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Limits to adaptation

Nature Climate Change volume 3, pages 305–307 (2013)Cite this article

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An actor-centered, risk-based approach to defining limits to social adaptation provides a useful analytic framing for identifying and anticipating these limits and informing debates over society's responses to climate change.

An inadequate multilateral response on reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions has resulted in much greater emphasis on adaptation to address the growing risks of climate change. Natural and social systems often have significant capacities to adapt, including the potential in social systems for transformative adaptation in response to climate-related risks1. Global-scale assessments of vulnerability to climate change have identified 'key vulnerabilities'2 and 'tipping points'3 suggesting thresholds in biophysical systems that, if exceeded, would pose major threats to sustainability and human welfare, and are thus 'reasons for concern'4. However, it is difficult to establish how the rate and magnitude of climate change and biophysical thresholds might relate to the capacity to adapt in social systems. Some adaptation limits have been clearly identified, primarily for ecological systems, exemplified by species extinctions. But little is known about limits in social systems — whether there are social limits to adaptation5, what influences their likelihood, where these might lie, who they would affect and what the consequences of reaching such limits might be.

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Figure 1: Acceptable, tolerable and intolerable risks in relation to adaptation limits.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mozaharul Alam, Habiba Gitay, Susanne Moser, James Thurlow, and Koko Warner for their constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Callcott Building 709 Bull Street, Columbia, 29208, South Carolina, USA

    Kirstin Dow

  2. Institute for Environmental Studies, VU University, De Boelelaan 1085, Amsterdam, 1081HV, Netherlands

    Frans Berkhout

  3. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, One Bethel Valley Road, PO Box 2800, MS-6301, Oak Ridge, 37831-6301, Tennessee, USA

    Benjamin L. Preston

  4. Stockholm Environment Institute, Kräftriket 2B, Stockholm, 106 91, Sweden

    Richard J. T. Klein

  5. Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research and Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Sweden

    Richard J. T. Klein

  6. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch, P/Bag x7, Claremont, Cape Town, 7735, South Africa

    Guy Midgley

  7. School of Agricultural, Earth, and Environmental Sciences, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, P/Bag x101, Scottsville, 3209, South Africa

    M. Rebecca Shaw

  8. Environmental Defense Fund, 123 Mission St, 28th Floor, San Francisco, 94105, California, USA

    M. Rebecca Shaw

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  1. Kirstin Dow
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Correspondence to Kirstin Dow.

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Dow, K., Berkhout, F., Preston, B. et al. Limits to adaptation. Nature Clim Change 3, 305–307 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1847

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