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Proportionate adaptation

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 833–834 (2012)Cite this article

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Decision-makers need to be able to respond to the question 'how much adaptation is enough?' even though there is seldom a simple answer.

Economic appraisals of projects to reduce flood risk are widely subject to this type of analysis, for example, in the USA, UK and the Netherlands. The UK's Climate Change Risk Assessment1 sought to generate consistent estimates of risks for a range of different climate impacts. Yet there are rather fundamental limitations to risk-based decision-making as depicted in Fig. 1, due to: (1) the uncertainties, complexities and interactions in estimation of future risks and costs2; (2) problems of fully valuing costs and benefits3, especially when these are incurred over a long time span and across differing spatial scales; and (3) questions of how costs, impacts and risks are distributed across society4.

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Figure 1: Optimal adaptation in principle.
Figure 2: Managing flood risk in the Thames Estuary.

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Jim W. Hall

  2. Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, University Road, Highfield, SO17 1BJ, Southampton, UK

    Sally Brown & Robert J. Nicholls

  3. Understanding Risk Research Group, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF10 3AT, UK

    Nick F. Pidgeon

  4. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7T, UK. The four universities are partners of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

    Robert T. Watson

Authors
  1. Jim W. Hall
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  2. Sally Brown
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  3. Robert J. Nicholls
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  4. Nick F. Pidgeon
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  5. Robert T. Watson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jim W. Hall.

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Hall, J., Brown, S., Nicholls, R. et al. Proportionate adaptation. Nature Clim Change 2, 833–834 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1749

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