mitigation
Another response to climate change is known as climate change mitigation. It advocates to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or enhance the removal of these gases from the atmosphere (through carbon sinks). Even the most effective reductions in emissions, however, would not prevent further climate change impacts, making the need for adaptation unavoidable. A study has concluded, with very high confidence, that in the absence of mitigation efforts, the effects of climate change would reach such a magnitude as to make adaptation impossible for some natural ecosystems. For human systems, the economic and social costs of unmitigated climate change would be very high.

Costs
Economists, using cost-benefit analysis, have attempted to calculate an "optimal" balance of the costs and benefits between climate change impacts, adaptation, and mitigation. There are difficulties in doing this calculation, for example, future climate change damages are uncertain, as are the future costs of adaptation.

Also, deciding what "optimal" is depends on value judgements made by the economist doing the study (Azar, 1998). For example, how to value impacts occurring in different regions and different times, and "non-market" impacts, e.g., damages to ecosystems. Economics cannot provide definitive answers to these questions over valuation, and some valuations may be viewed as being controversial (Banuri et al., 1996, pp. 87, 99).

Some reviews indicate that policymakers are uncomfortable with using the results of this type of economic analysis. This is due to the uncertainties surrounding cost estimates for climate change damages, adaptation, and mitigation. Another type of analysis is based on a risk-based approach to the problem. It has been argued that adaptation could play an important role in climate policy, but not in an explicit trade-off against mitigation.

Discourse
IPCC Working Group II, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction Office, and other science policy experts agree that while mitigating the emission of greenhouse gases is important, adaptation to the effects of global warming will still be necessary. Some, like the UK Institution of Mechanical Engineers, worry that mitigation efforts will largely fail. The IPCC group points out that the world's ability to mitigate global warming is an economic and political challenge. Given that greenhouse gas levels are already elevated, the lag of decades between emissions and some impacts, and the significant economic and political challenges of success, the IPCC group points out that it is uncertain how much climate change will be mitigated.

Countries of the Global South are the least able to adapt to climate change. Doing so depends on such factors as wealth, technology, education, infrastructure, access to resources, management capabilities, acceptance of the existence of climate change and the consequent need for action, and sociopolitical will. After assessing the literature on sustainability and climate change scientists concluded with high confidence that up to the year 2050, an effort to cap GHG emissions at 550   ppm would benefit developing countries significantly. This was judged to be especially the case when combined with enhanced adaptation. By 2100, however, it was still judged likely that there would be significant climate change impacts. This was judged to be the case even with aggressive mitigation and significantly enhanced adaptive capacity. The IPCC group also pointed out that climate change adaptation measures can reinforce and be reinforced by efforts to promote sustainable development and reduce poverty.

Theoretical Concepts
The term adaptation has in the context of climate change has received significant attention in literature in the last two decades, particularly since the third climate change assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate (IPCC) Adaptation has been receiving an increasing amount of amount of interest in climate change literature due to the failure or slow progress of climate change mitigation. Following the refusal of the USA in 2001 to support the greenhouse gas emission goals of the Kyoto Protocol, adaptation emerged as the only viable option for furthering climate change policy. During the UNFCCC'S Seventh Conference of the Parties held in Marrakesh, Monaco, a fund for adaptation was established. The fund ‘‘finances projects and programmes to help developing countries adapt to the negative effects of climate change. ’’



Different types of adaptation
Based on the school of thought one uses to look at adaptation, it can be understood from different perspectives. Adaptation can be broadly classified in the following three ways based on how the term has been used in climate change literature. The classification is also particularly inspired by Mark Pelling's three adaptation types. The approaches differ in aspects such as what they consider to be the major issue of vulnerability.

Adjustment adaptation considers the impacts caused by climate change to be biggest source of vulnerability. This type of adaptation assumes society to be in a state of equilibrium that is changed by climatic perturbations, and it aims to ensure that society can return to a state of desirable equilibrium. It can be contrasted with transformative adaptation which seeks to underline the importance of understanding the various causal factors of vulnerability in different environmental and political-economic contexts. The goal of vulnerability analysis is ‘‘to identify the active processes of vulnerability production and then to identify which are amenable to redress’’. Reformist adaptation seeks to find middle ground between the adjustment and transformative adaptation approaches. By locating risk in society as much as in the biophysical hazard, reformist adaptation seeks to reduce social vulnerability by addressing ‘‘vulnerability drivers’’ and ‘‘response capacity’’ through ‘‘development’’.

