Multiple Adaptation Types with Mitigation: A Framework for Policy Analysis
Citation:
Felgenhauer, T. AND M. Webster. Multiple Adaptation Types with Mitigation: A Framework for Policy Analysis. Global Environmental Change. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, Netherlands, 23(6):1556-1565, (2013).
Impact/Purpose:
The most important decision to inform is that of the near-term portfolio of climate change responses, over the next decade or two. This paper contributes to the literature on the integration of mitigation and adaptation by highlighting the characteristics of adaptation activities that are most relevant for balancing relative investments over time and under uncertainty. We argue that policymakers will be better able to understand the important policy characteristics of a mitigation and adaptation portfolio by splitting adaptation into its three flow, stock, and option stock types.
Description:
Effective climate policy will consist of mitigation and adaptation implemented simultaneously in a policy portfolio to reduce the risks of climate change. The relative share of these responses will vary over time and will be adjusted in response to new information. Furthermore, adaptation is a heterogeneous set of specific responses, and the relative shares of the specific actions will also vary over time and be adjusted along the way. Previous work on typologies of adaptation, however, have not elaborated on the dimensions most critical to choosing the appropriate combinations of adaptation activities and mitigation over time under uncertainty. The climate-related effects of mitigation are homogenous, global, and realized over the long term, while those of adaptation are heterogeneous over temporal, technological, and damage scales, even within a fixed locality and with a single implementing agent and affected sector. Two particular dimensions are fundamental to understanding the relevant relationships and tradeoffs that occur when mitigation and adaptation are considered together: 1) strategy investment lifetimes and capacity limits in reducing climate damages, and 2) strategy dynamics under uncertainty. This paper presents a new conceptual framework of the tradeoffs between adaptation and mitigation that focuses on these dimensions in order to inform the portfolio of responses that will be chosen under uncertainty. Reducing uncertainty about the effectiveness of adaptation actions may affect mitigation decisions to a different degree than the converse. For consideration of adaptation jointly with mitigation, we argue that the spectrum of adaptation responses should be disaggregated. We present three stylized classes of adaptation investment types as a conceptual framework : short-lived “flow” spending, committed “stock” investment, and lower capacity “option” stock with the capability of future upgrading. These simple categories of adaptation types can be integrated with mitigation within an explicit decision analysis framework in order to explore portfolios of mitigation and different adaptation responses over time. Given the large policy uncertainty that we face currently, explicitly considering adaptation “option” investments is a useful component of a policy response that can balance between the flexible flow and committed stock approaches, as it allows for the delay of costly stock investments while at the same time allowing for lower-cost risk management of future damages.
