Adaptation & Climate Change

First of all, adaptation seems to be context-sensitive. While mitigation, as a top-down approach, may be more for large scales (global, national or regional), hence having more implications on policy making, adaptation, as a bottom-up approach, may be more about small scales, having more to do with local people (this may be one of the reasons that mitigation has been the focus of climate change in the past). It doesn't seem to make much sense to talk about how a nation should adapt to climate change considering the environmental variability across the nation, not to say the whole globe. Even from its biological origin, adaptation involves in a specific environment where a particular living thing or species lives. So I tend to think adaptation is associated with local contexts.

Under the assumption that adaptation has a local context, it seems meaningless to talk about adaptation to climate change isolated from other issues in a place as in any local contexts there are always many issues for development and climate change may be only one of them especially in less developed countries though it may not be an important issue in some other places. There doesn't seem to be such a "human paradise" on earth that is perfect in everything else but only subject to the impacts of climate change. In those places where climate change will play a significant role, most probably there are some kind of existing climatic impacts already. Therefore, it seems more appropriate to treat climate change as one of those constraints for development, if it is indeed an issue for the place.

Under the assumption that adaptation has a local context, if we consider climate change as one factor/constraint/issue for development in a place, adaptation to climate change becomes part of sustainable development or sustainable development is a stronger and broader version of adaptation in the sense that adaptation is kind of automatic or passive (as humans and other living things have always been doing even unconsciously) whereas sustainable development is more deliberate, active and progressive, and also considers other issues. A holistic view is essential here as for studying any coupled human-environment systems.

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