Vulnerability
Vulnerability in the context of climate change adaptation has a profoundly different meaning. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its Second Assessment Report, defines vulnerability as “the extent to which climate change may damage or harm a system.” It adds that vulnerability “depends not only on a system’s sensitivity, but also on its ability to adapt to new climatic conditions.” In its fourth assessment report, the IPCC defined vulnerability as “the degree to which geophysical, biological and socio-economic systems are susceptible to, and unable to cope with, adverse impacts of climate change.”

Resilience
Resilience measures a community’s capability of bouncing back—restoring the original pre-disaster state, as well as bouncing forward—the capacity to cope with emerging post-disaster situations and changes. In the context of climate change, resilience needs to be decentralized, participatory, and adaptable. A community's most significant feature, in the context of resilience to climate changes, is its capacity to collectively identify problems, take decisions and act on them and to allocate resources. A community’s resilience can be conceptualized on the basis of how well the ‘critical triangle’ of three major community capitals—economic, social, and environmental capital—are developed in a certain community and how these capitals interact. A resilient community is multi-scalar; it acts at the individual, community, and regional levels, deploying its internal as well externally-networked resources in tackling and coping to adversaries.

International Adaptation Policy
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Institutions and Regimes
Adaptation is an issue of political discourse. The largest forum where its conzeptualisation and implementation has and is been under discussion can be detected on the global level. First adress here is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where adaptation developed from an instrument to measure resilience towards a policy object on eyelevel with mitigation. A main share of shaping the global perception of adaptation is connected to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well where adaptation is being received more and more diverse over the decades.

UNFCCC
The conceptualization of adaptation within the UNFCCC process has changed over time. At the first stage of the international negotiations on a common response to climate change in the 1980s hope was high that simple mitigation of greenhouse gas emission would be a sufficient act and an adaptation to adverse effects not necessary as the would occur negligibly. Even though in the original text of the convention of 1992 states are called to “cooperate in preparing for adaptation to the impacts of climate change” and that developed countries should assist developing countries to meet the costs of adaptation measures, the focus of responding to climate change was aiming at mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions at first (see Article 2 of the convention). This also is visible within the emergence of the Kyoto protocol. Adaptation was broadly considered on the one hand as a long-term strategy that would be used when evidence for the impacts of climate change would be stronger and on the other hand perceived as an act of giving up the efforts of reducing emissions as well as the acknowledgement of the need of “adjustments beyond normal behavior”. Furthermore, developed countries sought to avoid any discussion regarding compensations during the general debate on accountability for the emergence of climate change as well as that some developing countries did want to hold high the necessity of urging the industrialized part of the world to mitigate further emissions.

With ongoing debate, deeper knowledge on climate change impacts and especially along the delay of mitigation actions as requested by the Kyoto protocol, perceptions changed and adaptation was set up higher on the agenda. At that time, it was strongly recognized as a developing countries issue and thereby connected to (mostly financial) spheres of development. In 2001 on COP 7, the Marrakesh Accords have been agreed upon by the parties establishing a set of instruments and induced processes for adaptation efforts




 * LDC Work Programme : containing inter alia support and advice for LDCs in general and for NAPA preparation, training for capacity building, collection and dissemination of information and data, technology transfer for adaptation.
 * National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) : Within the programme LDCs should "identify priority activities that respond to their urgent and immediate needs with regard to adaptation to climate change"; focus here is to prevent an increase of vulnerability, development of action on the community level and applicability for local policymakers. Main focus lays on "agriculture and food security, water resources, coastal zones, and early warning and disaster management". To implement the NAPA a LDC can apply funding via the LDC fund.
 * LDC Fund : under the GEF umbrella; provides funding and assistance for LDCs to implement their NAPA.
 * LDC Expert Group : provides technical advice for LDCs during the LDC work programme and especially for the development and implementation of NAPAs and NAPs.


 * Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) : under the GEF umbrella; finances inter alia adaptation projects, capacity building and technology transfer.
 * Adaptation Fund : provides financial support to run projects for adaptation for developing countries that are members to the Kyoto protocol.

Later at the COP 11, the Nairobi work programme has been created. Core of work is the collection and dissemination of knowledge for the facilitation of adaptation processes under implementation.

