9.4: Caring for the Country

What can we do about Climate Change?

There are two types of response we can make to Climate Change: they are known as:

  • Adaptation

and

  • Mitigation

Figure 1 from IPCC 2007 summarises the relationship between these two responses and the scientific understanding of Climate Change in the form of a concept map.
 
Figure 1.  A concept diagram of human- induced Climate Change, its impacts and our possible responses to it. (Source: IPCC 2007 a  p. 26 ).

Adaptation
Adaptation to climate change is the adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climate stimuli or their effects. Such adjustments reduce the harm or make use of beneficial opportunities resulting from climate change. They may be:

  • unconscious adjustments  - e.g. the change of nesting sites of migratory birds from a damaged habitat to a new more favourable habitat,  
  • conscious adjustments  -  e.g. a farmer’s decision to reduce stocking rate by selling off sheep and cattle when continuous drought has reduced pasture growth,
  • planned adjustments as a result of deliberate policy decisions - e.g. the public construction of levy banks to protect river flats from expected higher flood levels.

However, plants, animals and people have a limited capacity to adapt in the short term to rapid changes in climate. Without planned efforts to head off the harmful effects of projected climate change it is possible that particular species, ecosystems and vulnerable human communities would face serious reduction and even extinction.  IPCC 2007 has summarised the kinds of planned adaptations that are likely to be required depending on local circumstances in response to Climate Change. These include changes to:

  • Water supply - including such things as: expanded rainwater-harvesting (by dam construction etc.); water recycling and desalination; and improved efficiency of  water use
  • Agriculture - including such things as: changes in the types of crops grown and in their planting location and seasons;  changes in land ownership and water-rights; and changes in livestock husbandry
  • Human settlement patterns - including such things as: relocation from low lying coastal area; and new capital works such as construction of levy banks and wetland buffer zones (see Plate 9)
  • Human health – including such things as: improved building design and air-conditioning to respond to increased risk of heatwaves; measures to prevent and treat warm-climate diseases (e.g. dengue fever); and changes in sanitation and water treatment to combat higher risks from particular pests and micro-organisms
  • Energy supply – including such things as: shifts away from hydro electricity in drought-prone areas; changes in power generation to cater for refrigeration, air-conditioning etc; measures to reduce the demand for energy.
  • Tourism  – including such things as diversification in localities and their uses (e.g. snow fields; inland river and lake systems)
  • Transport - including such things as rerouting away from areas of population decline to areas of population increase; and change design requirements in route construction drainage requirements etc.
  • Natural environments - including such things as expanding buffer zones and migration corridors to allow species to alter their natural range; and intervention to artificially maintain and relocate vulnerable species.


Figure 2:  The Delta Works project in the Netherlands involving the fortification of seawalls, expansion of canals, and construction of dikes, dams, and locks; carried out after thousands of lives were lost in the tragic natural disaster of January 1953, in which a combination of high spring tides and a strong windstorm caused the North Sea to surge onto coastal areas causing major flooding. The low lying lands of Holland are particularly vulnerable to potential sea level rise. (Source: NASA Earth Observatory   [Accessed October 2008]).

Mitigation

Mitigation to reduce the severity of Climate Change is a human action taken to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or to increase the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Mitigation measures may include changes to:

  • Energy supply – including such things as fuel switching from coal to gas; sequestration of carbon (e.g. by capture and storage of removed CO2 underground); renewable heat and power (solar concentration, and solar photovoltaics,  hydropower, geothermal, bio-energy, wind, tidal and wave energy); nuclear power
  • Transport – more fuel-efficient vehicles; hybrid vehicles; bio-fuels; shifts from private road transport to other forms e.g. public railroads and  non-motorised transport such as bicycles
  • Buildings – efficient heating and cooling devices; solar photovoltaics; efficient lighting devices; efficient appliances; improved insulation; energy-efficient architecture and materials; ‘intelligent’ metering
  • Industry -  energy-efficient equipment; heat and power recovery; recycling; carbon dioxide capture and storage for cement, ammonia and iron manufacture; inert electrodes for aluminium manufacture
  • Agriculture – improved crop and grazing land management to increase soil carbon storage; restoration of cultivated peaty soils and degraded lands; improved rice cultivation techniques and livestock and manure management to reduce CH4 emissions; improved nitrogen fertiliser application techniques to reduce N2O emissions; dedicated energy crops on poor agricultural land to replace fossil fuel use; improved energy efficiency; improvements of crop yields
  • Forestry and natural forests – plant new forests; reforestation; forest management; harvested wood product management; use of forestry products for bio-energy to replace fossil fuel use; tree species improvement to increase biomass productivity and carbon capture; improved remote sensing technologies to analyse vegetation/soil
  • Waste - landfill CH4 recovery; waste incineration with energy recovery; composting of organic waste; controlled wastewater treatment; recycling and waste minimisation 

Figure 3: The PS10 solar power tower near Seville, in Spain, concentrates sunlight from a field of heliostats on a central tower. (Source:  Wikipedia [Accessed October 2008])

Outcomes 9.4.6: Students analyse, process and present information to identify the origins of greenhouse gases and acid rain from both natural and made environments, and use available evidence to propose possible local and global strategies to achieve decreased emission of carbon dioxide, methane and sulphur dioxide