Page - 521 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

22 Technology forClimate Justice… 521 Adaptationmeasureseitherwithstand,transferorreducerisks,withriskreduction preferred over withstanding or transferring risk. Apart frommanaging the down- side risk, there is also in some cases potential for up-side risk, where a positive impact results.Forexample, changing toflood-resistant cropsmightnotonly lower the down-side risk of losing a harvest during a flood, butmight also increase the up-side risk by a higher yield.Maladaptation results if adaptationmeasures create additionalrisksinsteadofreducingthem.O’Brienetal.(2012)giveanexamplewhere irrigationmight be beneficial in the short-term, reducing a farmer’s vulnerability, but in the long-termincreasesvulnerabilitywhenthenon-renewablesourceusedfor the irrigation is depleted. “Hard” engineering solutions can be expensive andmay not cover costs and risks equally for all stakeholders across time.As an example, theNanbétodam inTogo reduced total dayswithfloodconditions for downstream communities,butalso increasedtheirfloodvulnerabilityevery timeanoverspilland subsequentpoorlymanagedandcommunicatedreleaseofwater tookplace(Climate Centre2017).IntheUnitedStates,pastbuildinginfloodplainareasdownstreamfrom damsthathaveexceededtheirdesignlifehasbecomeamajorconcern(O’Brienetal. 2012).Inthiscase,lossesanddamagesarebeingexacerbatedforthemorevulnerable communities.“Softer”solutionssuchasecosystemrestorationorstresstolerantcrop varietiesmayprovidearangeofbenefitsnowandin the future (IPCC2014;vander Geest andWarner2015)andcanbeverycost-effective sustainable solutions. In the caseofL&Drisks that are “beyondadaptation” (seeBox. 22.2 and intro- ductionbyMechleretal.2018), riskscanonlybeabsorbed,andwedistinguishhard andsoft adaptation limits.Asoft adaptation limitmeans that adaptationoptionsare currently not available to those affected, butmight becomeavailablewith cultural, social and economic change or technology and innovation (Dow et al. 2013). In other words, the limit is mutable. As an example, Alaskan native villages threat- ened by coastal erosion and inundation have, from their perspective, no available options tomaintain theirway of life (which is for them an intolerable risk), since protecting their infrastructure is economicallynot feasible (Kleinet al. 2014).Hard adaptation limits occur if no adaptive actions are available nowor in the future to avoid intolerable risks (Verheyen2012;Klein et al. 2014). For example, protection againstsea-levelriseis insomecasesconsideredimpossible,nomatterwhatwelfare growth, institutionalchangesortechnological innovationsemerge(Dowetal.2013). But, even hard adaptation limits can be dynamic over time. The inability to breed rice varieties that pollinate above 32–35 °C is currently considered as a hard limit (Kleinetal.2014).However,heavyinvestments inresearchmightsomedayresult in shiftingpollination temperature limitsupward (Dowetal. 2013).