Imagine you’re the mayor of a coastal city faced with regular floods from rising sea levels. What would you do to take on this challenge? Well, you could build new critical roads and power plants farther inland to protect them from flood water, or install flood barriers such as sea walls to protect the city. You might choose to restore natural defenses like wetlands, and you’ll probably want to create an early warning system to keep residents safe. These are just a few of the ways you could respond to the floods your city is facing.

Now, imagine all the different impacts of climate change being felt around the world—longer droughts, intense heat waves, and more severe storms, to name just a few. There are many different ways humans might respond to each of these impacts. This article will explore just how numerous and varied adaptation solutions can be, and in the face of all these options, how we can decide where we should focus our energy.

Exploring adaptation solutions

While adaptation solutions come in all shapes and sizes, many of the important solutions lie in four key areas: agricultural systems, urban planning and infrastructure, ecological systems, and emerging technology.

Agricultural systems are the ways we cultivate crops and raise livestock for food. Worldwide, we will need to adapt our agricultural systems to reflect shifting climatic conditions, and ensure we’re able to produce enough food to feed an expanding global population. This is especially important in areas facing extreme weather like drought and storms, where we will need to invest in diversifying and expanding resilient crops.

Urban planning and infrastructure solutions involve changes to the built environment. For example, areas impacted by flooding will need to focus on infrastructure and urban planning solutions, such as creating sea walls and building flood-resistant buildings.

Ecological solutions are centered around harnessing natural systems to reduce the impacts of climate change. For areas facing severe tropical storms, ecological solutions might look like restoring wetlands and creating vegetated buffer areas along coastlines. Finally, we will certainly need technological solutions to provide innovative tools and strategies for adaptation. The development of rainwater harvesting and desalination technologies for water sourcing and the creation of advanced storm warning systems are great examples.

Evaluating adaptation solutions

It’s clear that there are many varied impacts of climate change; therefore, we will need many varied adaptation solutions. But when a community must deal with the immediate impacts of climate change, how will they decide between these different solutions? How will they know where to focus their energy and resources?

Well, first off, local context is key. Each region of the world will be hit by different disasters and their effects and will do so to varying degrees. Each region has a different local climate, geography, and socioeconomic environment. Together, this means different adaptation solutions will be better suited to different regions.

However, we can still evaluate and compare solutions overall based on three key criteria. First, time: How quickly the solution can start making an impact? Second, cost: How much will it cost to implement, both upfront and in the long term? And third, impact potential: How great will the solution’s effect be on human and natural well-being? While this is not a complete list of criteria, it’s a helpful starting place.

Let’s start with an example: drought-tolerant crops. Droughts have immediate impacts on drinking water availability but also long-term impacts on crop success. As we experience more-frequent and longer droughts, crops that are sensitive to drought will likely die. This can lead to massive food shortages. However, if we invest in both the development and distribution of drought-tolerant crops, we can drastically reduce crop loss. Now, let’s look at our criteria to evaluate the importance of this solution.

1. Time. Some strains of drought-resistant crops, such as maize, already exist, and therefore only a short time is needed to mass produce and distribute their seeds. Other crops will require more time for scientists to develop. However, once planted, these crops will immediately increase the resilience of the local food system, reducing mass crop loss from drought.
2. Cost. The main costs associated with drought-tolerant crops will be those related to research and distribution. However, we know that for every dollar invested in CGIAR (one of the largest international agriculture research institutions), six dollars in benefits are generated. This means the costs are well worth the benefits.
3. Impact potential. Many regions around the world are already seeing—or expect to see in the coming decades—longer periods of drought. Drought-tolerant crops have a large impact potential because many of these vulnerable regions produce much of the world’s food supply, so any threat to their crop productivity threatens food prices and accessibility everywhere. What’s more, these regions are home to millions of subsistence farmers, people who grow the food their families eat. Drought-tolerant crops have a huge potential to positively impact the health and livelihood of these farmers.

So what do you think? Are drought-tolerant crops a productive place to focus our efforts? They can be deployed quickly with widespread, immediate effects. They have a relatively low cost relative to the benefits they produce. And drought-tolerant crops can make a significant impact for millions of people worldwide, particularly low- income farmers.

Implementing adaptation solutions

Now that you understand how we can categorize adaptation solutions and you’ve learned about the criteria we can use to evaluate solutions, there is one final question: Who is responsible for developing and implementing these solutions?

Remember that a key challenge with adaptation is that many of those who are most vulnerable are the least responsible. Some communities and regions of the world are more vulnerable, not only due to their location, but also other reasons as well, such as lack of resources and money for investment, historical inequities, lack of political power, and heavy reliance on the land. For these communities, the impacts of climate change are already here. Without adaptation solutions, these impacts will become catastrophic. But who will bear the cost of implementing adaptation solutions if these communities themselves cannot?

Take the example of drought-tolerant crops. Who should pay for the development and distribution of those seeds? Should it be the farmers who will grow the crops or the nations that are currently responsible for emissions historically responsible for greenhouse gas emissions? Or those nations that are currently responsible for emissions? Should it be the corporations, industries, or people with the highest emissions?

Regardless of who is deemed responsible, it is clear these communities must not be ignored or left behind. In fact, we will need their input and support as well in tackling adaptation. Because any adaptation solution we pursue must ensure that everyone—in particular, those who are most vulnerable and least responsible—is equipped to survive and thrive in the face of climate change.