6.9B - Adaptation Strategies
Adaptation strategies for a changed climate (water conservation and management, resilient agricultural systems, land-use planning, flood-risk management, solar radiation management) having different costs and risks
Water Conservation and Management
Benefits
- Fewer resources used, less groundwater abstraction
- Attitudinal change operates on a long-term basis: use more grey (recycled) water
- Efficiency and conservation cannot match increased demands for water
- Changing cultural habits of a large water footprint needs promotion and enforcement by governments, e.g. smart meters
Resilient Agricultural Systems
Benefits
- Higher-tech, drought-tolerant species help resistance to climate change and increase in diseases
- Low-tech measures and better practices generate healthier soils and may help carbon dioxide sequestration and water storage: selective irrigation, mulching, cover crops, crop rotation, reduced ploughing, agroforestry.
- More 'indoor' intensive farming
- More expensive technology, seeds and breeds unavailable to poor subsistence farmers without aid
- High energy costs from indoor and intensive farming
- Genetic modification is still debated, but frequently used to crease resistant strains, e.g. rice and soya
- Growing food insecurity in many places adds pressure to find 'quick fixes'
Land-use Planning
Benefits
- Soft management: land-use zoning, building restrictions in vulnerable flood plains and low-lying coasts
- Enforcing strict runoff controls and soakaways
- Public antipathy
- Abandoning high-risk areas and land-use resettling is often unfeasible, as in megacities such as Dhaka, Bangladesh or Tokyo-Yokohama
- A political 'hot potato'
- Needs strong governance, enforcement and compensation
Flood-Risk Management
Benefits
Costs and Risks
- Hard-management traditionally used: localised flood defences, river dredging
- Simple changes can reduce flood risk, e.g. permeable tarmac
- Reduced deforestation and more afforestation upstream to absorb water and reduce downstream flood risk
Costs and Risks
- Debate over funding sources, especially in times of economic austerity
- Land owners may demand compensation for afforestation or 'sacrificial land' kept for flooding
- Constant maintenance is needed in hard management, e.g. dredging; lapses of management can increase risk
- Ingrained culture of 'techno-centric fixes': a disbelief that technology cannot overcome natural processes
Solar Radiation Management
Benefits
Four of these strategies involve a mix of soft- and hard-engineering actions. Some of those actions are low in technology and upfront costs and so, in theory, are possible options for developing countries. A change in traditional practices and customs is often required here. However, there are also actions requiring high inputs of capital and technology that only developed countries can contemplate. The whole of the solar radiation management strategy clearly falls into this category.
- Geoengineering involves ideas and plans to deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming
- The proposal is to use orbiting satellites to reflect some inward radiation back into space, rather like a giant sunshade
- It could cool the Earth within months and be relatively cheap compared with mitigation
- Untried and untested
- Would reduce but not eliminate the worst effects of GHGs: for example, it would not alter acidification
- Involves tinkering with a very complex system, which might have unintended consequences or externalities
- Would need to continue geoengineering for decades or centuries as there would be a rapid adjustment in the climate system if SRM stopped suddenly
Four of these strategies involve a mix of soft- and hard-engineering actions. Some of those actions are low in technology and upfront costs and so, in theory, are possible options for developing countries. A change in traditional practices and customs is often required here. However, there are also actions requiring high inputs of capital and technology that only developed countries can contemplate. The whole of the solar radiation management strategy clearly falls into this category.