[font face=Times, Serif][font size=5]Managing private and public adaptation to climate change[/font]

Ref: 12/05
13 January 2012

[font size=3]New research has found that individuals and the private sector have an important role to play in the provision of public policies to help society adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Writing in the journal Global Environmental Change, Dr Emma Tompkins and Hallie Eakin from the University of Southampton, say that public investments alone cannot reduce our vulnerability to climate change.

Their research shows evidence of individuals, households, firms and corporations are deliberately supporting the wider public to adapt to climate change by incurring the social costs of the adaptation themselves. This apparently altruistic behaviour is both surprising, and of interest to governments who (given the current financial conditions) may have to rely on private actors (individuals, households, firms and corporations) to enable widespread adaptation to climate change. Adaptations are the processes and actions that enable people to cope better with increasingly challenging weather and climatic conditions – they can play an important role in improving society’s climate resilience.

More specifically, Tompkins and Eakin’s research found that to generate these public benefits a range of institutional mechanisms are required. This special case of adaptation has been neglected in climate policy so far.

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