A further step has been the Cancun Adaptation Framework (CAF) of COP 16 which had the task to extend and improve international cooperation on adaptation within the framework of the convention.


 * National Adaptation Plans (NAP): All parties are requested to develop their plan of how to address their medium- and long-term adaptation needs on a national basis, accompanied by technical and financial support.
 * Adaptation Committee (AC): The committee supervises and supports especially the NAP process via assisting and coordinative actions, sharing of knowledge and good practices and the promotion of synergies between all actors.

By now, in 2018, the UNFCC defines adaptation to climate change as following:

„Adaptation, refers to adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts. It refers to changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change.”

IPCC
Within the IPCC, the main scientific advisory board for climate change policy, view on adaptation has shifted over the decades. As it is stated in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, it has developed “from a focus on biophysical vulnerability to the wider social and economic drivers of vulnerability and people’s ability to respond.” To the drivers are counted “the gender, age, health, social status, and ethnicity of individuals and groups, and the institutions in place locally, nationally, regionally, and internationally”. Following further IPCC definitions, adaptation is about an increase and strengthening of resilience. Therefore, previous goals of development and disaster risk management have to be broadened and enriched with means of adaptation.

Furthermore, IPCC locates a need for adaptation there, where “action to ensure the safety of populations and the security of assets, including ecosystems and their services” to face challenges of climate change must take place. Still, the most implemented actions responding this need belong to area of technical and engineered measures, but the IPCC also highlights the value of ecosystem-based, social methods and institutional learning. As well, it is acknowledged that “many see the need for more transformative changes in our perception and paradigms about the nature of climate change, adaptation, and their relationship to other natural and human systems.”

Principles for effective policy
Adaptive policy can occur at the global, national, or local scale, with outcomes dependent on the political will in that area. Scheraga and Grambsch identify 9 fundamental principles to be considered when designing adaptation policy.


 * 1) The effects of climate change vary by region.
 * 2) The effects of climate change may vary across demographic groups.
 * 3) Climate change poses both risks and opportunities.
 * 4) The effects of climate change must be considered in the context of multiple stressors and factors, which may be as important to the design of adaptive responses as the sensitivity of the change.
 * 5) Adaptation comes at a cost.
 * 6) Adaptive responses vary in effectiveness, as demonstrated by current efforts to cope with climate variability.
 * 7) The systemic nature of climate impacts complicates the development of adaptation policy.
 * 8) Maladaptation can result in negative effects that are as serious as the climate-induced effects that are being avoided.
 * 9) Many opportunities for adaptation make sense whether or not the effects of climate change are realized.

Scheraga and Grambsch make it clear that climate change policy is impeded by the high level of variance surrounding climate change impacts as well as the diverse nature of the problems they face.

Adaptation can mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change, but it will incur costs and will not prevent all damage. The IPCC points out that many adverse effects of climate change are not changes in the average conditions, but changes in the variation or the extremes of conditions. For example, the average sea level in a port might not be as important as the height of water during a storm surge (which causes flooding); the average rainfall in an area might not be as important as how frequent and severe droughts and extreme precipitation events become. Additionally, effective adaptive policy can be difficult to implement because policymakers are rewarded more for enacting short-term change, rather than long-term planning. Since the impacts of climate change are generally not seen in the short-term, this means that policymakers have less incentive to act upon those potential outcomes. Furthermore, these problems (both the causes and effects of climate change) are occurring on a global scale, which has caused the United Nations to lead global policy efforts such as the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, in addition to creating a body of research through the IPCC, in order to create a global framework for adapting to and combatting climate change. However, the vast majority of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies are being implemented on a more local scale due to the fact that different regions must adapt differently to climate change and because national and global policies are often more challenging to enact.

Enhancing adaptive capacity
Adaptation can be defined as adjustments of a system to reduce vulnerability and to increase the resilience of a system to change, also known as adaptive capacity. Those societies that can respond to change quickly and successfully have a high adaptive capacity. High adaptive capacity does not necessarily translate into successful adaptation. For example, the adaptive capacity in Western Europe is high, and the risks of warmer winters increasing the range of livestock diseases was well documented, but many parts of Europe were still badly affected by outbreaks of the Bluetongue virus in livestock in 2007.



Adaptive capacity is the ability of a system (human, natural or managed) to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes) to moderate potential damages, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with consequences. Unmitigated climate change (i.e., future climate change without efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions) would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt.

