When climate adaptation backfires
In the scramble to combat climate change, so-called solutions can cause more harm. An IPCC 2022 report warns of these maladaptations.
Around the world, people are building levees, shoring up dams, digging canals and constructing infrastructure to confront the impacts of climate change. Most of these investments will likely save countless lives and protect property, but some will inadvertently add to the problems they are trying to address.
Experts call this phenomenon maladaptation. It generally refers to a protection effort against the impacts of climate change that backfires and increases vulnerabilities. For years, maladaptation was given short shrift as research and policy prioritized mitigating climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Now, with the world lagging utterly behind that effort — in the U.S. alone, reports in 2022 showed that global warming could cost $2 trillion by 2100 — adaptation and its hazards are getting a hard look. This past spring, the proposed U.S. federal budget for 2023 earmarked $18 billion to make communities more resilient to climate change.
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One of the most insidious aspects of maladaptation is the false sense of security it gives. The U.S. population is concentrated into some of the country’s most hazard-prone areas, like mountain forests and coasts. Erecting protective infrastructure in some of those places can cause people to downplay the risk, resulting in the “levee effect,” Travis says. “Losses actually increase over what you would have if you hadn’t built the infrastructure in the first place.” Insurance and disaster assistance also tend to invite people to invest in harm’s way.
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Cheaper, nature-based solutions, like rehabilitating wetlands that absorb flooding rivers, can work better than glitzy techno-solutions in some places. But these fixes are often overlooked, especially if on-the-ground knowledge about the environment is ignored. Prioritizing local perspectives in discussions can address that.
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