Abstract
We explore the individual and institutional conditions and the climate information used to underpin decision-making for adaptation to high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios in a land resource management context. HECC refers to extreme projections with global annual temperature increases of over 4 °C. We analyse whether HECC scenarios are used in the adaptation decision-making of stakeholders who will tackle the potential problem. We also explore whether the adaptation actions being considered are pertinent only to future climate change or whether other drivers and information types are used in decision-making (including non-climate drivers). We also address the role of knowledge uncertainty in adaptation decision-making. Decision-makers perceive HECC as having a low probability of occurrence and so they do not directly account for HECC within existing actions to address climate change. Such actions focus on incremental rather than transformative solutions in which non-climate drivers are at least as important, and in many cases more important, than climate change alone. This reflects the need to accommodate multiple concerns and low risk options (i.e. incremental change). Uncertainty in climate change information is not a significant barrier to decision-making and stakeholders indicated little need for more climate information in support of adaptation decision-making. There is, however, an identified need for more information about the implications of particular sectoral and cross-sectoral impacts under HECC scenarios. The outcomes of this study provide evidence to assist in contextualising climate change information by creating usable, cross-sectoral, decision-centred information.
Highlights
The committed warming due to the level of greenhouse gases (GHG) currently in the Earth’s atmosphere suggests that achieving the target of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 °C is an ambitious one, and reaching it is not a foregone conclusion
Global emissions of GHG are currently tracking on a high-end trajectory, viz. higher than the most fossil-fuel intensive emissions scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; Jordan et al 2013; IPCC (WGIII) 2014)
Four key themes emerged from the interviews: (1) the use of high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios, (2) the barriers to use of climate change information, (3) socio-economic factors that influence decision-making and 4) the role of uncertainty in decision-making
Summary
The committed warming due to the level of greenhouse gases (GHG) currently in the Earth’s atmosphere suggests that achieving the target of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 °C is an ambitious one, and reaching it is not a foregone conclusion. While intergovernmental emphasis is currently on mitigation of emissions to reach the 1.5 °C target, these EU projects recognise that good risk management involves preparing for higher levels of adaptation than we hope are necessary. Factors that influence individual decision-makers’ adaptation decision-making include cognitive biases and judgement heuristics, which have been shown to affect people’s perceived adaptive capacity irrationally and their risk perception (Grothmann and Patt 2005; Adger et al 2009). One such bias is the Boptimistic bias^ or Bunrealistic optimism^ (Grothmann and Patt 2005; Weinstein 1980). Factors that have been shown to limit adaptation at the organisation level include the following: lack of adequate information about climate change impacts, lack of resources at the local authority level, conflicting interests, negative impacts from existing policies at lower levels of governance, and the difficulty in assessing and implementing adaptation options (Adger et al 2009; Berkhout et al 2006; Crabbé and Robin 2006; Poteete and Ostrom 2004)
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