Adapting yourself and infrastructure to climate change

Climate change is already here.

The measures related to climate change are not only about preventing that it gets worse, but also to adapt to the situation. Some of the effects, such as storms, flooding and heat-waves are already here, more violent and more frequent than before. And several of them will increase in severity. We have to adapt the infrastructure to be more resilient. The Stern Review estimates (in part V) the costs for the OECD countries to be in the wide area of 15-150 b$ per year, the lower cost if we may halt the temperature from rising further. The UK Climate Impacts programme has produced a web-tool to be used to assess the situation for individuals and organisations and help them to find a useful strategy.

In real terms adaptation deals with:

• Land use planning, e.g. moving and allocating housing away from flood-plain areas
• Road-planning
• Flood storage and flood barriers, e.g. for London and Venice
• Heat Wave preparedness, e.g. Plan Canicule in France
• Preventing permafrost thaw, e.g. Qinghai-Tibet railway
• Early warning systems for flooding downstream from river-dams, e.g. Nepalese hydro-power
• Increasing dam-capacity, e.g. Berg River Basin in South Africa