May 4

Dr. Don Lemmen, Chief of Research and Science Assessment, Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Directorate, Natural Resources Canada
http://adaptation.nrcan.gc.ca/home_e.asp

Don Lemmen noted that both Seymoar and Smit eloquently demonstrated the importance of adaptation and community involvement. “I will step back and propose another level that is key in this issue—regulation and government.” The federal government is the enabling environment for adaptation. While many programs promote adaptation to climate change, it can only really be addressed through higher levels of government.

Lemmen said he is interested in the role of the scientific community in informing policy. In his experience, Lemmen said, policy people “are not only a likeable subspecies but we can move forward with them.”

“How do we know that adaptation is becoming increasingly important in climate change research?” asked Lemmen. The number of publications in the field within the last decade has increased four- to fivefold. However, the best research lies idle without engagement. Fortunately, increasing engagement is reflected in the growth in C-CIARN membership, for example, which doubled in a matter of one year.

This growth is due in part to greater opportunities for research in adaptation; there is now federal support for 120 programs, and since 2001 “we have been far from alone in providing support.” Lemmen noted actors such as the Ouranos Consortium in Québec, ArcticNet, and Canadian Climate Change Fund (Canadian International Development Agency).

“We have been leaders in impact and adaptation internationally,” observed Lemmen. All of these efforts are leveraging significant funds and international support. Research efforts in the past five to ten years have increased significantly and much of this research has had impact. This attests to “the tight relationship between academia and the implementation of adaptation.” Lemmen gave the examples of the Toronto Heat/Health Alert System and the Northern Infrastructure/Transportation projects that address river crossings and ice roads. Projects such as these illustrate the recognition of current conditions, and climate change will exacerbate them.

“We still need to develop the fundamental knowledge base,” said Lemmen. What is most interesting is that policymakers are starting to take notice as they all recognize that adaptation is an important part of the climate change challenge.

“It’s a start, but there is still a long way to go,” admitted Lemmen. Adaptation discussions are now held with a certain “maturity” but this is not the case with implementation.

Speaking of the next step, Lemmen said that research should not only help identify policy objectives but also clearly define them. Furthermore, policymakers face the challenge of sorting through contradictory reports that are primarily focused on impacts and are rarely linked to other policy issues.

There is a need for the scientific community to assess knowledge and transmit conclusions to policymakers. Knowledge assessment implies the integration of multiple sources with value-added analysis.

Lemmen also stressed the importance of defining goals, giving the example of Bill Hare’s work in Exeter. It defined dangerous climate change and used a “burning embers” diagram to quantify risk to regions and species at risk with respect to temperature increases.

Work such as this informs the question How serious is climate change? but provides little information for adaptation questions.

Lemmen suggested that “while there are many audiences we want to hit (e.g., industry, media, research funders, etc.), government is unique in its role as adaptors and facilitators of adaptation.”

Lemmen provided four keys to having impact in the policy arena:

Information from multiple sources and types across disciplines must be integrated. Information from silos is not adequate.

Currently, climate change research focuses on what is not known. It should instead emphasize what is known with a degree of uncertainty.

Focusing on decision points (e.g., thresholds and limits) is important from a policy perspective.

It is important to place climate change in the context of other policy initiatives to determine the potential synergies and conflicts.

The relative merits of different approaches to adaptation research have been discussed, said Lemmen. He invited participants to consider also that methods are evolving and the need to integrate the information is arising. He cited “a grand statement” about the value in combining a vulnerability-driven approach with a scenario-driven one. The statement said that there would be no need to look any further—that the work would already be done—but Lemmen indicated that he was not so sure.

Concurrent talk of adaptation and climate change impact is confusing for policymakers. Lemmen said this is largely an issue of scale where model-driven research is in contrast to the participatory model. “Is there a real risk that our disciplines are diverging?” he asked. This question must be addressed.

One way of integrating knowledge would be through the peer-reviewed literature, Lemmen suggested. Real adaptation, however, needs experts and practitioners and the inclusion of traditional knowledge (for example, the climate change observations of elders in Iqaluit).

In traditional knowledge lies a wealth of adaptive capacity. Lemmen suggested that knowledge could also be integrated and informed from the non-climate-change literature. “It’s not unique—we’ve been adapting to multiple stresses for a long time.”

Lemmen reiterated that “we should emphasize what we know and do so with levels of confidence.” He illustrated this idea with a matrix that had speculative and well established findings resulting in low to high levels of consensus, respectively.

Thresholds and the significance of rates of change are equally important. Lemmen said if rates of change decrease, then the cost of adaptation decreases if mitigation and adaptation are integrated. To his mind, he said, this was more of an ethical and moral judgement.

Climate change is one of multiple stressors and as such, needs to be seen in the context of other drivers. At the same time, climate change adaptation is fundamental to the concept of sustainable development and the goal of mainstreaming is essential.

He suggested some challenges to the research community:

improving quantitative analysis of exposure (cost/benefit); currently there is no mention of economics;

understanding adaptation capacity.

Quantifying exposure is easy and has impact, said Lemmen, giving the example of climate change impacts on forestry workers.

Currently, the costs of the dangers of climate change depend on the perspective of the scientist, with natural scientists estimating greater costs than social scientists. This points to a need for better economic analysis. Lemmen also noted that including positive impacts provides a better overall picture.

“We do have a credibility problem and, therefore, we need to make sophisticated economic arguments,” said Lemmen. Furthermore, the concept of adaptive capacity needs to be relevant to policymakers. Listing numerous determinants of adaptive capacity, Lemmen said that if “we know how— then policies can be developed to make adaptation effective.”

He concluded with the following points:

Science assessment as a tool for policy processes is evolving at multiple scale.

It is necessary to look beyond the peer-review climate change literature.

People should not be alarmed about uncertainty—it can be addressed through risk management

It is of key importance to understand what is known about people’s capacity to adapt, critical thresholds, and the significance of rates of change.

2005-04-05