Events

Climate change is one of the most important environmental, social and economic issues facing the world today. Despite growing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, some impacts such as higher temperatures, more intense floods, droughts, wildfires, and rising sea levels are now inevitable. We must plan for and adapt to these changes, to minimize the negative impacts and enhance the benefits to natural systems, societies, and human activities and well-being. This challenges decision making at all levels, from individuals to governments, as well as in business and industry.

This Climate Adaptation Futures 2012 conference will be co-hosted and convened by the University of Arizona in the southwestern United States, and by UNEP’s Programme of Research on Climate Change Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation (PROVIA ). The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is co-sponsoring the event.

The conference focuses on adaptation to climate variability and change and will bring together researchers, policy makers, and practitioners from developed and developing countries to share insights into the challenges and opportunities that adaptation presents. It will showcase cutting-edge research from around the world, focusing on themes of equity and risk, learning, capacity building, methodology, and adaptation finance and investment. It will explore practical adaptation policies and approaches, and share strategies for decision making from the international to the local scale.

High-Priority Topics and Questions Include:

• Regional studies: Where are the places and people most at need? What are their adaptation options and strategies for implementation?
• Update on key emerging climate change and impacts science, including the latest on future extremes, sea level change, water supplies and landscape transformation: How will uncertainties change in the coming decade?
• Communicating climate risks to facilitate adaptation: What do people want and need to know and how best to understand and deliver information?
• Building adaptive capacity: Communities, institutions, and individuals lack sufficient capacity for implementation; What are the most effective ways to build capacity? What type of investments in capacity are appropriate and what scale of decision-making should be targeted?
• Examples of adaptations through case studies and best practices, including costs and benefits of implementing these options: What can we learn from past adaptations to environmental change? How can we foster adaptations to futures characterized by surprise, non-linear change and unexpected consequences?
• Funding priority research and adaptation: Who pays, and for what, where, and how?
• Tools for adaptation: What approaches, tools, and methods are available? How do we judge their effectiveness?
• Measuring and evaluating adaptation: How do we know whether investments in adaptive capacity and adaptation are working?
• Adaptation under 4 degrees Celsius warming: As mitigation options are exhausted or delayed how might we face the challenges of adapting to 4 degrees C of warming?

Deadlines