Introducing the main challenges and opportunities of developing local, regional and global strategies for addressing climate change, this book explains the dilemmas faced when converting strategies into policies. Providing a synthesis of the findings of the three-year European Commission ADAM (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies) research project and written by many leading interdisciplinary climate change research teams, European strategies for tackling climate change are placed within a global context.
The book illustrates the differences between adaptation and mitigation, offers regional and global case studies of how adaptation and mitigation are inter-linked, and suggests six different metaphors for the strategic options to make climate change work for us, rather than against us. Offering practical solutions to climate change – both adaptation and mitigation – within the policy contexts in which these solutions have to be implemented, this book is valuable for researchers in varied related fields, as well policymakers in government, industry and NGOs.
List of contributing authors
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Part I. Concepts and Scenarios
1. Climate policy and inter-linkages between adaptation and mitigation Henry Neufeldt
2. Climate change appraisal in the EU: current trends and future challenges Duncan Russell
3. Scenarios as the basis for assessment of mitigation and adaptation Detlef P. van Vuuren
4. National responsibilities for adaptation strategies: lessons from four modelling frameworks Asbjørn Aaheim
5. Learning to adapt: re-framing climate change adaptation Jochen Hinkel
Part II. Strategies Within Europe
6. How do climate policies work? Dilemmas in European climate governance Frans Berkhout
7. Transforming the European energy system Gunnar S. Eskeland
8. A risk management approach for assessing adaptation to changing flood and drought risks in Europe Reinhard Mechler
9. Mainstreaming adaptation in regional land use and water management Saskia E. Werners
Part III. Strategies Beyond Europe
10. Global climate governance after 2012: architecture, agency and adaptation Frank Biermann
11. The economics of low stabilisation: implications for technological change and policy Brigitte Knopf
12. Mainstreaming climate change in development cooperation policy: conditions for success Joyeeta Gupta
13. Insurance as part of a climate adaptation strategy Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer
Part IV. Synthesis
14. What can social science tell us about meeting the challenge of climate change? Five insights from five years that might make a difference Anthony Patt
Appendix A. Description of models
Index
Mike Hulme is Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia and was the Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research from 2000 to 2007. Henry Neufeldt is head of the climate change program of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya. Between 2006 and 2009 he was based in the School of Environmental Sciences at University of East Anglia, and a Senior Research Coordinator in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, where he managed the ADAM project.