Vulnerability and Adaptation

The impacts of climate change are already upon us, and are likely to grow more serious even under the most optimistic mitigation scenarios. Given the high vulnerability of poor communities to the impacts of climate change, and the threats posed by global warming to the provision by ecosystems of critical services, efforts to adapt to the changing climate are intricately tied up in the broader challenges of development and ecosystem management.

The response to climate change will overlap heavily with traditional development concerns. A significant increase in the resources dedicated to sustainable development will be needed, since climate impacts are raising the costs of economic development and environmental protection efforts that are already under-resourced. Moreover, effective adaptation calls for the “mainstreaming” of climate responses into a wide range of planning and management processes. This means finding new ways to transcend institutional boundaries, bring together diverse stakeholders, and incorporate complex information into decision-making.

Strategy

National development policies that take the changing climate into account will provide an essential foundation for enabling effective action on adaptation. WRI’s Vulnerability and Adaptation (V&A) project tackles questions of how policy design can respond to the range of challenges raised by climate vulnerability.

Some of these questions include:

• Are all adaptation activities a subset of sustainable development, or are there actions that are specifically needed to reduce vulnerability to climate change?
• What processes are needed to integrate adaptation to climate change into national development plans?
• What information and institutions are required to promote adaptation activities?
• Once adaptation activities are implemented, how can progress be monitored?
• How can synergies between adaptation and mitigation be captured in national plans?

Working with partners in key developing countries, WRI will:

• Identify national policy elements that implement adaptive measures in infrastructural investments and development decisions
• Prevent the “maladaptation” potentially associated with the uncoordinated or contradictory action in different sectors or government agencies
• Provide local communities with the information and resources they need to take effective action to protect their livelihoods and ecosystems from the effects of climate change

Project Links

• Vulnerability & Adaptation Case Study Database