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understanding and provides the theoretical background for action. The aim
is to transcend what superfi cially seems like divergent trends. The study
of global climate change is no exception and features its own dichotomy,
in the two principal, distinct but complementary, strategies which apply in
order to answer its challenges: mitigation and adaptation.
Mitigation and Adaptation
Because it is not always easy to allocate a specifi c activity to either one
of the two strategies, it is particularly important to develop a clear and
unequivocal understanding of the terms as they are used within the context
of the climate change discourse. In fact the often contrary use of the terms
in everyday language as well as in other scientifi c disciplines complicates
the matter. Particularly climate change adaptation runs danger to become
a tautological truth since almost everything can be argued to be somehow
an adaptation to climate change. As we will see by the end of the chapter,
climate change adaptation in mountain regions (but also elsewhere)
addresses a specifi c situation that calls for specifi c types of actions that
must be integrated but not confused with climate change mitigation efforts.
With no doubt, both the artifi cial production of snow and the introduction
of Douglas fi r are successful measures to adapt to changing climate in the
Alps, with the former having negative mitigation outcome (additional
energy demand) (Schmidt et al. 2012), and the latter acting as enhanced
carbon sink and thus contributing to mitigation efforts (van Loo et al. 2012).
Various defi nitions for climate change mitigation and adaptation that
differ in nuances rather than confl icting in their core content have been
put forward by researchers and practitioners (OECD 2006). In an attempt
to present a distillation of these, mitigation can be defi ned as measures
that decrease radiative forcing that leads to global warming by reducing
sources and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gases. Adaptation are measures
that decrease the vulnerability or enhance the capacity to deal with direct
effects of climate variability and climate change in order to avoid harm or
reap its benefi ts.
Mitigation rarely occurs by coincidence. When switching to renewable
energies, developing new mobility concepts, promoting afforestation and
energy effi cient building in most cases mitigation is the stated aim of the
activity rather than a side effect. These activities assume refl ection and
willingness to further the goals of mitigation, to prevent our climate from
further change. Adaptation on the other hand can happen unconsciously,
both by nature and by action. It can range from spontaneous, chaotic and
haphazard to deliberately planned and implemented (for detailed treatment
see (Smit and Wandel 2006, Smit et al. 2000)). Before all adaptation is a
'natural' process inherent in the constant change and co-evolution of
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