It has been found that enhanced adaptive capacity would reduce vulnerability to climate change. Activities that enhance adaptive capacity are essentially equivalent to activities that promote sustainable development. These activities include:


 * Improving access to resources
 * Reducing poverty
 * Lowering inequities of resources and wealth among groups
 * Improving education and information
 * Improving infrastructure
 * Improving institutional capacity and efficiency
 * Promoting local indigenous practices, knowledge, and experiences

Others have suggested that certain forms of gender inequity should be addressed at the same time; for example women may have participation in decision-making, or be constrained by lower levels of education.

Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute found that development interventions to increase adaptive capacity have tended not to result in increased agency for local people. They argue that this should play a more prominent part in future intervention planning because agency is a central factor in all other aspects of adaptive capacity. Asset holdings and the ability to convert these resources through institutional and market processes are central to agency.

Agricultural production
A significant effect of global climate change is the altering of global rainfall patterns, with certain effects on agriculture. Rainfed agriculture constitutes 80% of global agriculture. Many of the 852 million poor people in the world live in parts of Asia and Africa that depend on rainfall to cultivate food crops. Climate change will modify rainfall, evaporation, runoff, and soil moisture storage. Extended drought can cause the failure of small and marginal farms with resultant economic, political and social disruption, more so than this currently occurs. Agriculture of any kind is strongly influenced by the availability of water. Changes in total seasonal precipitation or in its pattern of variability are both important. The occurrence of moisture stress during flowering, pollination, and grain-filling is harmful to most crops and particularly so to corn, soybeans, and wheat. Increased evaporation from the soil and accelerated transpiration in the plants themselves will cause moisture stress.

Adaptive ideas include:


 * Taking advantage of global transportation systems to delivering surplus food to where it is needed (though this does not help subsistence farmers unless aid is given).
 * Developing crop varieties with greater drought tolerance.
 * Rainwater storage. For example, according to the International Water Management Institute, using small planting basins to 'harvest' water in Zimbabwe has been shown to boost maize yields, whether rainfall is abundant or scarce. And in Niger, they have led to three or fourfold increases in millet yields.
 * Falling back from crops to wild edible fruits, roots and leaves. Promoting the growth of forests can provide these backup food supplies, and also provide watershed conservation, carbon sequestration, and aesthetic value.

Irrigation
The demand for water for irrigation is projected to rise in a warmer climate, bringing increased competition between agriculture—already the largest consumer of water resources in semi-arid regions—and urban as well as industrial users. Falling water tables and the resulting increase in the energy needed to pump water will make the practice of irrigation more expensive, particularly when with drier conditions more water will be required per acre. Other strategies will be needed to make the most efficient use of water resources. For example, the International Water Management Institute has suggested five strategies that could help Asia feed its growing population in light of climate change. These are:


 * Modernising existing irrigation schemes to suit modern methods of farming
 * Supporting farmers' efforts to find their own water supplies, by tapping into groundwater in a sustainable way
 * Looking beyond conventional "Participatory Irrigation Management" schemes, by engaging the private sector
 * Expanding capacity and knowledge
 * Investing outside the irrigation sector

Weather control
Russian and American scientists have in the past tried to control the weather, for example by seeding clouds with chemicals to try to produce rain when and where it is needed. A new method being developed involves replicating the urban heat island effect, where cities are slightly hotter than the countryside because they are darker and absorb more heat. This creates 28% more rain 20–40 miles from cities compared to upwind. On the timescale of several decades, new weather control techniques may become feasible which would allow control of extreme weather such as hurricanes.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) through its Commission for Atmospheric Sciences (CAS) opined in 2007: "Purposeful augmentation of precipitation, reduction of hail damage, dispersion of fog and other types of cloud and storm modifications by cloud seeding are developing technologies which are still striving to achieve a sound scientific foundation and which have to be adapted to enormously varied natural conditions."

Damming glacial lakes
Glacial lake outburst floods may become a bigger concern due to the retreat of glaciers, leaving behind numerous lakes that are impounded by often weak terminal moraine dams. In the past, the sudden failure of these dams has resulted in localized property damage, injury and deaths. Glacial lakes in danger of bursting can have their moraines replaced with concrete dams (which may also provide hydroelectric power).

Geoengineering
IPCC (2007) concluded that geoengineering options, such as ocean fertilization to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, remained largely unproven. It was judged that reliable cost estimates for geoengineering had not been published.

