Adaptation to climate change: A new paradigm for action or just old wine in new skins?

摘要

Climate change is affecting all social groups and all economic sectors. The main societal response options are generally categorized into mitigation of climate change, which refers to constraining the amount and magnitude of climate change by reducing anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases or enhancing their sinks, and adaptation, which comprises a wide range of measures by public and private actors to reduce the adverse impacts of current and future climate change. Both mitigation and adaptation will affect the economic and environmental conditions for architects and engineers, including reliability engineers. This paper explains key adaptation concepts, outlines key scientific and policy questions regarding adaptation and highlights some challenges for implementation, with a particular focus on reliability engineering. Adaptation to climate change includes many well-established practices from, e.g., disaster risk management, coastal management, natural resource management, spatial and urban planning, public health, and agricultural outreach. Thus, most activities considered in adaptation to climate change are not completely new. At the same time, adaptation to climate change is characterized by several unprecedented challenges and opportunities, including new hazards, new opportunities for action, new methodological challenges, new actors, and new ethical questions. As a result, effective adaptation requires close collaboration between scientists, policy analysts, policy-makers, and practitioners from public and private institutions. Responding to the rhetorical question from the title, this paper concludes that even though adaptation to climate change can often build on existing activities, it comprises much more than just old wine in new skins.