Beyond Adapting to Climate Change: Embedding Adaptation in Responses to Multiple Threats and Stresses

TLDR

Climate change impacts are already being felt worldwide, especially in the Arctic, and adaptation is urgently needed, though research is nascent and planning has begun in many U.S. localities. The article aims to broaden adaptation by integrating it with hazards research, sustainability science, and community and regional resilience frameworks. The authors draw on case studies from the southeastern United States and New Orleans’ environmental history to examine multiple threats and stresses affecting communities.

Abstract

Climate change impacts are already being experienced in every region of the United States and every part of the world—most severely in Arctic regions—and adaptation is needed now. Although climate change adaptation research is still in its infancy, significant adaptation planning in the United States has already begun in a number of localities. This article seeks to broaden the adaptation effort by integrating it with broader frameworks of hazards research, sustainability science, and community and regional resilience. To extend the range of experience, we draw from ongoing case studies in the Southeastern United States and the environmental history of New Orleans to consider the multiple threats and stresses that all communities and regions experience. Embedding climate adaptation in responses to multiple threats and stresses helps us to understand climate change impacts, themselves often products of multiple stresses, to achieve community acceptance of needed adaptations as cobenefits of addressing multiple threats, and to mainstream the process of climate adaptation through the larger envelope of social relationships, communication channels, and broad-based awareness of needs for risk management that accompany community resilience.