Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-1 (section)

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

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=== FAQ 1.1 | What are the goals of climate change adaptation? ===

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''The goals of climate change adaptation, as a broad concept, are to reduce risk and vulnerability to climate change, strengthen resilience, enhance well-being and the capacity to anticipate, and respond successfully to change. Existing international frameworks provide a high-level direction for coordinating, financing and assessing progress toward these goals. However, specifying the goals for specific adaptation actions is not straightforward because the impacts of climate change affect people and nature in many different ways requiring different adaptation actions. Thereby, goals that accompany these actions are diverse. Goals can relate to health, water or food security, jobs and employment, poverty eradication and social equity, biodiversity and ecosystem services at international, national and local levels.''

Climate change adaptation entails the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. At a high level, international frameworks, including the Paris Agreement and the SDGs, have come to provide a direction for coordinating, financing and assessing global progress in these terms. The Paris Agreement calls for climate change adaptation actions, referring to these actions as those that reduce risk and vulnerability, strengthen resilience, enhance the capacity to anticipate and respond successfully, and ensure the availability of necessary financial resources, as these processes and outcomes relate to climate change. In addition, the Sustainable Development Goals include 17 targets (with a specific goal SDG 13 on climate action) to fulfil its mission to end extreme poverty by 2030, protect the planet and build more peaceful, just and inclusive societies. These goals are difficult to reach without successful adaptation to climate change. Other notable frameworks that identify climate change adaptation as important global priorities include the SFDRR, the finance-oriented Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the New Urban Agenda.

While vital for international finance, coordination and assessment, the global goals set forth by these frameworks and conventions do not necessarily provide sufficient guidance to plan, implement or evaluate specific adaptation efforts at the community level. Specifying goals of adaptation is harder than setting goals for reducing emissions of climate-warming GHG emissions. For instance, emission reduction effort is ultimately measured by the total amount of GHGs in the Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, adaptation aims to reduce risk and vulnerability from climate change and helps to enhance well-being in each individual community worldwide.

Because the impacts of climate change affect people and nature in so many different ways, the specific goals of adaptation depend on the impact being managed and the action being taken. For human systems, adaptation includes actions aimed at reducing a specific risk, such as by fortifying a building against flooding, or actions aimed at multiple risks, such as requiring climate risk assessments in financial reporting in anticipation of different kinds of risk. At the local level, communities can take actions that include updating building codes and land use plans, improving soil management, enhancing water use efficiency, supporting migrants and taking measures to reduce poverty. For natural systems, adaptation includes organisms changing behaviours, migrating to new locations and genetic modifications in response to changing climate conditions. The goals for these adaptation actions can relate to health, water or food security, jobs and employment, poverty eradication and social equity, biodiversity and ecosystem services, among others. Articulating the goals of adaptation thus requires engaging with the concepts of equity, justice and effectiveness at the international, national and local levels.

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=== FAQ 1.2 | Is climate change adaptation urgent? ===

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''Climate impacts, such as stronger heat waves, longer droughts, more frequent floods, accelerating sea level rise and storm surges, are already being observed in some regions, and people around the world are increasingly perceiving changing climates, regarding these changes as significant and considering climate action as a matter of high urgency. Reducing climate risk to levels that avoid threatening private or social norms and ensuring sustainable development will require immediate and long-term adaptation efforts by governments, business, civil society and individuals at a scale and speed significantly faster than the current trends.''

Current observed climate impacts and expected future risks include stronger and longer heat waves, unprecedented droughts and floods, accelerating sea level rise and storm surges affecting many geographies and communities. People around the world are increasingly perceiving changing climates, regarding these changes as significant and considering climate action as a matter of high urgency. In particular, marginalised and poor people, as well as island and coastal communities, experience relatively higher risks and vulnerability. The available evidence suggests that current adaptation efforts may be insufficient to help ensure sustainable development and other societal goals in many communities worldwide even under the most optimistic GHG emissions scenarios.

Climate change adaptation is, therefore, urgent to the extent that meeting important societal goals requires immediate and long-term action by governments, business, civil society and individuals at a scale and speed significantly faster than that represented by current trends.

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=== FAQ 1.3 | What constitutes successful adaptation to climate change? ===

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''The success of climate change adaptation is dependent on the extent to which relevant actions reduce risk and vulnerability, as well as achieve their respective goals. At a global scale, these goals are set and tracked according to international frameworks and conventions. At smaller scales, such as local and national, goals are dependent on the specific impacts being managed, the actions being taken and the relevant scale. While success can take shape as uniquely as goals can, the degree to which an adaptation is feasible, effective and conforms to principles of justice represents important attributes for measuring success across actions. Adaptation responses that lead to increased risk and impacts are considered maladaptation.''

Altogether, adaptation success is dependent on the extent to which adaptation actions achieve their respective goals of reducing climate risk, increasing resilience and pursuing other climate-related societal goals. Viewed globally, successful adaptation consists of actions anticipated to make significant contributions to meeting SDGs, such as ending extreme poverty, hunger and discrimination, and reduce risks to ecosystems, water, food systems, human settlements, and health and well-being. Viewed locally, successful adaptation consists of actions that help communities meet their diverse goals, including reducing anticipated current and future risks, enhancing capacity to adapt and transform, avoiding maladaptation, yielding benefits greater than costs and serving vulnerable populations, and arising from an inclusive, evidence-based and equitable decision process.

While success can be unique to an adaptation action, there are important attributes that constitute it as a successful solution. These include the extent to which an action is considered feasible, effective and conforms to principles of justice.

