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Adaptation Planning
Adaptation, as "adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects (…), seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities". Among the actions to face climate change, adaptation has been considered (and still is) "the poor cousin". It comes a lot after mitigation and receives fewer resources than resilience. If in mid-2019, all European countries and 16 out of 50 U.S. states have a plan or an adaptation strategy, in the Global South the spread of these tools is uncommon. In 2010, the United Nations Framework to Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the occasion of the Conference of Parties in Cancun (COP16) committed itself to financially accompanying (Adaptation Fund) the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the preparation of their national adaptation plan (NAP). The integration of climate change measures into national plans has become a target for the 13th Sustainable development goal (Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts) of the United Nations (2015). Ten years after Cancun, 120 developing countries out of 150 started the NAP process but only 11 have completed it. The NAP is important as it outlines the framework for preparing local adaptation plans. However, local governments did not wait for the NAP and prepared stand-alone plans or included adaptation measures into existing plans for climate change adaptation, taking advantage of the funding opportunities made available by development assistance or simply under pressure from local coalitions.

The repeated declarations of commitment for adaptation are not followed, at least for the moment, by tracking its spread and impact on climate threats, despite the fact that several scholars have occasionally investigated these aspects. Regardless of the reduction of climate impacts on a local scale, mobilizing a community on the formulation of an adaptation plan is an opportunity to increase local knowledge, to co-produce it, to inform citizens, businesses and local administration. Building a plan is an opportunity to decide from the outset how to divide the responsibilities of adaptation between the public, businesses and citizens.

The preparation of a stand-alone adaptation plan or the mainstreaming of adaptation measures into existing plans are both opportunities to change the approach in planning. Nowadays, the forecasting approach remains the most widespread. It extrapolates past trends in the future (climate, population, use of resources), has a deterministic vision, identifies the most likely futures and defines adaptations accordingly. Community participation often ends in the description of the problems that individual communities encounter and in the expression of their needs, thus remaining at the bottom steps on the ladder of participation. Generally, these are medium-term plans (4-5 years) whose duration coincides with the mandate of the local government. The backcasting approach is less widespread, it calls on the community to design the desired long-term future (20 years) from which to go backwards to identify the adaptations to be made in the early years of the plan (usually one to five years). This approach uses strategic planning tools (scenario planning, SWOT analysis). Participation pursuing gender equality can take place at all stages of the planning process, including decisions making. In the process of preparing the most recent plans, it is possible to observe a frequent mixture of the two approaches described above by including strategic planning tools but confining public participation in the diagnosis stage.

Adaptation is defined with plans that depend on the size of the human settlement and on the prevalent character (rural or urban) of the administrative jurisdiction. The most populous cities tend to have adaptation plans or adaptation and mitigation plans, as recommended by the New Urban Agenda of the United Nations (2017). Green and Sustainable are terms found in the name of the plans which include both adaptation and mitigation policies. Medium sized cities, towns and predominantly rural jurisdictions mainly use local development plans.

The adaptation plans usually start with the vulnerability assessment which considers the determinants of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Adaptations and implementation strategies follow. The formats of the plans and the planning process can be significantly different from country to country. The recurring elements include the prioritization of adaptation needs, the adaptation strategies, the integration of actions into existing plans, the description of funding opportunities, the monitoring & evaluation system.

Studies on the state of adaptation consider the plans by continents or geo-political units. However, adaptation plans should organize responses to specific threats from individual climate zones. Consequently, it would be more appropriate to consider and compare the adaptation plans by climate zone. The updated subdivision of Koeppen Geiger  has been used for this purpose in some recent surveys. Considering local jurisdictions that are exposed to similar climate threats has the advantage of facilitating the transfer of best practices in adaptation planning.

Subtropical Zone
OECD member countries, the BRICS and only a few Developing Countries (DCs) fall entirely or in part in this area. These countries have local administrations with more resources and more technical staff than those of the LDCs. Consequently, many large cities have adaptation plans or adaptation and mitigation plans. Adaptation is promoted by federal policies such as the EU Adaptation Strategy [2013] and by platforms such as Climate ADAPT which promote adaptation on a local scale among EU member countries since 2012. Several Senate Bills (SB) have been submitted in recent years to include adaptation in General or Comprehensive Plans (California SB 379-2015, effective from 2017, Florida SB 1094-2015, Virginia HB 672-2020). Local-scale adaptation is also being promoted by local government organizations such as ICLEI (a worldwide network of 1,750 local governments). Several surveys have assessed the quality of the adaptations suggesting that there is still a long way to go to have truly effective measures on climate change in place. Adelaide, Casablanca, Tunis (2011) and Santiago de Chile (2012) are among the first millionaire cities to adopt adaptation plans. These plans are stand-alone plans, which often do not integrate with other local planning tools and are not required by state or federal legislation. Among the measures envisaged by the adaptation plans for cities in the subtropical area, the ones in the sectors of green extension / management (to limit run-off and heat island effect), water conservation and storm water drainage maintenance are most frequently used.

Tropical Zone
Some OECD member countries and the BRICS have a large part of their territory in a tropical zone. Most of the LDCs fall entirely in the tropical zone. This area is exposed to specific hydro-climatic threats (cyclones or tornadoes, strong winds, drought, dust storms) that often coexist within a year.

The approach of adaptation plans in this area is very varied. The biggest difference is given by the role of participation and the way to define the adaptation actions. Among all types of possible plans, pure adaptation plans are still rare, since rarely required by a general environmental protection law or a specific state law (Philippines 2007, single US states as General or Compehensive plan element). They are therefore often voluntary, stand-alone or which also include mitigation measures, such as sustainable and green plans (15% approx). Punta Gorda, FL, USA (2009) is among the first towns to adopt an adaptation plan. Darwin, Australia and Semarang, Indonesia are among the first cities (medium-size and millionaire respectively) in the tropical zone to have an adaptation plan to face climate change since 2010. The mainstreaming of adaptation measures in local development plans is instead widespread. The adaptation plans for this zone offer a hundred measures, mainly structural (tree planting, storm water drainage, flood barriers, resettlement of inhabitants from flood-prone areas) and to a lesser extent non-structural (early warning systems, flood drills).

In tropical Africa there are still few cities with an adaptation plan. These tools have different limits, for example in the vulnerability assessment to ubiquitous floods. Mainstreaming in local development plans is the only way to achieve adaptation in the rural area. Droughts, strong winds, bush fire and flood are the most frequent threats to which rural communities are exposed. The setting up of local development plans has several elements of strategic planning (visioning, SWOT). However, in the vast majority of cases, the process is little attended by women and remote communities. Participants are asked only to express the main needs of the community they represent. Women are excluded from decision making and from monitoring plans. The main measures are afforestation, the use of crops drought tolerant, the construction of boreholes and wells. Disaster relief and the creation of early warning systems are the most frequent preparedness measures.