Towards a Prioritized Climate Change Management Strategy: A Revisit to Mitigation and Adaptation Policies

Abstract

Scientific evidence shows that climate change is real and its risky impacts are localized in different parts of the world. A critical analysis of past and current climatic trends from an existentialist lens is equally axiomatic to that effect. Countries all over the world particularly developing countries face manifest extreme weather and other climate-related impacts on asymmetric scales. Therefore, it is now patent that climate change reality is no longer a contested global issue. The problem however remains how to effectively manage it. This concern over the years resulted in two major climate policies: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation has popularly received more focus and emphasis, as all countries are required to put their best efforts in combating climate change. This is true even as adaptation was originally perceived to be an inconsequential concept likely to preposterously impede global mitigation efforts. Nonetheless, there is high uncertainty with regards to detectable and measurable result from global efforts in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. More so, differences in climate variability and its impacts question how mitigation policy in a global context can achieve inclusiveness, bearing in mind that climate impacts are locally felt. This study re-examines the relevance of mitigation and adaptation policies in a need-based context and scale of experience of some countries or regions with regards to climate change variability and its impacts. Specifically, it argues that disparities in climate impacts trigger a growing inevitable need demanding a more prioritized reactive adaptation option over mitigation policy for certain countries or regions that are ever extremely vulnerable to climate change. The study adopts a qualitative analysis approach by building its argument on existing literature.