The degree to which an action is ''feasible'' is the extent to which it is appraised as possible and desirable, taking into consideration barriers, enablers, synergies and trade-offs. These considerations are based on financial or economic, political, physical, historical and social factors, depending on what is required for an action to be implemented. The degree to which an action is ''effective'' depends on the extent it reduces climate risk, as well as the extent an action achieves its intended goals or outcomes. An adaptation action can sometimes—usually inadvertently—increase risk or vulnerability for some or all affected individuals or communities. In some cases, such risk increases will be sufficient to call the actions maladaptation. The degree to which an action is ''just'' is when its outcomes, the process of implementing the action and the process of choosing the action respects principles of distributive, procedural and recognitional justice. Distributive justice refers to the different distributions of benefits and burdens of an action across members of society; procedural justice refers to ensuring the opportunity for fairness, transparency, inclusion and impartiality in the decision making of an action; and recognitional justice insists on recognising and including those who are or may be most affected by an action.

These attributes of adaptation success can be assessed throughout the adaptation process of planning, implementation, Monitoring &amp; Evaluation, adjustment and learning. However, at the same time, the success of many adaptation actions depends strongly on context and time. For instance, the effectiveness of adaptation will depend on the success of GHG mitigation efforts, as adaptation has strong synergies and trade-offs with mitigation efforts

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=== FAQ 1.4 | What is transformational adaptation? ===

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''Continuing and expanding current adaptation efforts can reduce some climate risks. But even with emission reductions sufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals, transformational adaptation will be necessary.''

Over six assessment reports, the IPCC has documented transformative changes in the Earth’s climate and ecosystems caused by human actions. These changes are now unequivocal and projected to become even more significant in the years and decades ahead. This AR6 report also highlights climate adaptation actions people are taking and can take in response to these significant changes in the climate system.

Some adaptation is incremental, which only modifies existing systems. Other actions are transformational, leading to changes in the fundamental characteristics of a system. For instance, building a seawall to protect a coastal community from flooding might exemplify incremental adaptation. Changing land use regulations in that community and establishing a programme of managed retreat might exemplify transformational adaptation. There is no definitive line between incremental and transformational adaptation. Some incremental actions stay incremental. Others may expand the future space of solutions. For instance, including climate risk in mortgages and insurance might at first seem incremental but might lead to more transformational change over time.

Transformation can be deliberate, envisioned and intended by at least some societal actors, or forced, arising without explicit intent.

Deliberate transformational adaptation is not without risks because change can disturb existing power relationships and can unfold in difficult to predict and unintended ways. But transformational adaptation is important to consider because it may be needed to avoid intolerable risks from climate change and to help meet development goals as articulated in the SDGs. In addition, some types of societal transformation may be inevitable and deliberate rather than forced transformation and may bring society closer to its goals.

Some types of transformation may be inevitable because the amount of transformational adaptation needed to avoid intolerable risks depends in part on the level of GHG mitigation. Low concentration pathways consistent with Paris Agreement goals require deliberate transformations that lead to significant and rapid change in energy, land, urban and infrastructure, and industrial systems. Even with low concentration pathways, some transformational adaptation will be necessary to limit intolerable risks. But with higher concentration pathways, more extensive transformational adaptation would be required to limit (though not entirely avoid) intolerable risks. In such circumstances, insufficient deliberate transformation could lead to undesirable forced transformations.

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=== FAQ 1.5 | What is new in this 6th IPCC report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability? ===

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''Since IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, many new sources of knowledge have been employed to provide better understanding of climate change risks, impacts, vulnerability and also societal responses through adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development. This new, more integrative assessment focuses more on risk and solutions, social justice, different forms of knowledge including IK and LK, the role of transformation and the urgency of fast climate actions.''

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) has played a prominent role in science–policy–society interactions on the climate issue since 1988 and has advanced in interdisciplinary climate change assessment since AR5. Many new sources of knowledge have been employed to provide better understanding of climate change risks, impacts, vulnerability and also societal responses through adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development.

This AR6 assessment focuses more on risk and solutions. The risk framing for the first time spans all three Working Groups. It includes risks from the responses to climate change, considers dynamic and cascading consequences, describes with more geographic detail risks to people and ecosystems, and assesses such risks over a range of scenarios. The solutions framing encompasses the interconnections among climate responses, sustainable development and transformation, and the implications for governance across scales within the public and private sectors. The assessment therefore includes climate-related decision making and risk management, climate resilient development pathways, implementation and evaluation of adaptation, and also limits to adaptation and loss and damage.

The AR6 emphasises the emergent issue on social justice and different forms of knowledge. As climate change impacts and responses are implemented, there is heightened awareness of the ways that climate responses interact with issues of justice and social progress. In this report, there is expanded attention on inequity in climate vulnerability and responses, the role of power and participation in processes of implementation, unequal and differential impacts, and climate justice. The historic focus on scientific literature is also accompanied by increased consideration and incorporation of Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge and associated scholars.

The AR6 has a more extensive focus on the role of transformation and the urgency of fast climate actions in meeting societal goals. This report assesses extensive literatures with an increasing diversity of topics and geographical areas with more sectoral and regional details. The literature also increasingly evaluates the lived experiences of climate change—the physical changes underway, the impacts for people and ecosystems, the perceptions of the risks, and adaptation and mitigation responses planned and implemented.

The assessment in AR6 is more integrative across multiple disciplines and combines experts across Working Groups, chapters, papers and disciplines, such as natural and social sciences, medical and health sciences, engineering, humanities, law and business administration. The emphasis on knowledge for action has also included the role of public communication, stories and narratives within assessment and associated outreach.

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