Abstract
The Paris Agreement requires measurement of the progress made on adaptation. Tracking the progress made by governments through analysis of policies provides insight into the goals and means to achieve adaptation targets. Here we show the current state-of-the-art in public adaptation planning affecting 136 of the largest coastal port urban agglomerations, covering 68 countries. We identify 226 adaptation policies: 88 at national level, 57 at regional/state level and 81 at city/metropolitan level. This set of adaptation policies can be considered the latest, most up-to-date database of governmental and public-led adaptations. Our analyses show that (1) in one half of cases, there is no evidence of policy implementation, (2) in almost 85% of cases, planned adaptation actions are not driven by present or future climatic impacts or risks, and (3) formal adaptation planning is relatively recent and is concentrated in more developed areas and countries.
Highlights
Tracking adaptation is needed to identify who is adapting to what, when, where and why; to understand the efficiency of assigned resources and to adjust adaptation planning given that information (Ford et al 2015, Magnan 2016, Magnan and Ribera 2016, Lesnikowski et al 2017, Tompkins et al 2018)
Our analyses show that (1) in one half of cases, there is no evidence of policy implementation, (2) in almost 85% of cases, planned adaptation actions are not driven by present or future climatic impacts or risks, and (3) formal adaptation planning is relatively recent and is concentrated in more developed areas and countries
These factors contribute to the messiness of adaptation tracking-related research (Ford et al 2015) which is currently characterised by non-robust methodologies and insufficient comparable data sources, leading to a lack of consistent guidance (Ford et al 2015, Ford and Berrang-Ford 2015, Biesbroek et al 2018, Tompkins et al 2018, Berrang-Ford et al 2019)
Summary
Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Marta Olazabal1,5 , Maria Ruiz de Gopegui1, Emma L Tompkins2, Kayin Venner3 and Rachel Smith4 Keywords: adaptation tracking, Paris agreement, adaptation policy and planning, public policy, coastal adaptation, global adaptation stocktake
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