The Royal Society (2009) published the findings of a study into geoengineering. The authors of the study defined geoengineering as a "deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system, in order to moderate global warming". According to the study, the safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is early action to reduce GHG emissions.

Scientists such as Ken Caldeira and Paul Crutzen suggest techniques such as:


 * Solar radiation management may be seen as an adaptation to global warming. Techniques such as space sunshade, creating stratospheric sulfur aerosols and painting roofing and paving materials white all fall into this category.
 * Hydrological geoengineering - typically seeking to preserve sea ice or adjust thermohaline circulation by using methods such as diverting rivers to keep warm water away from sea ice, or tethering icebergs to prevent them drifting into warmer waters and melting. Though this is an adaptation technique, if it prevents Arctic methane release it would also be classified as mitigation.

Migration
Migration frequently requires would-be migrants to have access to social and financial capital, such as support networks in the chosen destination, and the funds or physical resources to be able to move. It is frequently the last adaptive response households will take when confronted with environmental factors that threaten their livelihoods, and mostly resorted to when other mechanisms to cope have proven unsuccessful.

The rhetoric of migration being related to climate change is complex and disputed. However, It is widely accepted that the results of migration events are multi-causal, with the environment being just a factor amongst many. Outside of policy, human rights organizations, expert demographers and environmental climate scientists dominate this debate. Many discussions are based on projections and less with current migration data. While many migration events can be attributed to sudden environmental change, most migration events are a result of long term environmental changes and do not cause sudden migration. Some scholars attribute these events to sudden environmental changes, like natural disasters. Some choose to label it "climate change", which reflects a more long term onset of change, and the human impact element. It is helpful to provide an intersectional approach to this discussion and understand that focusing on climate change as the issue frames the debate in terms of projections, causing the research to be speculative. Migration as tool for climate change adaptation is projected to be a more pressing issue in the decade to come. It is often framed in terms of human rights issues and national security. Migration events are often seen as a failure of the governments or policy making bodies that could not contain or effectively manage environmental changes. For example, extreme drought events in the Caribbean proliferate movement of peoples because of the lack of water. This is often seen as a failure on the local governments to provide structural and independent resources. These adaptation failures that have been the topic of concern for many scholars researching this area. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been viewed as one of the highest authorities and moral right and resources to help those displaced.

Insurance
Insurance spreads the financial impact of flooding and other extreme weather events. Although it can be preferable to take a proactive approach to eliminate the cause of the risk, reactive post-harm compensation can be used as a last resort. Access to reinsurance may be a form of increasing the resiliency of cities. Where there are failures in the private insurance market, the public sector can subsidize premiums. A study identified key equity issues for policy considerations:


 * transferring risk to the public purse does not reduce overall risk
 * governments can spread the cost of losses across time rather than space
 * governments can force home-owners in low risk areas to cross-subsidize the insurance premiums of those in high risk areas
 * cross-subsidization is increasingly difficult for private sector insurers operating in a competitive market
 * governments can tax people to pay for tomorrow's disaster

Government-subsidized insurance, such as the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program, is criticized for providing a perverse incentive to develop properties in hazardous areas, thereby increasing overall risk. It is also suggested that insurance can undermine other efforts to increase adaptation, for instance through property level protection and resilience. This behavioral effect may be countered with appropriate land-use policies that limit new construction where current or future climate risks are perceived and/or encourage the adoption of resilient building codes to mitigate potential damages.

Challenges of Implementation
A successful implementation of climate change adaptation measures is challenged by differences across geographic regions, socio-economic and political development levels. Foremost, the range of necessary methods is determined by the environmental, geographic and climatic conditions of a region. Due to environmental, geographic and climatic conditions, generally countries of the global south are more affected by climate change than countries of the global north. For example, Bangladesh is one of the countries which is most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and is in need of severe adaptation measures. At the same time, socio-economic and political status influence the ability to adapt to climate change, the so-called adaptive capacity of human-social systems.

