I guess climate adaptation has arrived – featured yesterday in a USA Today column. The higher profile of adaptation planning in the U.S. owes much to a media blitz by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) over the last few weeks. It began in late July with the release of a report on water, Thirsty for Answers, summarizing previous research on water-related vulnerabilities in 12 cities. In early August, NRDC debuted its Climate Change Threatens Health website, designed to reveal climate change impacts “in your backyard.” Bringing climate change data down in scale to state and county levels is a significant need, and the work by NRDC is unique and valuable. Next up will be determining impacts at the LOCAL level, where change will be directly experienced and where (I predict) the most effective policies for human health and wellbeing will be enacted.
In the USA Today article, Brian Holland of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA is quoted as saying that adaptation is a new field. That cannot be emphasized enough. Adaptation planning is very new, and it is difficult to take the success stories of adaptation planning (cities mentioned in the USA Today article and this list of “climate-ready cities”) too seriously. Almost everything written about climate adaptation dates from 2010 or 2011! [Note: much more has been done by cities in the area of mitigation plan development.] There is a tremendous amount of work to do! But we are fortunate that some adaptation strategies piggyback on other issues that have been studied for a longer period of time, like green infrastructure-based stormwater management. Time to get on with walking the talk.
A good starting point for additional information on adaptation planning is the ICLEI site.
Praxis in Landscape Architecture 
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