Planning Beyond Mitigation: The Importance of Adaptation for Climate Action Planners

Dual directives in climate action, mitigation and adaptation have been central but often compartmentalized themes in climate planning work for decades. Mitigation strategies are any actions that work to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gasses that – as a result of globalized industrialization – have accelerated climate change into our current climate crisis. Adaptation, on the other hand, concerns any actions taken in response to expected or experienced climate change impacts, like unprecedented flooding or drought conditions. In an overly simplistic analogy, mitigation actions are proactive to stave off climate change at its source, whereas adaptation actions are reactive to expected or actual climate impacts experienced “on the ground.”

Mitigation has been the overwhelming focus for global climate policies since the science behind accelerating climate change was first identified, and for good reason. The logic was, if we could efficiently and equitably address the root problem of climatic instability – the sheer amount of greenhouse gasses being deposited into our atmosphere – we could effectively halt the worst of climate change in its tracks. For this reason, mitigation has received the majority of public monies and private investment into climate finance since the 1990s.

But adaptation remains an important climate action priority – especially for planners who will have to anticipate a climate-changed future with or without the sizable mitigation of emissions that is needed to stave off 2 degrees (or more) of global warming. Across the world, climate adaptation costs are increasing and compounding, as significant climate-change impacts like sea level rise and wildfire events continue to increase in both frequency and calamity. And yet, adaptation has been a historically underfunded pursuit of climate finance from national governments and their partners, compared to mitigation strategies. Despite the woeful lack of results from early mitigation efforts (carbon dioxide emissions are an estimated 60 percent higher today than they were in 1990), adaptive measures only accounted for a third of global climate investments as recently as two years ago.

While it is true that mitigation strategies address the fundamental root cause of climate change, to enact a full-scale mitigation strategy can be considered in itself an adaptation – an adjustment – to the “way we’ve always done it” paradigm. Adaptation is then fundamentally essential for our collective survival on this rapidly changing planet, and our “action plans” should reflect this urgency and priority.

One way we can begin to utilize adaptation as planners is by acknowledging a certain level of change is itself certain and demanded, that our communities will need to utilize alternative ways of resource distribution beyond “the way we’ve always known.” The enormous loss that is projected for our global biodiversity and cultural ways of being is absolutely staggering; this is undeniable, and a staunch reason we need to continuously advocate for the mitigation of global emissions in our quest for climate justice.

And still, we can also view this acknowledgement of change as an opportunity to reimagine new ways of living in our communities – ways that support both our local ecosystems and our locally-based economic ventures, beyond exclusively extractive efforts that are harmful for both people and the planet.

Incorporating adaptation as an essential climate action and planning-for-the-future priority will look to ensure that equity and environmental justice are not afterthoughts but intentional strategies of this adaptive “new normal.”

Climate change is and will remain a central challenge for planners this century, and into the next. Change and a departure of certainty will be central components of this story, for not even the most pioneering planner can know for certain in an ever-dynamic environment such as our Earth’s.

Nonetheless, holding both mitigation and adaptation as mutually supportive – not antagonistic nor exclusive – priorities is the responsibility we have before us as the climate crisis continues to unfold. We can silo our vast financial resources or our planning efforts in a unitary direction, or we articulate our proposed climate actions on this way to reimagining with what they truly require – a blend of all that is indispensable to make our communities vibrant and thriving amidst even the greatest uncertainties.

We can work to halt as much hardship and destruction as we possibly can, while in the same capacity reconfiguring and reimagining our systems for something new – a “new normal” that will be defined differently by our geographic regions and by our relationships with one another.

The planning for this systems-change starts now – what the future holds remains to-be-told in many regards. As planners, we have the responsibility to our communities and to future generations to hold the balance of mitigation and adaptation in their traditionally defined sense, and plan for a just-filled future that’s reimagined by and for everyone.