Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Adaptation
There will certainly be climate change. Many countries will be adversely affected in the
near future, and nearly all countries will be affected in the next 30 years. So the second re-
port of the IPCC Fifth Assessment published in 2014 examines the impacts of climate
change and the potential sensitivity, adaptability, and vulnerability of each national envir-
onment and socioeconomic systems. For example, as flooding is going to become more
prevalent in Britain, damage to property and loss of life could be prevented with new flood
defences and strict new laws that limit building on floodplains and vulnerable coasts.
The IPCC believes there are six reasons why we must adapt to climate change: (1) climate
change cannot be avoided (see
Chapter 4
); (2) anticipatory and precautionary adaptation is
more effective and less costly than forced last-minute emergency fixes; (3) climate change
may be more rapid and more pronounced than current estimates suggest, and unexpected
and extreme events are likely to occur; (4) immediate benefits can be gained from better
adaptation to climate variability and extreme atmospheric events (for example, with the
storm risks, strict building laws and better evacuation practices would need to be imple-
mented); (5) immediate benefits can also be gained by removing maladaptive policies and
practices (for example, building on floodplains and vulnerable coastlines); and (6) climate
change brings opportunities as well as threats.
Figure 33
provides an example of how coun-
tries can adapt to predicted sea-level rise.
The major threat from climate change is its unpredictability (see
Chapter 6
). Humanity can
live in almost any extreme climate, from deserts to the Arctic, but we can only do so when
we can predict what the extremes of the weather will be. So adaptation is really the key to
dealing with climate change, but it must start now, as infrastructure changes can take up to
30 years to implement. For example, if you want to change land-use, for example, by build-
ing better sea defences or returning farmland back to natural wetlands in a particular area, it
can take ten years to research and plan the appropriate measures. It can then take another
ten years for the full consultative and legal processes, and a further ten years to implement
these changes. It can then take another decade for the natural restoration to take place to
complete the adaptation project (see
Figure 34
). A good example of this is the Thames Bar-
rier, which currently protects London from flooding. It was built in response to the severe
flooding in 1953 but did not open officially until 1984, 31 years later. Since then the UK
Environmental Agency has had a programme of continually upgraded all the flood de-
fences along the River Thames to make the barrier as effective as possible.
