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Climate pp 157-168 | Cite as

Adaptation to Climate Change

More Than Technology
Conference paper
First Online:
Part of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security book series (NAPSC)

Abstract

The traditional view of adaptation to climate change tends to assume that a national government is responsible for implementing technological adaptation measures (e.g., seeds, dams, irrigation schemes), which are selected on the basis of specific knowledge of future climate conditions. This view has been widely challenged but is still prevalent within sectors dominated by engineering, such as water and coastal management. The purpose of this chapter is to show that while technology has an important part to play in climate adaptation, its effectiveness relies on it being part of a broader strategy that acknowledges uncertainty and addresses the underlying drivers of people’s current and future vulnerability. Such a strategy requires the integration of adaptation with human and economic development efforts.

Keywords

Climate Change Climate Adaptation Future Climate Condition Hard Structure Coastal Hazard 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgements

Research presented in this paper contributes to the Nordic Centre of Excellence for Strategic Adaptation Research (NORD-STAR), which is funded by the Norden Top-level Research Initiative sub-programme ‘Effect Studies and Adaptation to Climate Change’. It is based on a presentation to the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Climate Change Adaptation and Security, which took place in Hella, Iceland, on 6–10 June 2010. The author thanks the workshop organizers for the opportunity to present, and the workshop participants for their constructive comments and suggestions. This chapter combines insights from four previous publications [17, 18, 19, 21]. The author thanks the co-authors of those publications for their contributions.

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© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Stockholm Environment Institute and Linköping UniversityStockholmSweden

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