ABSTRACT

China’s sheer size, vast population and competing development priorities (whose pathways often contribute to severe environmental degradation), as well as increasing economic disparity across regions, are among the many challenges facing China’s current leaders. As documented in the previous chapters, climate change presents an additional stressor. China has been subject to floods, droughts and heat waves for millennia; these hazards are not new. What is new is how rapidly climate risks are changing for different groups of people and sectors. This is due to the unprecedented rates of change in multiple processes – socio-economic development, migration, land use change, pollution and urbanisation – occurring alongside increasingly more intense and frequent weather hazards and shifts in seasons. China’s people and ecosystems are facing dynamic pressures that threaten the progress made in lifting large segments of the population out of poverty. It is within this challenging context that China’s policy makers, businesses and citizens must manage climate risk and build resilience. China faces similar difficulties to other countries in grappling with climate risk and adaptation as a ‘wicked challenge’. As discussed in Chapter 1, developing climate risk management and adaptation strategies and polices is difficult for a number of reasons, including: limited data records; low financial, computational and research capacity for conducting and understanding integrated risk assessments; over-reliance on technological and engineering solutions; and the necessity of cross-sector policies and actions that do not sit conveniently within any one government agency or research discipline. Adaptation planning for policy making requires significant investment of both human and financial resources, and many countries currently lack capacity in core areas needed for

adaptation. Ensuring successful long-term adaptation is complex, as it involves trade-offs between certain actions. Even with the best data and intent, the results can lead to policies and actions that create maladaptive futures. The challenge for China, an emerging world power, is how to approach the risks and opportunities presented by climate change while also addressing long-term socio-economic needs – particularly the needs of diverse vulnerable populations – in more sustainable ways, despite an uncertain climate future. This closing chapter documents the evolution of Chinese climate adaptation planning efforts, from approaches in assessment research to institutional arrangements and policy. It does so by examining assessment research methodologies and attitudes toward the environment and natural resource use, both of which underpin current policy and planning decisions. The chapter provides an overview of key adaptation policies that China has instituted at national to provincial scales in light of research priorities and concerns, such as those documented in the other chapters. The chapter covers some of the ongoing challenges to national and provincial adaptation policy and planning. It also highlights, and concludes with, China’s emerging South-South climate policy and cooperation efforts in moving forward with treating adaptation as an iterative, cooperative process.