Global environmental climate change, largely attributable to human activities, is a growing threat to people in developing and industrialized countries. Its harmful effects are already visible. Slowing or stopping its progression may be next to impossible.

Therefore, innovative, far-reaching adaptation strategies must be formulated and implemented from the top down and bottom up to help people, businesses, ecosystems and wildlife cope with these changes. In the United States, priority should be given to creating a comprehensive national adaptation strategy and coordinating collaborative efforts across all levels, geographies and sectors. A strong financial and human-capital commitment will be essential for ensuring the success of proposed adaptation measures.

These key conclusions and recommendations were among many set forth by leading scientists, scholars and policy makers during the final day of the National Summit on Coping with Climate Change. The three-day event, May 8-10, was hosted by the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan.

During that time, attendees analyzed climate-change issues in the areas of public health, the energy industry, water quality and fisheries. They also suggested general models for creating multidisciplinary, cross-sector structures and processes to help anticipate and adapt to near-term and long-term changes.

The idea for the first-ever national summit evolved from last year’s Clinton Global Initiative, a non-partisan catalyst for action, established by former President Bill Clinton and the William J. Clinton Foundation for the purpose of bringing together global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to pressing world challenges.

“The eureka process happened,” said Rosina Bierbaum, dean and professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, who spearheaded the summit.

Prior to her deanship, Bierbaum served both the U.S. Congress and the U.S. President through 20 years of science policy leadership in Washington, D.C. As acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, she was the Administration’s senior scientific advisor on environmental research and development. The first national assessment “Climate Change Impacts on the United States” was completed under her leadership. Currently she co-chairs the United Nations Scientific Expert Group on Mitigation and Adaptation to Climate Change.

At the summit, Bierbaum introduced four experts who presented adaptation strategies distilled from all the summit activities. She expressed hope that these lessons would help participants “reflect with us on new directions.”

Peter Backlund, director of research relations at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and his breakout group suggested:

• Endorsing an overarching national adaptation strategy and backing it up with “purposeful incrementalism,” i.e., thousands of small steps in thousands of different places, coupled with evaluation, feedback, revision and possibly reversal, if necessary.
• Building climate-change considerations into existing institutions, networks and government agencies rather than creating a brand new set of organizations to deal with the problem.
• Requiring action at all levels ─ individual, local, state, federal ─ and coordinating bottom-up and top-down activities to avoid redundancy and rivalries.
• Increasing and improving the communication flow about climate change and framing issues in ways that avoid making people feel helpless or less inclined to take action.
• Developing ways to measure the success of adaptation strategies, and then tracking the effects of those measures in different areas.
• Building adequate funding sources at all levels.
• Networking the networks to leverage the involvement of already-committed organizations and institutions, such as land-grant colleges and agricultural extension agents.
• Supporting the continued and more rapid integration of research in the physical, social and life sciences.

Kristie Ebi, an independent consultant at ESS LLC, and her breakout group recommended:

• Being aware of our responsibilities to other nations, particularly low- and middle-income countries in Africa and Southeast Asia where the climate-change impacts are greatest and already occurring, and thinking about how changes in other nations will impact our country.
• Establishing a national focal point for adaptation and providing state and local implementers with easy access to climate-change information, projections, processes, and assessments.
• Mandating that all operational agencies at all levels incorporate climate-change risks and responses into their activities, and ensuring they have the human and financial resources to fulfill that mandate.
• Requiring collaboration across all stakeholders.
• Assessing the benefits and risks of utilizing new technologies to mitigate climate change and to facilitate adaptive solutions.

Tony Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and his breakout group urged:

• Clarifying the jurisdictional and policy landscapes that accompany potential climate-change actions spanning personal, private-sector, corporate and governmental involvement.
• Thinking clearly about the human, financial and opportunity costs of adaptation, and developing tools to evaluate these costs while guiding decision-making.
• Viewing mitigation and adaptation efforts as part of a portfolio of actions rather than as competing activities.
• Recognizing the pervasiveness of thresholds and “tipping points” associated with global environmental change.
• Setting in place a straight-forward communication program that listens as well as speaks.
• Acquiring the tool kit needed to track programs and analyze options so wise choices can be made.
• Cementing creative partnerships that bring the resources of larger federal institutions to bear on local and regional concerns.
• Building strong leadership, particularly at the federal level, but also in the private sector, in state and local government, and at the individual level.

Peter Schultz, acting director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program office, and his breakout group advised:

• Recognizing that responsible change requires a place-based, bottom-up perspective and cannot be achieved solely from the top down.
• Considering the possibility that climate change could cause world war.
• Establishing a National Climate Service to promote local, state and regional public and corporate action and awareness, and to document climate-change impacts.
• Emphasizing the importance of response, assessment and decision support across multiple dimensions (geographic, temporal, institutional, sector, sub-population, etc.) when formulating a national adaptation strategy.

In closing, Schultz said, “I’m inspired by being at this workshop, and I’ll do everything I can within the small amount of leveraging I have within the federal government. I hope that all of you are similarly inspired to go out in your communities. Although we cannot write the laws and change the world, we can affect our communities. We are all leaders. This is an incredible group of people. And this ball is in our hands.”

By Claudia Capos

For more information, contact Cynthia Shaw at cshaw@umich.edu or call 734-763-6605.