Adaptation and mitigation

Mitigation is about reducing our carbon emissions, to slow down climate change.

Adaptation is about coping with the impacts of climate change.

Now that we understand why the climate is changing and the resulting effects, we can make efforts to reduce the amount of carbon we use. Although governments, businesses and individuals have started to do this, there is a long way to go before the UK meets its target of reducing emissions by at least 60 per cent by 2050.

Projections suggest that these historic emissions are going to have some serious impacts in the three regions. Specifically there will be more flooding, water scarcity, and overheating. With time, each of the three impacts will be increasingly frequent and severe.

In the light of this, it is important that we work on two fronts at once - reducing the danger from future change by limiting the amount of greenhouse gasses we emit and also preparing ourselves for inevitable changes. We need to make sure that our adaptations don't increase our carbon emissions.