Adapting to climate change impacts when opportunity knocks

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report presents incontrovertible evidence of ongoing and accelerating severe adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change. There is also little dispute that with continued unavoidable climate change there is urgency to implement adaptation measures alongside essential mitigation actions. However, it is also the case that not all impacts of climate change are necessarily adverse; some may be regarded as beneficial.

Of course, interpretation of what constitutes beneficial or adverse impacts and for whom is entirely context-specific and circumstantial. An example is the Arctic, where substantial economic opportunities for some (e.g., mineral exploitation, shipping routes and tourism) intersect incalculable risks for many others (e.g., Indigenous communities, national geopolitical, economic and military security, displaced populations, habitat and species loss, environmental pollution). 

In this presentation I will argue that alongside essential studies of risk, it is also important to improve understanding of potentially beneficial impacts of a changing climate. This can inform adaptive responses for realising such opportunities in a sustainable and socially just manner. The example of the exploitation of Arctic sea ice retreat reminds us that, without further scrutiny of often commercially-driven and poorly regulated adaptation measures already being implemented in response to opportunities for some, the emergence of new inequities and risks would seem to be inevitable outcomes for many others (i.e., maladaptation), which may jeopardise progress towards the types of just and sustainable outcomes that might otherwise be achievable.

I will present examples from the few assessments that have addressed potential benefits. These reveal several unique research needs for informing adaptation, including: systematic analysis of the beneficial impacts of climate change; cataloguing of adaptation that has already occurred to realise opportunities; examination of the distributional aspects of potential benefits and possible associated risks when adapting to these; widened consideration of social justice in adaptation policy and practice to account for beneficial impacts; improved understanding of values and norms concerning adaptation effectiveness; investigation of interdependencies and trade offs between opportunities and risks under different scenarios; identification of barriers and enablers for adapting to realise opportunities; and use of consistent and agreed terminology concerning opportunities.

I contend that the IPCC Risk Framework commonly adopted to formulate climate change adaptation policy, focused on adverse impacts and precaution, may inadvertently be constraining important research on adapting to potentially beneficial impacts of climate change. In its place, I propose a more inclusive research framework for informing adaptation science. This integrates the analysis of potential impacts (including risks and opportunities) with two other elements: consideration of social justice and future visioning using hybrid scenarios. It would be important that the research associated with such inclusive framing be initiated urgently, so that results are available to feed into assessment processes such as the IPCC and policy processes serving adaptation planning. The analytical framework itself would also need to be properly articulated in order to feed into updated technical guidelines for assessing climate change impacts and adaptation being prepared as part of the IPCC AR7.