Cross-sectoral interactions of adaptation and mitigation measures

Abstract

Adaptation and mitigation are complementary strategies for addressing the impacts of climate change, yet are often considered separately. This paper examines the literature for evidence of the interactions of adaptation and mitigation measures across the agriculture, biodiversity, coasts, forests, urban and water sectors, focusing on Europe. It found that often adaptation and mitigation synergies and conflicts were not explicitly mentioned within a sector, let alone between sectors. Most measures, however, were found to have an effect on another sector, resulting in neutral, positive (synergies) or negative (conflicts) interactions within and between sectors. Many positive cross-sectoral interactions involved biodiversity or water and thus these could represent good starting places for the implementation of integrated, cross-sectoral strategies. Previous studies suggest that adaptation and mitigation are undertaken on different time and geographical scales; this study found many local scale measures which could facilitate integration between both adaptation and mitigation. It is important that cross-sectoral interaction of adaptation and mitigation measures are explicitly recognised if they are to be mainstreamed into policy, so that positive outcomes are enhanced and unintended consequences avoided.

Integrated assessment of China’s agricultural vulnerability to climate change: a multi-indicator approach

“…The most direct and urgent task is to implement effective adaptation options to enhance local adaptive ability and reduce the adverse impacts of climate change on crop yield. Adaptation strategies and measures that have synergies with mitigation will be important, as they are environmentally and economically more efficient (Berry et al 2014a;Fig. 3 Geographic distribution of agricultural adaptive capacity to climate change in China for the year 2010 Skourtos et al 2014).…”

Defining transformative climate science to address high-end climate change

“…by promoting the institutionalisation of multiple networks working on systemic innovation and win-win solutions; (ii) Consider how to redistribute long-term responsibilities accordingly (see Dangerman & Schellnhuber 2013;Tàbara et al 2010); (iii) Move away from the development of climate policy narratives about additional costs, impacts, and burdensharing to those focused on opportunities ; and (iv) Focus new climate assessment processes on solutions that are able to yield multiplicative, non-linear, and systemic effects in contrast to the traditional additive, wedge-based, or single-sector/scale approaches (see Berry et al 2015;Kates et al 2012;Wiek et al 2012).…”

About mitigation, adaptation and the UNFCCC’s 21st Conference of the Parties

“…And yet, it has been noted that mitigation and adaptation measures influence each other in complicated ways, requiring integrative approaches that also take into account their tradeoffs, conflicts and disconnections (MOSER, 2012). For example, actions and measures may present different spatial and temporal scales (BERRY et al, 2015) or may involve different social groups within a country, or even different countries (e.g. AYERS; HUQ, 2009;DE SHERBININ et al, 2011, p. 456).…”