Download Activity 2 - Mitigation Versus Adaptation

Activity 2 – Mitigation Versus Adaptation
It’s important to make a distinction between ‘mitigation’ of climate change and ‘adaptation’ to
climate change. Whenever the IPCC presents information to governments, they make it
clear what the distinction is.
Mitigation essentially means trying to stop climate change from happening. The IPCC define
it as follows (anthropogenic means human-led):
‘an anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of
greenhouse gases’ - IPCC (2007, 18.1.2)
Adaptation means making changes to our society so that we can live in a changed climate.
The IPCC defines adaptation as:
‘any adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected
climate stimuli, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities’ - IPCC
(2007, 18.1.2)
Here’s a great place to do some more research:
http://www.unep.org/climatechange/mitigation/
You can also click on the heading for adaptation on the same website as the link above will
take you to mitigation.
In reality, most scientists argue that we need to focus on both. Mitigation is certainly needed
to ensure that the environmental and social costs of adaptation are not too high; in other
words, if we do nothing to stop climate change, then its impacts are likely to be severe.
However, scientists have also concluded that even effective mitigation measures will
struggle to prevent serious environmental impacts as the climate system is subject to lockedin warming; in other words, because humans have been emitting greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere since the 1750s with the Industrial Revolution, we have already done a large
amount of damage and change is inevitable.
The IPCC recognises the need to provide advice to government on mitigation and
adaptation. It is a collection of natural and social scientists, split into three separate groups;
the first looks at the climate science itself (Activity 1), the second looks at adaptation, and
the third covers mitigation. See here for more information:
https://www.ipcc.ch/working_groups/working_groups.shtml
Activity: Think of the different types of Geographers that could work in each of these
panels. Geography is a perfect subject to cover climate change because it is so wideranging. Perhaps you want to do Geography because you are interested in climate change which angle do you want to research it from?