Surviving & thriving in a changing climate
In the picture, my little hometown Ledro, which has been living since centuries in perfect symbiosis between nature and humans, accepting all the many gifts which mother nature has given us, from animals, cristal water, fruits and vegetables and finally fresh air, always allowing nature to continuously donate
Climate change is regarded as the long-term modifications of climate patterns cause both by natural and anthropogenic causes. The natural development of this phenomenon has been increasingly escalated since pre-industrial era particularly by human intervention, which summarizes into the increment of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere as a result of creating energy, farming for food, transportation of goods, building constructions and industry production.
As a result of this event, humans had to find a way to adapt into this ever changing environment as well as preventively mitigate the negative effects of such shifts onto the planet. Surprisingly so, there have been several cases where communities have been able to not only survive, but as well to thrive into this evolving climate. They were able to become forerunners into the race towards adaptation and eventually minimization of the climate change, hence representing an example for the scientific communities of inspiration for a potential future upscaling and replication of the same pattern.
What are though the common denominators which have been analysed in these communities to make them so keen to adaptation and prosper?
Because of several socio-geographical-economic variables, cities are positioned as the precursors for climate impact control. Due to the massive impact which sea level and precipitation have on the majority of the cities which usually lay close to water, as well as the fact that they directly control the majority of transportation, infrastructure, waste and therefore GHG emission, they were forced to boost their adaptation by experimenting several pathways even before the luxury of validation by policy makers.
The three main assumptions synthesized to create the base for adaptation policies are simple: humans need to adapt in symbiosis with nature and not anymore at the antipodes by trying and create nature based solutions; we must develop with the knowledge that more extreme events are forecasted and therefore flexibility is a key variable for any restoration project; lastly, institutions and governments need to understand that preparing now for climate change will not only have environmental impact but as well socio-economic benefits to the people (US Global Change 2014).
But how is this put into practice?
From the example of cities, the methodology to achieve concrete and actionable measures is simple (Headwaters Economics 2012). We must have a strong leadership not only to allow a smoother and coherent implementation of the policies, but as well to create a strong network of social workers, such as health system, fireworks etc, which are effectively ready for necessary action. (Carmin et al. 2012). Start with an existing project, recognise what is valued right now by the community and scale that into a larger adaptation project, for example if the cities' landmark is its lakes, start by creating some social programs for purifying those areas. This can as well be advanced by outlining a financial benefit from the adaptation, for example very relevant nowadays is energy efficiency. This way, the citizen will even be motivated to move for actions. Finally, very important as well, is to create a regional or even national network, in order to form a more cohesive and communal way of action, as well as to move, eventually, globally towards the same goal, considering as well that in one way or another the whole ecology of the planet is interconnected and we will therefore end up impacting each other.
Ultimately, research has proved intrinsic biological benefits to the climate change, which fundamentally stimulates, by ecological-socioeconomic stresses, evolution in organisms.
"Climatic–ecological stresses led to human ecological–socioeconomic crises, and thereby dramatically increased twice of the thinkers' number and their thoughts' impact across different philosophies in truth, knowledge, and ethics for adaptation at multi-decadal to centennial temporal scales. The process of the stress-generated cultural dynamics displays some similarities with the stress-induced mutagenesis in organism evolution." (Zhang, David D, 2020)
References:
U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, 2014.
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