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Understanding what climate change means for Canada requires addressing potential impacts and how we, as a country, can best adapt. Adaptation is a critical response to climate change, which is complementary to mitigation. Adaptation will reduce our vulnerability to climate change and allow us to take advantage of potential opportunities.

But basic science fails to shed light - at least directly - on daunting challenges confronting society such as how best to adapt and what stock to place in various solutions. Adapting will involve dealing with sea-level rise, upheaval in agriculture, stark changes in energy demand for heating and cooling, new water resource management regimes, and fundamental change in the world's transportation and energy infrastructure. It is a challenge of enormous scale, requiring that civilization overcome "technological, financial, cognitive and behavioral, and social and cultural constraints," as the chapter on adaptation in the IPCC's 2007 report put it. Adapting to global warming and stemming the greenhouse-gas tide will touch nearly every aspect of life, forcing climatologists, biologists and oceanographers to work with energy experts, social scientists and automotive engineers, even economists. Together, these strange bedfellows must produce recommendations useful to political leaders from presidents to planning commissioners. Those collaborations are not in place.

The concluding message from the seminar is that climatic change will place unprecedented pressures on agriculture. New crop varieties are needed to maintain the level of food production under the climate changes predicted for the 21st century in all IPCC scenarios, irrespective of any action taken today. Plant breeders are dependent on genetic diversity from many countries to adapt crops to changing climatic conditions. This biological diversity is under continuous threat. All countries should recognize their responsibility for food production and the need for international collaboration in this regard. At the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009 the need to conserve and make available crop diversity as the bedrock of all plant breeding efforts must be recognised as a fundamental component of climate change adaption.

Climate Change - ADB Programs: Strengthening Mitigation and Adaptation in Asia and the Pacific

I am convinced that as people begin to see the limited performance of existing approaches to emissions reductions, and as the toll of climate-related disasters grows due to ever-increasing vulnerabilities, there will be a shift to a more short-term-focused approach to climate mitigation and adaptation.

I am convinced that as people begin to see the limited performance of existing approaches to emissions reductions, and as the toll of climate-related disasters grows due to ever-increasing vulnerabilities, there will be a shift to a more short-term-focused approach to climate mitigation and adaptation.

We need to do two things, broadly. We need first to slow the rate of climate change. The second thing is that we need to start adapting to the climate changes we can't avoid. And the best way to say it is that we need to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable.

The IPCC was established to provide the decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change. The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they need to deal objectively with policy relevant scientific, technical and socio economic factors. They should be of high scientific and technical standards, and aim to reflect a range of views, expertise and wide geographical coverage.

The impact of climate change will make the poorest communities across the world poorer. Many of them are already affected by conflict and instability and thus face a dual risk. International Alert's new research finds that the consequences of climate change will fuel violent conflict, which itself hinders the ability of governments and local communities to adapt to the pressures of climate change.

"Some bold steps to make your carbon footprint smaller" Articles on Act, Eat, Invent, Learn, Live, Move, and Build