The U.S. State Department unveiled plans earlier this month to commit $50 million to a program that would help some of the world’s poorest nations adapt to climate change. The funds, directed through the Global Environment Facility, would support planning and management of climate-related risks in sectors like health, agriculture, water, and disease.
Adaptation, a process the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines as adjustments to reduce vulnerability or enhance resilience in response to observed or expected changes in, has entered discussion of foreign and domestic climate policy in recent years. While consensus on the best way to mitigate new carbon emissions is elusive, citizens around the world are faced with the reality that existing greenhouse gas emissions are changing their environment—rising sea levels are encroaching on island nations, droughts and floods are altering crop cycles, and changing conditions continue to shift human interaction with the animal world.
Designing and implementing effective adaptation programs requires policymakers to address a host of considerations. Recent and forthcoming work from researchers at RFF delves into some key concepts in domestic and international adaptation policy design.
Information Coordination: International and inter-organizational information coordination will be essential to ensuring adaptation programs are operating effectively and not undermining one another. To aid policymakers, researchers, NGOs, and others in maximizing the benefits of their adaptation dollars, researchers at Resources for the Future have begun work on The Global Adaptation Atlas.
A dynamic, online database the Adaptation Atlas will provide the best-available natural and social science data to inform the design and funding of adaptation efforts around the world.
Coordination of Regulatory Regimes: Many climate change impacts are not new, but they will challenge public institutions in new ways. Major reforms are necessary to ensure an effective federal response to adaptation.
At a recent RFF First Wednesday Seminar a panel of experts gathered to discuss likely effects of climate change on terrestrial and marine ecosystems, freshwater, and the built environment in the U.S., and steps policymakers at the local, state, and federal level should take to reduce the vulnerability of these resources.
Research and Information: Mitigation has been the centerpiece of climate policy for several decades; adaptation is a fairly new consideration. RFF is helping fill this research gap with a major adaptation project supported by the Smith-Richardson Foundation. In the coming weeks, RFF will release a series of reports on climate change impacts and domestic adaptation from the first phase of this project. The second phase, currently under way, will offer specific adaptation policy recommendations on reforming institutions and managing extremes.
