Intro Adaptation - Adaptation webdoc

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Climate change adaptation does not mean submitting to it, rather the contrary. Its meaning is instead to act in order to reduce the negative effects of climate change and, when possible, to elaborate different models of our life.

Clearly, adaptation is not an alternative to mitigation, which instead acts on the causes of climate change (greenhouse gases). Instead, it is a fundamental integration which makes the time horizon of our mitigation action more effective and less expensive.

However, the road to let the world audience and policymakers accept this strategy has been long and tough. A path we have taken in the middle of the 1990s.|

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The British were the first to develop an adaptation strategy. Indeed, the UK created the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) in 1997, which was then followed by the Finnish national strategy for adaptation, published in 2003 and then included in the national plan for climate and energy in 2005.

After 2003 other countries, such as the US, Canada, Mexico and South Africa, got involved in the idea of adaptation and thus financed research and studies on this.

Nowadays tens of states, cities and even small towns are looking for (and often finding) new solutions to allow people to live in the era of climate change.

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Clearly, rethinking urban areas, preserving nature, planning sustainable defences, balancing the need to produce food with the preservation of soil is no easy task. In a 2009 study, the World Bank calculated the costs for adaptation in between 70-100 billion dollar a year until 2050 – if the 2 degrees temperature rise is to be respected.

We believe that good practices should be spread, to favour the exchange of knowledge and raising awareness. The reason why ADAPTATION was born.