ABSTRACT
Adaptation is a kind of shared responsibility. Governments, businesses and households each have matching roles to play. Individuals and businesses are best positioned to make adaptation decisions that reduce climate risks to their assets and livelihoods. This chapter describes some of the adaptation experiences across, for example urban and rural areas, and across eight continents and contexts. Adaptation planning for urban-based disaster risk management has become essential due to rise in climate-induced localized disasters such as storms, flooding, fires, and landslides. Adaptation to climate change generated larger benefits to small islands when integrated with other development activities, such as disaster risk reduction and community-based approaches to development as revealed in Fiji and other islands. Adaptation in natural ecosystems may occur independently, such as tracking shifts in composition and distributions of species, or caused by human intervention, such as assisted dispersal.
