Current mitigation actions and pledges are insufficient for averting dangerous level of climate change.1 There is a widely shared perception that progress in international negotiations and unilateral policy action will be too slow for halting warming and associated climate changes before serious damage occurs. Where climate change mitigation fails, adaptation becomes the unavoidable response. However, just as with mitigation, adaptation also can suffer from a “tragedy of the horizon”2, which means that short term concerns prevent meaningful action that would prevent or mitigate future problems. Also, within regions, different groups can be very differently affected. Adaptation to climate change will find its expressions in multiple strategies, not all of which can be foreseen already.3 Adaption has strong links to the Agriculture and Soil Science innovation system as biodiversity is important for the resistance of ecosystem productivity to climate extremes.4

• 1. Boyd, Rodney, Joe Cranston Turner, and Bob Ward. 2015. Tracking Intended Nationally Determined Contributions: What Are the Implications for Greenhouse Gas Emissions in 2030? ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy / Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
• 2. Elliott, Larry. 2015. ‘Carney Warns of Risks from Climate Change “Tragedy of the Horizon”’. The Guardian, September 29, sec. Environment. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/29/carney-warns-of-risks....
• 3. Harrison, Paula A., Ian P. Holman, George Cojocaru, Kasper Kok, Areti Kontogianni, Marc J. Metzger, and Marc Gramberger. 2013. ‘Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Understanding for Exploring Cross-Sectoral Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability in Europe’. Regional Environmental Change 13 (4): 761–80.; Termeer, Catrien, Robbert Biesbroek, and Margo Van den Brink. 2012. ‘Institutions for Adaptation to Climate Change: Comparing National Adaptation Strategies in Europe’. European Political Science 11 (1): 41–53.
• 4. Isbell, Forest, Dylan Craven, John Connolly, Michel Loreau, Bernhard Schmid, Carl Beierkuhnlein, T. Martijn Bezemer, et al. 2015. ‘Biodiversity Increases the Resistance of Ecosystem Productivity to Climate Extremes’. Nature advance online publication (October). doi:10.1038/nature15374.