Earth Today | Researchers advance priority areas for insight into climate readiness
Published:Thursday | January 6, 2022 | 12:09 AM
A GLOBAL network of researchers has flagged eight areas for prioritisation in adaptation research, as the world braces for continued climate change impacts – from increases in temperature to extreme weather events and the varied risks to lives and livelihoods.
The group of 126 researchers, including The University of the West Indies’ Dr Donovan Campbell of the Department of Geography and Geology, Mona, and Dr Aidan Farrell of the Department of Life Sciences, St Augustine campus, recently did a stocktake of evidence of human adaptation to climate change.
From their assessment of more than 1,600 articles, they concluded, among other things, that “few studies attempt to assess outcome measures” from adaptation, which is any adjustment in ecological, social or economic systems, made in response to actual or anticipated climate impacts. These include changes in “processes, practices and structures”, whether to blunt potential damage or otherwise, to benefit from any opportunities that may arise.
“Ultimately, and in most cases,” the researchers explained, “adaptation success results in avoided harm at some point in the future. This is intrinsically difficult to measure, but it is possible to assess change in climatological, ecological and human health outcome variables, such as flood damage, crop yield and health impacts. Introducing effective monitoring of these variables at the start of adaptation programmes, ideally in a comparative way with counterfactuals, would allow assessment of the response effectiveness, and at least observed, current benefits.”
Also required is financing to do the work.
“Dedicated funding, training, monitoring and research streams are needed to overcome barriers to the development and implementation of frameworks for effectiveness assessments. There is considerable potential to draw on existing tools, such as theories of change, and from synthesising insights from evaluations in the non-academic literature to increase the consideration of how responses are affecting transitions towards risk reduction and minimising the risk of maladaptation,” they noted.
Further, they said there is need for enhanced understanding of limits to adaptation as well as adaptation adequacy.
“A precautionary approach and limited available evidence suggest that we assume our current response is inadequate. More research is needed to understand why complacency persists and why we are not learning how to overcome well-known barriers to adaptation. An assessment of transformational adaptation is an imperfect but useful tool to gauge progress on adaptation across scales,” the researchers explained.
Beyond that, they have put on the table the need to “enable individuals and civil society” for “autonomous adaptation by individuals and households, particularly in the Global South”; as well as for efforts to understand private sector responses while also addressing gaps in scholarship in parts of the world such as Central and South America, Central Asia and North Africa “where vulnerability is high, but adaptation research is comparatively sparse”.
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The assessment of adaptation at different temperature thresholds; the integration of varied forms of research for more robust insight into adaptation interventions; and the inclusion of long-term assessments to inform policy are also recommended.
Climate change impacts are being felt in several parts of the world, including in the Caribbean where recent extreme hurricane events together with the continued warming of the planet, among other observed changes, are seen as troubling indications of what is to come.
Adaptation – a key negotiating point at the United Nations climate talks held in Glasgow, Scotland, last year – is seen as critical to the preservation of lives and livelihoods for small-island developing states and has been championed by many, including members of the scientific community.
“There is undoubtedly a need to emphasise mitigation, since it is the only way to achieve 1.5 or under two degrees Celsius (of global warming). Every additional degree of warming is further bad news for a relook at finance flows ahead of the Glasgow talks,” explained respected climate scientist, Professor Michael Taylor, in making the case for a relook at finance flows ahead of the talks last year.
“However, to do so and not equally consider adaptation is a mistake. On the one hand, mitigation funding has an inherent bias towards resourcing and almost incentivising major emitters (to reduce). So, if done at the expense of those most impacted by those emissions, that is, the most vulnerable countries like the Caribbean, there is a sense of perpetuated inequity,” he explained.