Climate change mitigation requires restricting the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by cutting emissions from fossil fuels and improving carbon “sinks,” or storage facilities, which collect and store them.
Climate change is an intricate issue and needs action taken by all levels of society to combat it. Cities and local communities are at the forefront of combatting this global phenomenon by building flood defenses and devising heatwave plans.
Adaptation
Adaptation involves making necessary adjustments in response to climate change and its impacts, whether these be negative like flooding or food insecurity or positive like longer growing seasons and increased productivity. To accomplish this, adaptation means decreasing vulnerability through activities such as building more resilient infrastructure, developing new technology or changing policies.
At its core, climate change can only be addressed effectively through an approach combining mitigation and adaptation – but this must be implemented correctly. It’s crucial that adaptation measures don’t increase vulnerability by decreasing wetlands’ or reefs’ ability to absorb inundating flood waters or storm surge, competing with mitigation strategies or competing for scarce resources like water resources. Therefore integrated planning is vital; GHG emission reduction may inhibit some adaptation options; for instance forestry techniques that decrease GHGs could also increase demand on these resources, restricting opportunities to implement adaptation strategies effectively.
Mitigation
Scientific consensus holds that climate change is caused by human activities, including burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), deforestation and ineffective agriculture and land-use practices. Such actions increase atmospheric greenhouse gas levels that act like “heat traps”, warming up our planet further and prompting global warming.
Reducing GHG emissions through mitigation actions that decrease sources and enhance sinks is one way of mitigating their effect. For instance, this includes cutting fossil fuel emissions, restoring forests and natural sinks like methane-absorbing soils, as well as collecting methane emissions from landfills.
Climate change mitigation efforts can also reduce the risk of climate-related disasters by avoiding or lessening their adverse impacts. Restoration of coastal wetlands is one such approach which has proven successful at mitigating flood damage in urban areas by absorbing rising sea levels and heavy rainfall events, while at the same time protecting buildings and infrastructure from storm surges and flooding risks – this practice is commonly known as nature-based adaptation (PDF).
Integrated Actions
To combat global warming, the world will need to make rapid strides in both mitigation and adaptation efforts. Smart growth policies support both of these endeavors by reducing GHG emissions while strengthening communities against climate impacts.
Integrated actions encompass energy efficiency and renewables, sustainable land use, urban planning and various other strategies. They may also include ecosystem-based adaptation such as wetland restoration or sustainable forest management in order to help communities adapt to flooding or sea level rise.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the potential tools for mitigating climate change by extracting CO2 from the air and storing it underground. While CCS requires significant investments and energy inputs to operate, it has shown promising results in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as fossil fuel dependency – as evidenced in pilot projects around the world. An international carbon price floor is widely seen as the most effective means of spurring action while avoiding “carbon leakage”, where companies escape to countries offering lower or no emission prices altogether.
Finance
Climate change mitigation entails restricting the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere by either reducing their sources or expanding natural reservoirs, such as oceans, forests, or soil that absorb and store them. It requires massive investments which are often beyond individual households or countries’ capacities to make.
Climate mitigation efforts can cost billions of dollars and even the wealthiest nations face serious impacts that threaten to exhaust their financial resources. They must invest in climate-resilient economies while paying for any losses caused by unavoidable climate changes like deeper droughts, hotter temperatures, larger wildfires and rising sea levels – these losses must also be covered somehow.
Finance to address climate change can take various forms, from concessional loans with preferential terms to green bonds, debt swaps and social protection systems. Mobilizing private capital through these mechanisms is crucial; its distribution must be equitable so all parties can meet their climate commitments as detailed in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Please see IFF factsheet on financing climate change for further details.