Development cooperation & adaptation assistance
Since 2011, programmes of adaptation assistance have been established as part of development cooperation. Mainly, these programmes offer financial or technical assistance. Global financial assistance is provided by the GEF, the World Bank and the Adaptation Fund Board. Among others, the GEF provides financial assistance to support efforts to overcome environmental challenges. In case of climate change adaptation it aims to assess adaptations needs, supports building increased adaptive capacity of the global south and fosters priority actions to increase resilience to climate change by the NAPAs. In 2008, in conjunction with the Regional Development Banks the World Bank set up the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) which supports developing and emerging economies in shifting to low carbon and climate resilient development. In addition to the global adaptation fundings, regional adaptation assistance programmes offer financial support like the African Development Bank Climate Risk Management and the Global Climate Change Alliance.

Costs of development cooperation
According to UNFCCC estimates in 2007, costs of adaptation to climate change would cost $49–171 billion per year globally by 2030, of which a significant share of the additional investment and financial flows, USD $28–67 billion would be needed in 2030 in non-Annex I Parties. This represents a doubling of current official development assistance (ODA). This estimate has been critiqued by some scientists who argues that the UNFCCC estimate underestimates the cost of adaptation to climate change by a factor of 2 or 3. Moreover, sectors such as tourism, mining, energy, and retail were not included in the UNFCCC estimate.

The more recent World Bank Study, "Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change", found that the costs of adaptation would be in the range of $75–100 billion per year between 2010 and 2050; with higher estimates under the wetter global scenario than the drier scenario, assuming that warming will be about 2 degrees by 2050.

A key point of contention between states at the UNFCC Copenhagen Climate Summit was who was to foot the bill and if aid is to be given, how is it to affect other levels of development aid. The concept of additionality has thus arisen and the EU has asked its member states to come up with definitions of what they understand additionality to mean, the four main definitions are:


 * 1) Climate finance classified as aid, but additional to (over and above) the 0.7% ODA target;
 * 2) Increase on previous year's Official Development Assistance (ODA) spent on climate change mitigation;
 * 3) Rising ODA levels that include climate change finance but where it is limited to a specified percentage; and
 * 4) Increase in climate finance not connected to ODA.

The main point is a conflict between the OECD states budget deficit cuts, the need to help developing countries adapt to develop sustainably and the need to ensure that funding does not come from cutting aid to other important Millennium Development Goals.

Role of Non-governmental Organizations
On site, Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) support communities to combat the effects of climate change also by implementing adaptation measures. They are the connection between local communities and governments and international institutions. Ideally these programs integrate historically rooted  adaptive capacity of indigenous communities via their participation.

Justice and Ethical Concerns
Different concepts of justice address ethical issues of climate change. Based on social justice, issues of fair processes and fair outcomes are discussed. Furthermore, Climate justice attempts to provide a framework which ensures a just approach of handling climate change. In theory, the four principles of


 * avoiding dangerous climate change,
 * forward-looking  responsibility,
 * putting the most vulnerable first and
 * fair participation of all

provide such an approach. These principles are based on distributive justice and procedural justice. Distributive justice indicates how beneficial and adverse effects of climate change adaptation should be distributed. Also it is based on the capability principle, which takes the diversity of affected parties and their situations into account. Procedural justice, on the other hand, accounts for the heterogeneity of affected parties and hence deals with the degree of their recognition and participation. Avoiding dangerous climate change, forward-looking  responsibility and putting the most vulnerable first should be based on distributive justice. Climate change mitigations aim is to avoid dangerous climate change by a severe limitation of  global emissions of greenhouse gases. The scope of these limitations should ensure the capacity of natural systems and allow food production systems and economic systems to adapt to the changes. Fair participation of all needs procedural justice to resolve dilemmas of distributive justice.

Different time scales
Adaptation can either occur in anticipation of change (anticipatory adaptation), or be a response to those changes (reactive adaptation). Most adaptation being implemented at present is responding to current climate trends and variability, for example increased use of artificial snow-making in the European Alps. Some adaptation measures, however, are anticipating future climate change, such as the construction of the Confederation Bridge in Canada at a higher elevation to take into account the effect of future sea-level rise on ship clearance under the bridge.

Much adaptation takes place in relation to short-term climate variability, however this may cause maladaptation to longer-term climatic trends. For example, the expansion of irrigation in Egypt into the Western Sinai desert due to a period of higher river flows is a maladaptation when viewed in relation to the longer term projections of drying in the region ). Adaptations at one scale can also create externalities at another by reducing the adaptive capacity of other actors. This is often the case when broad assessments of the costs and benefits of adaptation are examined at smaller scales and it is possible to see that whilst the adaptation may benefit some actors, it has a negative effect on others.