After the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009, it is more obvious than ever that adaptation to climate change is inevitable. Both the scientific and the policy communities will have to devote more attention to the issue of adaptation in the coming years. In this special issue, we focus on the tools and approaches that will be needed to meet the challenge of adaptation to climate change. This special issue is based on papers presented at a session at the Climate Change Congress held in Copenhagen in March 2009, which aimed to synthesize the current state of scientific knowledge on the issue of climate change as an input to the deliberations that were to take place at the end of the same year. Several important questions were addressed in the session and are examined in more detail here: What methods and tools are available to support adaptation decisions and also contribute to sustainable development? What kind of information and what communication channels are needed for adaptation decisions to be made in good time and in the right place? What general approaches to research and development are needed given the wide range of stakeholders to be involved and their diverse interests to be respected in adaptation measures? As pointed out by Banaszak and colleagues (in this issue), different people have different perceptions of the risks that they are facing and this leads to conflicts related to the implementation of adaptation measures. People filter the information that they receive about a risk through preexisting mental models, which cannot be changed easily. Groups of individuals sharing the same models are better able to communicate with each other and share their learning, while communication with groups with a different mental model is more difficult. Extreme events appear to provide opportunities to stimulate changes of mental models. Furthermore, participation both in decision-making and in reaping the benefits of action can also lead to such changes. The topic of ‘‘mental models’’ is also a focus of the paper by Valkering et al. (this issue), who use a multipleperspective approach as part of participatory scenario development. Taking the different perspectives of actors into account can contribute to more robust and flexible strategies for climate change adaptation. Valkering et al. show that during the process, the perspectives can change, for example as a result of context developments or learning among the participants. A change of perspective means that either the participants change their position or the dominance of particular perspectives shifts. An example is presented for climate change adaptation in the Netherlands. The results demonstrate the learning that took place when the perspectives approach was used. A comprehensive approach to provide decision support for adaptation is presented by Daniell and colleagues (in this issue), who note the need for capacity building and coordination over multiple governance levels. In addition to illustrating the variety of multilevel processes and the different actor groups engaged at each level, they also show the multitude of different policy domains that affect the adaptation to climate change (e.g. land use, water, transport and energy policy). Adaptation to climate change requires coordination over multiple levels of governance to arrive at acceptable local, regional and global management J. Jager (&) Vienna, Austria e-mail: jill.jaeger@speed.at
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Jun 1, 2011
Anna Dubel + 3
Open Access