ABSTRACT
Over the past twenty years, the nature of the discourse around climate change risk management, and the role of climate adaptation in particular, have changed markedly. In 1992, Al Gore referred to adaptation as a “kind of laziness” (Gore 1992; Pielke 1998, 2005). Fifteen years later, however, in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (Parry et al. 2007), the world began to reevaluate the utility of adaptation. Adaptation is now a key negotiating point in climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (see also Chapters 5 and 8). Meanwhile, adaptation planning is progressing rapidly at national, regional, and local scales (CEC 2007; COAG 2007; Moser 2009; Swart et al. 2009; NRC 2010a, b; Preston and Kay 2010; Preston et al. 2011a). Underlying this action on climate adaptation is a rapidly expanding scientific enterprise including the physical, natural, social, and policy sciences. Recent years have witnessed not only exponential growth in climate adaptation-themed academic publications (Figure 9.1), but also a proliferation of research institutions and boundary organizations dedicated to such research. Annual number of peer-reviewed publications with the topical words “climate” and “adaptation.” https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203593882/68f625d3-d4e7-4bb6-8b24-c5da238ef252/content/fig9_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Source: Web of Knowledge [accessed 15 September 2011].
