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31
Recommendations
The recommendations about impacts and adaptations are grouped
into three classes. The classes were defined by the panel, and in
its judgment the recommendations within the three classes are
justified by the assumptions, analyses, and findings stated
throughout its report. The first class concerns information and
analysis, getting the facts straight and sharing them with people
who must decide how hard to try to stop the climate from changing
and how to adapt. The second class refers to improving rules and
building institutional strength. This is the organizational
framework for action. The final class is specific actions requiring
investment of hard cash now or soon in ways to reduce future harm
and aid adaptation.
Improve Information and Analysis
Assess Actual Climatic Impacts
Understanding the impacts of climate now and in the past is the
bedrock on which analyses about the future must rest. Every year
there are droughts, heat waves, severe storms, and all the other
phenomena that are expected to change frequency or location in the
future. Understanding how strongly our economy and environment are
affected by climate now and how they are changing over time is
necessary to help in making decisions about the scale and direction
of investments.
Perform Research and Development
on
Adaptation for Climate Change
The spectrum of effort from basic research to development needs
to be directed at climatic sensitivities, impacts, and adaptation.
Both studies of
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contemporary analogues of future climate changes and studies
that are based on scenarios generated by numerical models can be
useful. Studies are needed of such subjects as water and
ecosystems, and they should be integrated to create a larger,
coherent picture. Social, demographic, economic, and ecological
data for both the United States and other countries need to be
improved to aid impact assessments and adaptations.
Although estimates of impact and suggestions of adaptation
abound, many suffer from four shortcomings. First, they may assess,
say, the fall in yield of 1990 wheat caused by a 1°C warming in
2030, ignoring the proven adaptability of farmers, who will not
behave in 2030 just as they do in 1990 if their environment has
changed. Second, the studies may ignore technological changes, such
as improved wheat strains. Third, the assessments are usually made
without regard for the background of other changes that will affect
impacts, for example, how markets for food products are changing
and how production is shifting around the world from one region to
another because of changes in comparative advantage. Fourth,
suggestions of adaptations may fail to anticipate such side effects
as salinity from irrigation.
Similar issues arise in impact studies of unmanaged ecosystems,
which often study the response of a single species, neglecting the
impact of other blows, such as chemical pollution, and amidst the
competition and contributions of other species that grow with it.
How will one species succeed another as the system adjusts at a
place? How will a system of plants and animals migrate if climatic
zones shift over half a century?
Many studies of adaptation must be conducted outdoors and in the
current climate. The need for specialized research and development
concerned with changing climate is moderated by the fact that the
climates that may be experienced in 2030 are, for the most part,
climates that are today being experienced somewhere, probably
nearby. If the climate of Nebraska is going to become like that in
Oklahoma today, experiments in Oklahoma fields now help later
adaptation in Nebraska. Nevertheless, keeping in mind knowledge
from simplified and controlled experiments and searching for global
principles rather than catalogs of empiricisms, scientists must
learn how disparate, entire systems of species live and
reconstitute themselves outside as the environment, especially the
concentration of CO2, changes.
Analysis must include so-called pests whose depredations depend on
the quality of the host and environment and alter the outcome
outdoors. For crop varieties a sound strategy continues to be
maintaining diverse strains and adapting them to the weather of the
current decade, because the climate of the next decade will not be
vastly different, even if climate is changing over a century, and
because the useful economic life of a cultivar is only about a
decade. It will be useful to demonstrate in the reality of outdoors
how to shorten long renewal times so that man-made things can be,
and natural things will be, promptly adapted to climate.
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Monitor the Climate and Forecast the
Weather
Monitoring the current climate and disseminating information
about it can aid adaptation. It is useful for people to know if
climate is already changing and how. For adaptation, monitoring of
the air, streams, and seasonal events in individual localities is
what matters. In Chapter 35 we have identified indicators of
particular use. Monitoring global and regional climate is also
necessary to test predictions of future climate, as discussed by
the Effects Panel (Part Two).
Weather forecasts aid adaptation. Improved forecasts on all time
scales, from hours to weeks and seasons, help. If warned a few days
ahead where and when a hurricane or frost will strike, people can
retreat from the shore or buy fuel to warm an orchard. If people
know a few weeks ahead whether the season will be dry, they can
choose the appropriate crop or store water. Accurate forecasts make
all climates safer and more productive.
