Module 2: Climate Change Adaptation Policy: A Deep Dive
Module 2: Climate Change Adaptation Policy: A Deep Dive
In this module (Module 2) you will become more familiar with the overall policy landscape for climate adaptation. While Modules 3 and 4 will narrow down and look more closely at policy in your own professional disciplinary areas, or work you manage in your government role, it is important to first know something about where those more specific policies came from – which is from the public policy space. This space includes: International, Federal, Provincial, Local and First Nations policy areas.
We will look at these policy spaces through three lenses: a) policy gaps due to climate uncertainty (International), b) stakeholder involvement in policy development (Federal), and c) policy innovation (Local).
So what will you be doing in this module? You will review lecture material, contribute to discussions based on some readings, and watch videos with expert interviews:
TOPIC #1: Climate Adaptation, Uncertainty, and Policy Gaps (International policy example)
TOPIC #2: Climate Adaptation Policy and Stakeholder Involvement (Federal policy example)
TOPIC #3: Climate Adaptation Policy Innovation (Local policy example)
Note: There are also sections in this module for both Provincial and First Nations policy, but for these, there are readings only.
Topic #1 Reading
The complete 2014 International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR5 Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability report is almost 1800 pages long. In that document, the word uncertainty appears 588 times! How on earth do we make decisions in the face of so much uncertainty!
Scientists deal with uncertainty by being extremely conservative in their communications. We can see this in the cropped image below: “Observed Impacts Attributed to Climate Change” from this same report. Full image is here (Summary for Policymakers\/Graphics/Figure SPM2): https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/
On the left hand side of the legend below, you can see a box labelled “Confidence in Attribution“. The number of stacked bars here indicates a measure of how confident IPCC scientists are about whether the specific impacts seen on the map are related to climate change. You can see they are very confident in some areas, and less confident in others. Being transparent about uncertainty is an important part of communication about science. So, how do policy makers deal with climate change adaptation uncertainty? Let’s talk about that in the Topic #1 Discussion next.
Please review Section A of this Summary, which includes both A2-Adaptation Experience and A3-The Decision-making Context. This reading is about 7 pages in total:
IPCC Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report / Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Summary for Policy Makers (2014) https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf
Fig. SPM2. IPCC AR5 Summary for Policymakers. Found in: IPCC, 2014: Summary for policymakers. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerab