By Laurie Goering

BARCELONA (AlertNet) - Not so long ago, curbing greenhouse gas emissions was seen as an urgent challenge best solved internationally, while adapting to the effects of climate change was considered a local problem that could be solved gradually.

Not any more. As negotiators struggle to reach a new global climate pact that will commit nations to mandatory emission cuts, national, regional and even local carbon-cutting efforts, most of them voluntary, may end up being the backbone of any new carbon-slashing deal, some negotiators reluctantly admit.

And as scientists agree some degree of climate change is already unavoidable, adaptation is turning into the urgent new international priority. It is attracting growing private investment, particularly from the insurance industry, and producing a legion of new specialists in fields from public health to agriculture, experts say.

Most tellingly, even developed nations that once saw themselves as relatively removed from the impacts of climate change are now putting together adaptation plans. Climate migration and climate-related conflict, experts say, are now widely expected to become international security issues.

Little by little, "adaptation is becoming global and mitigation local," said Ian Burton, a Canadian climate adaptation expert and visiting fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a London think tank.

But creating effective plans for adaptation won't be easy, researchers warned at talks in Barcelona this week aimed at producing a new global climate treaty.

CLIMATE-RELATED CHANGES

Just how severe climate-related changes might be, how fast they will appear and what form they will take remains difficult to accurately assess, experts say. Vulnerability to potential problems is also closely related to a wide variety of other existing issues, from lack of good governance to poverty and vulnerability to financial shocks, said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow with the International Institute for Environment and Development.

That suggests the countries already struggling to deal with widespread corruption, crippling poverty, health crises like AIDS or general issues of underdevelopment will also find themselves most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, Huq said.

Some researchers have proposed mapping adaptation hot spots - areas likely to need the most preparation to deal with climate shifts - but Huq warned that a more effective approach may be to narrowly define groups in peril and focus targeted efforts on them. Elderly at risk from floods in poor urban areas might be one example, he said, or farmers at risk of losing their livelihoods during extended droughts.

Adaptation to climate change will need to be factored into almost every development decision in the future, from how high to build roads to keep them above floodwaters to whether bed nets to prevent malaria need to be distributed to ever-wider areas as mosquitoes move into new ranges, researchers said.

"It's not just adaptation in sectors of water and health and agriculture," Burton said. Because the sectors are interlinked, neglect in one area could end up dragging others down, he said.

ADAPTATION COSTS

The World Bank estimates the cost of adaptation to climate change worldwide at $75 billion to $100 billion a year, a figure many researchers consider a substantial underestimate.

The researchers warned that while preparing for adaptation is crucial, planners also should not rely too heavily on it to solve climate-related problems.

"There are dangers already in putting so much focus on adaptation because we will come up against certain limits," Burton noted.

Helping residents of low-lying islands build sturdier houses higher above sea level may work for a time but "helping them think they can stay there forever may be misguided," Burton said. Relocation and migration will need to be part of adaptation plans in many nations, the researchers said.

Actually carrying out such plans, though, will prove difficult, Huq warned.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people live on shifting islands in Bangladesh's Brahmaputra River, and regularly lose their homes to erosion and flooding, he said. International aid programmes help them to each time build new houses and buy new livestock.

Trying to decide when aid efforts should be abandoned and people forced to move, he said, is very difficult, not least because the families themselves resist change and have a hard time looking ahead.

"One of the problems with bringing climate change messages to very poor and vulnerable communities is that they don't know where their next meal is coming from. To tell them that in 10 years they're going to be vulnerable doesn't make sense," Huq said.

But most families want a better life for their children, and will invest time and effort in that, he said. So "the strategy is to help the adults cope and to invest in the child so he can eventually get a job in town and take his parents in in 10 years time," Huq said.

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