Plans from the household to the planet: Adaptation is planned at every scale, from one family to the United Nations. An adaptation plan decides what to protect first.
The points to remember
- Individuals and households: small, cheap changes, e.g. raising a house on a higher base.
- Communities: shared shelters, village early-warning volunteers, community seed banks.
- Cities: resilience plans for floods and heat, e.g. parks that store storm water.
- Nations: adaptation plans with laws, money and priorities for decades ahead.
- International: the UN helps poorer countries plan and pay for adaptation.
- Bigger scales set the rules and money; smaller scales act fastest and know local needs.
Remember it as: House, village, city, country, world: everyone plans, at their own size.
Real example: in Bangladesh, families in flood-prone villages raise their homes on earth mounds called plinths; village volunteers spread cyclone warnings; and the government wrote a national plan in 2005 and a National Adaptation Plan for 2023-2050.
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The poorest countries face the worst impacts with the least money. The UN created a process to help them decide what is most urgent and to pay for it.
NAPAs and the UNDP process
- NAPA = National Adaptation Programme of Action, set up under the UNFCCC in 2001.
- For the least developed countries: it lists their most urgent adaptation needs.
- Steps: assess what is most at risk, ask local communities, rank priority activities.
- Priority projects can then get international funding, e.g. from the Least Developed Countries Fund.
- The UN Development Programme (UNDP) helps developing countries through this process and to get money.
- Since 2010, National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) add medium- and long-term planning.
Real example: in Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation, the coast was the most urgent need. With money from the Green Climate Fund and support from the UNDP, the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project reclaimed 7.3 hectares of new, raised land in the capital, Funafuti, built to stay above the sea beyond 2100.
Say who it is for: A NAPA is for the least developed countries and lists URGENT needs. Name a country that has one.
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A whole country plans: National plans decide the big structures, the laws and the money. The best ones work with nature as well as against it.
What a national adaptation plan does
- A national plan looks decades ahead, because sea level and rainfall keep changing.
- It sets safety standards in law, e.g. how big a flood a dyke must withstand.
- It mixes structural works (dykes, barriers) with non-structural ones (zoning, warnings).
- It often gives water more room instead of only building higher walls.
- It needs steady funding: rich countries pay themselves; poorer ones need help.
Real example: after near-disastrous river floods in 1993 and 1995, the Netherlands ran Room for the River (2007-2015): about 30 projects costing €2.3 billion that moved dykes back, lowered floodplains and dug side channels. At Nijmegen a dyke was moved 350 metres inland and a 3.5 km channel was dug, so the Waal river can spread out safely.
Cities write their own resilience plans, because floods and heat hit dense streets hardest.
What a city resilience plan does
- Cities face cloudbursts, heatwaves and surges, and have dense, costly property.
- A resilience plan maps where water and heat do most harm, then ranks projects.
- Blue-green measures: parks, squares and streets that store or carry storm water safely.
- Grey measures: bigger drains and underground tunnels.
- Residents help too: valves against sewer backflow, green roofs, rain barrels.
Real example: Rotterdam, mostly below sea level, builds 'water squares'. The Benthemplein square (2013) is a sunken playground and basketball court that fills with up to 1.7 million litres of rain in a storm, then drains slowly, so the streets around it stay dry.
Plans link up: City plans sit inside national rules and funding, and households add their own small measures. Mention more than one scale when you can.
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Two societies, side by side: A common question asks you to compare and contrast the adaptation of two societies. Learn one pair well, with similarities and differences.
How to compare and contrast
- Compare = say what is the same in both; contrast = say what is different.
- Name two societies and keep both in every point.
- Use headings: flood defences, warnings, health, buildings, money, plans.
- Mix both: a point of similarity, then a point of difference, and so on.
- Only similarities, or only differences, caps the answer below full marks.
Real example: before Cyclone Amphan in 2020, Bangladesh's volunteers moved over 2 million people into shelters, and the death toll was in the tens, not the hundreds of thousands of the 1970 cyclone. The Netherlands relies instead on engineering: its dykes and barriers are built to withstand very rare storms.
How this comes up: Paper 2, Section B (b): compare and contrast two named societies, seven separate points.
The Netherlands and Bangladesh are both low-lying delta countries threatened by floods, but one is among the world's richest countries and the other among its poorest.
Compare and contrast the adaptation strategies to climate change of the Netherlands and Bangladesh.
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