Adaptation or Mitigation

By: Bikal Dhungel 

Climate Change is real, it is visible everywhere and we have no option but to take action either to adapt with Climate Change or mitigate it. Adaptation means learning to cope with it, learning to live with it and mitigating means reducing the impact of this. Both of them are not simple and easy. Both costs a lot of money and without a global cooperation, it is impossible to reduce the risk of climate change. However, it is everything but an easy task to agree on issues related to Climate Change. All the climate negotiations in the last years and decades have failed to agree on 'common but differentiated responsibility'. For most of the developed countries, especially Western Europe, there is a strong willingness to pay for climate change, however, the US is not so flexible. Developing countries on the other hand do not want to compromise their economic growth for climate. They argue that the current level of CO2 emission was caused by rich countries in the previous two centuries, not by them and that is why, they do not want to bear the cost and not at the cost of their growth. Growth is vitally necessary for poor countries to eradicate extreme poverty, to provide universal education and healthcare and to achieve a certain level life standard. However, poor countries are also the ones who will be affected over-proportionally by the climate change. So, they cannot simply walk away from the issue. Both developed and developing countries should play their part. It has also been largely debated either least developed countries should adopt the path of growth of rich countries or 'leap-frog' to sustainability. The latter is only possible if there is a technology transfer from indusrial countries because least developed countries do not have climate friendly technologies. How this can be achieved is being discussed but another issue within this issue is either to focus on adaptation or mitigation and which one is more cost-effective. Public intellectuals like Bjorn Lomborg of Copenhagen Consensus Center call for adapting to climate change putting the arguments forward like pouring billions of dollars every year for mitigation purposes in the next few decades would postpone the climate change for only few days and either this spending is meaningful or we should use the money in things that are more important today namely poverty, health or education. Opponents are not convinced by him. They point that mitigation should start sooner rather than later and the international community should not save in climate fund to solve the problem of poverty and malnutrition. They can save in security expenditures like in military, nuclear weapons and long range missiles. There is no problem of finance, there is only a problem of spending money in a right way. Both of them are right. Therefore, to meet an agreement, we should compare the pros and cons of both measures.

Before we embark to compare both, it is important to mention areas where adaptation and mitigation can be focused. In this article, for adaptation we will look the following areas: Water Agriculture, Infrastructure/settlement, Health, Energy, Transport and Tourism. For mitigation, it is important to look at following areas: Energy Supply, Transport, Industries, Buildings, Agriculture, Forests and Waste.

Adaptation:

• Water: Water is life. We not only need water for drinking purposes but also for irrigation and other purposes. There should be water and storation technologies so that even in times where there is no rainfall, we can use the stored water for irrigation. Rainwater harvesting is another option. National governments should bring policies to manage water resources better. Physical barriers should be dealt sustainably.
• Agriculture: It is necessary to adjust with planting dates. The data about the weather should be collected in regular basis and this would help to determine planting and harvesting crops. Moreover, crop relocation should be considered because some kind of crops might not be suitable for the new temperature. Technological and informational constraints might be a challenge.
• Infrastructures/settlement: More infrastructures are needed for more people. Small Island nations might go under water soon. The people from there needs to be relocated somewhere.More infrastructures are needed, more land should be acquired and for that, new land use policies should be brought. The challenge here is again the availability of land where people can be relocated. It is likely that the new land will be a part of a different country. It is being debated about the place where Climate Refugees can be relocated.
• Health: Higher temperature might bring diseases that do not exist today or the prevalence of existing diseases will increase. Changes in other areas like Water will have impact on health. So, in order to adapt with health issues, other areas should also be taken into consideration. Public Health has more role to play.
• Tourism: Areas where lower number of tourists used to go due to cold weather before, can be a new tourist attraction. This can be northern Scandinavian or Russia. Areas where people used to go to enjoy the beach and sun can no longer be there. Beaches will be automatically relocated. So, new infrastructures should be built. Challenges remain in financing.
• Transport: Transportation should be designed according to the conditions. When too much rain or icefall can stop bus services or airports, this will cause turbulences in daily life. However, technological barriers remain.
• Energy: Rainfalls can make the electricity polls to fall putting risks in human and animal lives. Putting electricity transmission underground can be a good adaptation techniques. Investments should be done in renewable technologies. Total energy consumption should be reduced. However, financial and technological constraints remain because renewable energy is costly and technology might not be there.

The following points should be focused while mitigating the impact of climate change.

Mitigation

• Energy: Renewable energy is the only option. Coal will continue polluting the climate. Hydropower, Solar, Wind, Geothermal and Bioenergy should be prioritized. There should also be some action in policy level for example there should be higher taxes for dirty energies and subsidies for clean energy.
• Transport: Energy intensive transportation should loose importance and fuel-efficient technologies should be supported. Cycling, use of public transportation etc should be used instead of private cars for everybody.
• Building: The most CO2 emission are caused by residential buildings. Reducing household energy consumption and providing efficient forms of energy can reduce the emission significantly.
• Industries: Like in household buildings, industries should also be encouraged and incentivized to use efficient technologies which will reduce energy use and cause lower emission.
• Agriculture: Crops need large amount of water but the water might not be available all the time due to the lack of rainfall or destroyed irrigation system. So, there should be research on how to grow crops using less water. Processing and Packaging is also energy intensive. So, again, energy efficiency is required here.

I will stop here because my aim is not to clearify which is better, rather just to give an introduction about where and how mitigation and adaptation should be placed to. Having written this, it is important to note that, both adaptation and mitigation makes less sense in some aspect because the CO2 is already there in the atmosphere and it will remain for decades long. It will continue changing the climate. So, adapting alone will not help as the patterns might be different every year. It might be unpredictable. So, both mitigation and adaptation should be there in tandem. Green House Gas emissions should be reduced and at the same time, adaptation techniques should gain importance. If we only focus on adaptation, countries and industries will be motivated to emit further by saying that nomatter how the climate might react, we wil adapt. We might face a situation where it will not be possible to adapt. There are limitation on adaptation. It can be limitation of technology, limitation on other things. Until we are able to reduce the warming up to natural level, we will face impacts and it might take a short time to destroy human existence. Nature is powerful. It has wiped off countries, civilizations and empires. We cannot underestimate the power of nature and the universe. Either we play with the rule or we are out of the game.