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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 11, NUMBER 8, AUGUST 1998

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE

Item #d98aug7

“The Scope for Adaptation to Climate Change: What Can We Learn from the Impact Literature?” R. S. J. Tol (Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Samuel Fankhauser, J. R. Smith,Global Environmental Change 8 (2) 109-123 (1998).

The authors looked at the literature on climate-change impacts to determine the likely scope and costs of adaptation. They found that the literature described characterized by the adoption of simple assumptions

how adaptation would be accomplished and paid little attention to the process of adapting to climate change. They conclude that adaptation analysis must first recognize that (1) people will perceive the need to adapt but may be constrained from taking adaptive actions by economics, traditions, or other influences and (2) people may not clearly understand the permanence or direction of the change with which they must contend.