Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Policy

Hard choices and soft outcomes?

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 105–106 (2015)Cite this article

Subjects

Asia's mega-deltas are densely populated and face multiple stressors including upstream development and sea-level rise. Adapting to these challenges requires difficult choices between hard and soft responses set within a strongly political context.

The low-lying delta areas of southern Asia's major river basins exemplify the pressures of multiple, rapidly growing drivers of change acting on large, often highly vulnerable, populations. Management and planning in such complex situations involves difficult choices that are strongly politically influenced and can produce unequal outcomes for people's well-being. Management options are often characterized as hard (such as those including infrastructure and sea defences) and soft (for example, options that take into account land use and planning). Writing in Nature Climate Change, Alex Smajgl et al.1 evaluate a range of management options for the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, in response to a massive programme of upstream development and its impacts on downstream river and sediment flows, and the effects of increases in salinity due to rising sea levels. Smajgl et al. argue that a mix of hard and soft responses is economically and socially most beneficial but that options are politically contested and have important budgetary implications for key government ministries.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

  1. Smajgl, A. et al. Nature Clim. Change 5, 167–174 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Hallegatte, S. Glob. Environ. Change 19, 240–247 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Tanner, T. & Allouche, J. IDS Bull. 42, 1–14 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Arnall, A. et al. Geogr. J. 180, 98–101 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Eriksen, S. & Lind, J. Environ. Manage. 43, 817–835 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Milman, A. & Arsano, Y. Glob. Environ. Change 29, 349–359 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Conway, D. & Mustelin, J. Nature Clim. Change 4, 339–342 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Ranger, N. et al. Adaptation in the UK: A Decision-making Process (Environment Agency, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Declan Conway is at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK,

    Declan Conway

Authors
  1. Declan Conway
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Declan Conway.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Conway, D. Hard choices and soft outcomes?. Nature Clim Change 5, 105–106 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2511

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2511

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing