Barriers to Climate Specific Adaptation This module provides a typology of barriers, and suggests a method to assess barriers and thus, ideally, avoid such barriers.

1. Online Training Resource: Climate Adaptation
Evaluating Techniques

2. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Barriers to Climate Specific Adaptation
This module provides a typology of barriers, and suggests a method to assess barriers and thus, ideally,
avoid such barriers.
Climate Adaptation
Deborah Davies, Carlo Aall, Eli Heiberg, 2012
Online Training Resource

3. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Barriers to implementation
There are significant barriers to implementing adaptation.
These include both the inability of natural systems to
adapt to the rate and magnitude of climate change, as well
as technological, financial, cognitive and behavioural and
social and cultural constraints.
There are also significant knowledge gaps for adaptation
as well as impediments to flows of knowledge and
information relevant for adaptation decisions.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

4. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Types of barriers
• Goal barriers
– Conflicts of interest pertain to conflicts between different goals.
– e.g. the desire to establish residential houses near seas and lakes versus the goal of
preventing such construction because of the risk of ocean rise and inundation.
• Instrument barriers
– Barriers related to the choice of instruments.
– e.g. whether or not the municipality should expropriate land or make it voluntary for land-
owners to sell land.
• Organisational barriers
– Pertain to how the climate adaptation effort is organised.
• Uncertainty barriers
– Pertain to various forms of knowledge deficit in analyzing climate vulnerability and how this
may obstruct climate adaptation.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

5. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Conflicts for land development in relation to the adaptation measure:
• Avoid building infrastructure in areas at risk
– conflicts between a climate resilient pattern of development and town development
• Private economic interests
• Political goals (e.g to minimise transportation needs in town development)
• Risk of maladaptation
– Creating transportation needs in conflict with mitigation policies
– Town development on agricultural land in conflict with other adaptation needs
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

6. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
The Importance of Uncertainty Barriers
The connection between climate parameters and geo-hazards
• General
– The connection between climate parameters and geo-hazards
• Local
– The areas at risk at todays climate
– The areas at risk in the local climate projections
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

7. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Instrument barriers
• The government funding of local analyses of geo-hazards.
• The government funding of local protection measures
-The large regional and local differences in areas at risk of geo- hazards makes it an impossible
task for some regions to cover the expenses.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

8. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Organisational Barriers
• The lack of administrative capacity, especially within land-use planning
– both in regard to implementing measures and in regard to the scope and quality of the
measures implemented.
• The lack of administrative competence
– especially when it comes to the quality of measures.
• A lack of political competence is a barrier to a comprehensive approach to climate
adaptation,
– i.e. one which sees adaptation in connection with other environmental challenges, emissions
of climate gases and long-term sustainable development.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

9. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Levels and Degrees of Barriers
• First-degree barriers
– Refers to whether or not the measure should be carried out at all.
– A first-order barrier may include a lack of a given competence or skill.
• Second-degree barriers
– Pertain to the quality of the measure, i.e. that the measure is implemented, but
the desired outcome was not achieved
– A second-degree barrier could arise because the necessary competences or skills are not
sufficiently developed or accessible.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

10. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Template of Barriers
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

11. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
How Much Adaptation Can We Take?
Diagram2
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

12. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Final key points
The Fourth Assessment Report from IPCC’s Working Group II (Parry et al., 2007) points to a range
of environmental, economic, informational, social, attitudinal, and behavioural constraints that
impede the adaptation:
1) The level of uncertainty associated with climate change makes it difficult to not only calculate
risks but also the potential benefits from investments in adaptation.
2) Measuring the impacts of climate change at a local level depends on the downscaling and
calibration of global models, which is still an immature science.
3) There is a lack of information on adaptation costs, in part, because it is complicated to account
for, and to estimate costs related to, the effects of adaptive capacity building-processes
4) Issues of scale and long time-frames can make the need to respond more remote and removed
from the current context (Zermoglo et al., 2011).
Zermoglio, F., Taylor, R., Devisscher, T., Taylor, A., Smith, B., Downing, T., et al.
(2011, March 30). Adaptation Targets | weADAPT 4.0.
http://weadapt.org/knowledge-base/adaptation-decision-making/Adaptation-Targets
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

13. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Final key points
Perceptions of barriers to adaptation also limit actions, even when capacities and resources to
adapt are available. These perceptions vary among individuals and groups within populations and
even the scientific community itself.
For example, under the logic of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) definition of climate change in 1994, climate specific adaptation was viewed as a cost of
climate change; any potential benefits of the adaption measures were not considered (Pielke, 2005).
The IPCC presented a broader definition of climate change, and outlined the potential for
adaptations to have benefits. Here, adaptation is treated as a facet of sustainable development,
representing a resource investment rather than a financial loss.
Pielke, R. A. (2005). Misdefining “climate change”: consequences for science and action.
Environmental Science & Policy, 8(6), 548–561.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

14. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Final key points
• Adaptation to climate change is multidimensional, encompassing various impacts, sectors,
actions, and governance levels. It is closely linked to development processes, and involves a
range of activities, actions, decisions, and attitudes that reflect existing social norms and
processes
• Current thinking proposes that adaptation mainstreaming is probably the most efficient way of
tackling multidimensional adaptation needs (Dessai & der Sluijs, 2007, Hammill & Tanner, 2011).
Mainstreaming involves factoring climate risks into social, economic, and environmental
planning and facilitates climate-resilient development. However, the theory of adaptation is less
problematic than its implementation.
Dessai, S., & der Sluijs, J. v. (2007). Uncertainty and Climate Change Adaptation - a Scoping Study,.
Utrecht : Department of Science Technology and Society, Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University.
Hammill, A. and T. Tanner (2011), “Harmonising Climate Risk Management: Adaptation Screening and
Assessment Tools for Development Co-operation”, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 36,
OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5kg706918zvl-en.
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource

15. Process Stage 4
Evaluating Adaptation: Barriers to Adaptation
Final key points
Finally it needs to be acknowledged that successful adaptation can not happen if:
•
the changes in climate are too great
•
the costs of adaptation are too high
•
both organisations/ institutions and the general public do not accept that impacts have been
averted
•
responses do more harm than good
Is is vital therefore that
•
mitigation is seen as necessary to avoid limits
•
there is a cultural and institutional awareness of ‘expensive fixes’
•
decisions are legitimate and based on the best information available
•
all potential adaptation decisions are screened for maladaptation
Climate Adaptation
Online Training Resource