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Adaptation responses to climate change

Adaptation responses to climate change can be divided into two broad categories: Building Adaptive Capacity (BAC) and Delivering Adaptation Actions (DAA).

Building Adaptive Capacity involves developing an institutional capacity to respond to climate change effectively. Examples of BAC could involve activities such as:

undertaking research, institutional change, education and training;
creating standards and legislation, changing management systems, and developing personnel, or other, resources to cope with, or benefit from, climate changes; and
developing appropriate policies, plans, strategies

Delivering Adaptation Actions is concerned with practical responses to climate change and could include measures such as:

building flood defences or managing retreat
putting more nails in a roof tile, increasing the diameter of a drain
creating 'siesta' times in a business or locality

Note that adaptation actions may involve physical changes and/or changes in process -- the ways in which things are done. Given that physical changes are often costly, it is worth considering whether changes to processes may be a more cost-effective response.

Initially many of your responses are likely to fall into the BAC category. In fact, developing your first Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan itself can be seen as a key element in building the capacity of your authority to adapt to the challenges of a changing climate.

Some general types of adaptation options include:

The most basic option is to do nothing. This may be an appropriate response to low priority impacts or situations where climate risks are outweighed by non-climate factors. In some cases, it may also be appropriate for more significant impacts where no obvious adaptation response can be clearly identified, or where there are prospects that other factors may change future circumstances.
'No regret' options will deliver benefits that exceed their costs, whatever the extent of climate change. These should always be implemented if they exist. For instance, if you are already experiencing weather-related problems, then cost-effective actions to deal with them should be 'no regret' options.
Win-win options are ones that contribute to desired outcomes (be they environmental, social or economic), and also improve your ability to adapt to climate risks. Green roofs, or improvements to urban green spaces could be examples of win-win options.
Low regret options are ones where moderate levels of investment increase the capacity to cope with future climate risks. Typically, these involve over-specifying components in new builds or refurbishment projects. For instance, installing larger diameter drains at the time of construction or refurbishment is likely to be a relatively low cost option compared to having to increase their specification at a later date due to increases in the intensity of rainfall.
Flexible options These are similar to low-regret approaches in that they involve moderate levels of investment to increase the capacity to cope with future climate risks, but in this case they involve measures to make it easier to introduce adaptation measures should they become necessary in future. For instance, designing a new building to allow for the easy fitting of external sun shading, or over specifying the foundations of a flood defence to allow it to be heightened without the need for additional groundwork.

You should, wherever possible:

Avoid actions that will make it more difficult to cope with climate risks
Avoid making decisions that will make it more difficult to manage climate risks in the future.

These are called adaptation constraining decisions. One obvious example is inappropriate development in a flood risk area.