Since the modern science of meteorology began a century ago,
forecasting has gradually improved, and there are reasons to be
confident that further improvements can be achieved. In the
greenhouse issue, the United States and other nations should find
strong, sustained motivation to improve forecasting and the data
and research that make the forecasting possible. The quality of
weather analyses and forecasts in many poor countries, especially
in the tropics, is markedly lower than in industrial countries,
particularly in the northern hemisphere. Advances in numerical
modeling and extension of technology for monitoring in tropical
regions can cause improvements.
Improve Institutions
Consider Efforts to Advance Regional
Mobility of People, Capital, and Goods
Expanding the territory over which impacts are absorbed and
adaptations can occur has historically been a major way to lessen
the adverse consequences of climate and weather. For example, food
shortage is a greater risk in societies that rely only on local
supplies than in those that draw their food from wide areas.
Countries vary greatly in their expanse and the range of climates
that they encompass, and the ones that are diverse in climate and
economic activity are more able to adapt to climate changes.
In general, the questions about opening borders to goods,
capital, and people are highly political, raising issues far beyond
concerns about future climate change. Nonetheless, we can remind
ourselves that larger agglomerations are more robust and able to
adapt to climate change than are smaller units. More open and freer
trade in goods and capital by themselves will
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enhance the ability of countries to absorb climate shocks; in a
regime of free trade, countries that lose comparative advantage in
one climate-sensitive industry (e.g., timber produced in frosty
climes) can move to other industries (e.g., fruits produced in
warmer climes) and be ensured that markets will be available.
Although freer trade in goods has increased in the last
half-century, nations have been increasingly reluctant to allow
free migration of people. Countries with roughly the same living
standards, however, may find it in their long-run economic
interests to consider regional agreements for freer migration. The
European Community constitutes an enormous climatic region and
during this decade will move to a policy of free internal mobility
of its laborers. In the years to come, the major challenge will be
to deal with the flows of refugees, and if climate change becomes
swift, nations may need to consider how to cope with large numbers
of environmental refugees.
Build Effective Government
All adaptive strategies will benefit from administrative
capability. In a country like the United States, the establishment
and strengthening of agencies like the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the
Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service, and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency have been integral aspects of
adaptation to climate. In a rapidly changing climate in the United
States, their missions would become even more important. Making
such agencies as effective and informed as possible will facilitate
adaptation.
While some governments have developed the institutional means to
adapt to harvest failures and floods, the governments of countries
that are most vulnerable to climate change should take steps now to
enhance the capacity of relevant organizations.
Effective government will be useful in the face of climate
change not only at the national level but at the local and at the
intergovernmental levels as well. Well-administered agencies at the
international level in disaster and famine relief, as well as in
meteorology and environmental protection, will facilitate
adaptation. Thus, we recommend continuing and increasing U.S.
support for the World Meteorological Organization, the World
Climate Program, the United Nations Environment Program, and other
relevant organizations.
Promote Markets
In societies like the United States, most adaptation to changing
climate takes place through decentralized individual reactions to
social, economic,
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and political signals. When a war reduces the availability of
oil, requiring a reduction in oil consumption, society adjusts
primarily as individuals reduce their consumption in the face of
higher prices and lower incomes. When changing climate or shifting
patterns of comparative advantage shift the relative productivity
of different regions, individuals adapt—changing cultivars,
occupations, or even residences—primarily in response to
signals of prices and incomes. However, where market signals are
impeded (such as with price controls or in nonmarket economies),
adaptation to changing environments is slowed.
In general, adaptation will be speeded if market signals,
primarily prices, reflect changing conditions quickly. Where
feasible, governments should work to improve markets, particularly
where price signals are missing or misleading.
Outside the United States, particularly in nonmarket economies,
the opportunity for market mechanisms to signal climate change is
large. Many countries insulate their farm prices from world prices,
slowing adjustment and increasing waste.
For the United States, particular concerns are water systems,
risk, and environmental externalities. Here and in many other
nations, water is allocated largely by water rights. By encouraging
water auctions or market-based transfers, while remembering the
public and environmental good, governments can prepare to adjust to
new climates and water resources. Water markets can allow water to
be used where it is most valuable. Also, if runoff changes, the
market signals will evoke an efficient adaptation of its use.
