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Adapting to Climate Change: Why Adaptation Policy is More Difficult than We Think

Authors:

William Walker

David Liebl

Lewis Gilbert

James LaGro

Pete Nowak

John Sullivan

Wisconsin Group

+2 more
Publication Type:
Miscellaneous
Year of Publication:
2010
Publisher:
Wisconsin Institute for Climate Change Impacts
City:
Madison, Wisconsin
Pages:
23
Year:
2010
Date:
10/2010

Abstract

The Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) exists to help policy-makers, resource managers, and others lead Wisconsin's adaptation to climate change. Chapters in the main report examine the impacts of climate change on wildlife, infrastructure, and other parts of the human and natural worlds. Those chapters also suggest adaptation strategies specific to each chapter's topic. This paper, on the other hand, explores the nature of climate change adaptation itself. The goal of this paper is to make readers aware of three fundamental problems with climate change adaptation. Those problems limit what society will be able to achieve through adaptation, but they also suggest important ways to focus adaptation efforts. This paper is an overview and synthesis of the adaptation literature. Our goal is to identify important issues in adaptation, both to alert policy-makers to their importance and to encourage researchers to explore them.