A systematic global stocktake of evidence on human adaptation to climate changeAssessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of responses.

There is emerging evidence of the important role of indigenous knowledge for climate change adaptation. The necessity to consider different knowledge systems in climate change research has been established in the fifth assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, gaps in author expertise and inconsistent assessment by the IPCC lead to a regionally heterogeneous and thematically generic coverage of the topic. We conducted a scoping review of peer-reviewed academic literature to support better integration of the existing and emerging research on indigenous knowledge in IPCC assessments. The research question underpinning this scoping review is: How is evidence of indigenous knowledge on climate change adaptation geographically and thematically distributed in the peer-reviewed academic literature? As the first systematic global evidence map of indigenous knowledge in the climate adaptation literature, the study provides an overview of the evidence of indigenous knowledge for adaptation across regions and categorises relevant concepts related to indigenous knowledge and their contexts in the climate change literature across disciplines. The results show knowledge clusters around tropical rural areas, subtropics, drylands, and adaptation through planning and practice and behavioural measures. Knowledge gaps include research in northern and central Africa, northern Asia, South America, Australia, urban areas, and adaptation through capacity building, as well as institutional and psychological adaptation. This review supports the assessment of indigenous knowledge in the IPCC AR6 and also provides a basis for follow-up research, e.g. bibliometric analysis, primary research of underrepresented regions, and review of grey literature.

No abstract

Sea level rise and extreme weather events threaten the livelihoods and possibly the long-term existence of whole island nations. While the media, policy, and often scientific arenas essentially focus their attention on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which are widely recognised as hotspots of global climate change, the situation of the numerous other vulnerable island territories has been relatively neglected. As a result, the focus on SIDS has paved the way for mainstream adaptation research and, in turn, for biases in the interpretation of climate change vulnerability and risks of small islands in general. Here, we argue that such an overly narrow scope severely limits our understanding of island-specific issues that influence island societies' adaptability to on-going and future climate change. This article reviews the current perspective on challenges and opportunities for climate change adaptation on SIDS and compares it with other types of island territories, especially dependent islands of continental states and semi-autonomous sub-national island jurisdictions (SNIJ). This comparison reveals that despite critical socio-political differences between the respective island types, more general lessons can be learned as island territories at large face similar issues both regarding the drivers of vulnerability and exposure and the adaptation measures needed. We propose an analytical framework for looking 'beyond SIDS' that includes the recognition of critical issues (asymmetrical governance structures, archipelagic constellations, inter-island connections) that shape island societies' vulnerability and leeway for adaptation to climate-related hazards.