Imagine you’re the captain of a sailboat. The crew notices that water has started leaking into your boat, but you still have options since they caught it early. You could identify the leaks and patch them, then pump out the water already aboard, or you could turn your boat around and head for shore. Regardless, it would make sense to have everyone put on rubber boots to keep their feet dry.

Mitigation vs. adaptation

Although few of us will captain a sinking ship, we all live with climate change. Climate change is the long-term heating of the Earth’s climate due to human activities, particularly the emission of greenhouse gases. It can happen naturally or in response to human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are natural fuels that form over long periods of time. They include oil, gas, and coal. Burning these fuels creates greenhouse gases, which trap heat at the Earth’s surface. The trapped heat causes global temperatures to rise.

These problems might feel overwhelming, but there are many different solutions available. Some of them, like stopping the water from leaking into your ship, aim to mitigate the problem. Mitigation refers to the actions taken to reduce the scale of a problem. Climate change mitigation involves reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to slow and limit climate change. This process is also known as decarbonization. Climate change adaptation is how we adjust our behavior to protect people, places, and ecosystems from climate change.

Climate change mitigation strategies focus on one of two goals: reducing the amount of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere or collecting and storing greenhouse gases elsewhere. Greenhouse gases can be stored through natural sinks or carbon capture technology. Mitigation solutions also include using renewable energy and electric cars. Furthermore, mitigation strategies are at the heart of most well-known goals surrounding climate change. One example is the international effort to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, as set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

You might not have heard much about climate change adaptation, however. Adaptation plans are often community- specific. That’s because every region faces unique environmental conditions and climate change impacts, and every community has different available resources. Adaptation strategies focus primarily on one or more of the following goals:

1. Reducing vulnerability—The level of community exposure and sensitivity to a disaster. For example, a community facing rising sea levels could restore coastal wetlands. These wetlands could act as a cushion to storms and so reduce vulnerability.
2. Increasing resilience—The capacity of a community to keep working during a disaster. Many plans that reduce vulnerability also increase resilience. A community facing sea-level rise could relocate its critical buildings (such as power plants) to higher ground to increase resilience.
3. Expanding adaptive capacity—The skills that help a community respond to a disaster. Communities facing sea-level rise could train people to protect their homes from intense flooding or to get out safely when needed. Steps such as these would expand adaptive capacity.

Adaptation might mean building flood-resistant buildings in areas facing increased flood risk. It might also mean expanding access to air conditioners to deal with extreme heat. Communities might improve forest management and develop drought-resistant crops, too. They might even move away from frequent disaster zones.

Where do mitigation and adaptation meet?

While mitigation and adaptation might seem entirely separate solutions with different goals, they do overlap. Of course, how much adaptation is needed depends on how much mitigation we achieve. Some options are also helpful for both mitigation and adaptation.

For example, wetland restoration is the process of reintroducing wetland habitats. Wetland restoration can be a form of mitigation since wetlands pull large amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and store it. But wetland restoration can also be a form of adaptation. Wetlands reduce the intensity and impact of storms and hurricanes that pass over them.

Some forms of adaptation might lessen mitigation efforts and vice versa. One example involves the increased use of air conditioners in response to extreme temperatures. Many places are already just too hot for people to survive without them. But using more air conditioners means using more electricity, and far too much of our electricity still comes from burning fossil fuels. Mitigation and adaptation strategies are often closely interconnected.

Adaptation, mitigation, or both?

So, should we put all our efforts into adapting to the effects of climate change? Or should we focus on mitigation to reduce emissions as quickly as possible? Well, the reality is that we need to do both.

There is no one climate change “switch” that we can turn on or off. Climate change happens on a scale, and there’s a big difference in the extent of climate change. For example, the world looks much different at 1.5 degrees C of warming versus 2 degrees C and beyond. At 1.5 degrees C of warming, 14 percent of the world’s population will face a severe heatwave every five years. At 2 degrees C of warming, that percentage more than doubles to 37 percent of the world population. At 1.5 degrees C of warming, the average drought length will be around two months—at 2 degrees C, it is four months. These differences determine whether individual people, communities, and ecosystems can recover.

Mitigating emissions now means fewer adaptation measures in the future. But we can’t focus exclusively on mitigation because climate change is already affecting people across the globe. These effects are being felt right now, from increased storm frequency and severity to drought and flooding. We can’t just wait for mitigation to happen; we also need plans to adapt.

We are also seeing that climate change does not affect us all equally. Those hit hardest by the effects of climate change are often those who produce the most minor greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation solutions are needed on a practical and moral level. If we were to focus on mitigation solutions and delay working on adaptation, the most exposed communities would be facing the worst climate change effects on their own. This would be extremely unfair.

As the captain of a leaking ship, you must focus on addressing the problem’s causes, the hole in the ship, and preparing for long-term effects. The same is true for addressing climate change. We need to pursue both mitigation and adaptation solutions. Understanding their connection will enable us to create a strong, sustainable, and fair future.