Other concerns are risk and environmental externalities. Today,
some insurance premiums do not reflect climate risks in areas
subject to natural disasters. If premiums did, decisions about
where to locate and what to build might be more logical. In
addition, improved pricing of environmental externalities could
help businesses decide better about adapting to climate change.
Improve Investments
Adaptations can be made in anticipation of climate change,
simultaneously with it or after it. In these recommendations, we
emphasize anticipatory adaptation, since, for the most part,
impacts lie some decades in the future. Deciding whether to adapt
now or to wait will depend on such factors as the length of time
until an adaptation is needed, the probability that it will be
needed, the discount rate, and the cost of the adaptation now
relative to later.
For example, anticipatory adaptation would be justified in a
situation where the effects of climate change would be produced
within 50 years, the
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probability of climate change was at least 0.4, the uninflated
discount rate was no more than 3 percent per year, and the cost of
future adaptation (retrofit) was at least 10 times the cost of
acting now. Possible worthwhile investments in anticipation of
climate change are discussed below.
Preserve Biological Diversity
Biological diversity is a natural protection against surprises
and shocks, climatic and otherwise. Among diverse species will be
some adapted to prosper in a new landscape in new circumstances. In
diverse species can be found genes to make crops prosper. So for
security, preserving and encouraging biological diversity is
recommended. This preservation should include varieties of
commercial crops, wild relatives of these crops, and other species
that so far lack values in current markets.
The unmanaged systems of plants and animals that are much of our
landscape and oceans have a problematic future because of many
man-made hazards. The anguish about these hazards arises in part
from fears about risky consequences of the transformations and in
part from doubting the righteousness of our dominion over living
things and the goodness of our stewardship.
To date, most conservation efforts have assumed constant
climates. If climate changes, existing reserves may become
unsuitable for species currently living there, and landscape
fragmentation may make migration more difficult. Therefore,
conservation efforts need to give more attention to corridors for
movement, to assisting species to surmount barriers, and to
maintaining species when their natural environments are threatened.
Expenditures for reserving land are an example of an investment
that is likely to have a lower cost now than in the future and that
keeps options open. At present, the potential for human
intervention to ease adaptation in marine ecosystems seems
limited.
Cope with Present Variability
Today droughts and floods, cold snaps and heat waves, all take
tolls. Whereas justifying costly adaptations now for specified
future climates is hard because the climate may never come while we
pay interest for decades, the current fickleness of weather is sure
and now. We thus recommend investments now to adapt to climate
variability through such acts as improved insulation, better
disaster management, and control of low coastal areas. Water supply
is already sensitive to the variability of today's climate.
Diversifying water supply over sources like streams and aquifers,
over space and political boundaries by connections, and through
time by storage and conservation increases reliability during
changing climate.
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Remember Long-Lived Facilities and
Preservation of Heritage
When long-lived facilities are being planned or infrastructure
is being renovated or replaced, investment in anticipatory
adaptation is most likely to be justified. The method presented in
Chapter 33, the section ''Making Decisions in an Uncertain World,"
illustrates the thinking needed for decisions about incorporating
the possibility of climatic change into design. Such methods need
to be elaborated.
It is not only functional facilities such as airports and water
supply systems that may warrant modification or protection for the
contingency of climate change. Every culture treasures buildings,
neighborhoods, monuments, and other features of its heritage that
may be affected by changing climate or rising seas. These
structures in some cases have survived hundreds or thousands of
years. Climate change joins a long list of threats to conservation
of our physical and cultural heritage. Studies need to be
undertaken in this area. It can be expected that investments will
be justified to assure the longevity of our cultural heritage in
the face of climate change.
Help Others
People in industrial countries with diversified economies are
best equipped to cope with the vagaries of climate change. By
developing the necessary technology, they have found how to survive
and flourish in almost all climates. By contrast, people in poor
and small countries often have difficulty in adapting to even minor
environmental hazards. Their primary need is for the development of
strong and diverse economies when this can be done. But this cannot
be achieved quickly. As we share a global interest in adaptation to
climate change, we need to help others by finding means and setting
conditions in which to transfer resources, knowledge, and
technology and to ensure that the recipients can make good use of
them.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
future climate
