When we think of climate change, we often think of the broader sense of the term. We envision the polar ice caps melting, heat waves across the globe, and whole ecosystems being destroyed. While these issues are certainly significant and true, this global crisis is felt on a local scale. That’s where climate change mitigation comes in, addressing not just the large-scale crisis but also the smaller, community-level issues that impact our daily lives and livelihoods.
What is Climate Change Mitigation?
To put it simply, climate mitigation means reducing or preventing climate change in order to make the impact of it less severe. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the goal of climate mitigation is to “stabilize greenhouse gas levels in a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
Climate change mitigation involves human intervention such as:
- Taking steps to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases
- Using less fossil fuels
- Creating and using clean, renewable energy
- Stopping deforestation. Gases are stored in tree roots and forests are essential in stabilizing gas levels in the atmosphere
- Build and increase the sizes of forests
What is Climate Change Adaptation?
Climate change adaptation means taking steps to adjust to a changing climate as it comes, such as minimizing the damage of rising sea levels and extreme weather events. This can include:
- Large-scale infrastructure changes
- Developing emergency response plans
- Managing food, water, and natural resources
- Helping communities understand their local risk
- Putting systems and defenses into place to handle weather-related disasters
Adaptation also includes taking advantage of potential opportunities related to climate change, including:
- Longer growing seasons for crops
- Introducing new crops that can tolerate weather changes, such as warmer, drier, or wetter conditions, depending on the area you live in
- A higher yield for certain crops
A New Approach - Climate Change Resilience
Climate change resilience refers to the ability of communities, businesses, and ecosystems to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the impacts of climate change. Resilience focuses on minimizing damage, maintaining functionality, and ensuring a swift recovery after climate-related disruptions.
This includes:
- Installing flood barriers, elevating equipment, and improving drainage systems
- Designing cities with green spaces, permeable pavement, and climate-adaptive zoning
- Creating emergency response strategies for hurricanes, wildfires, and extreme weather events
- Using reflective roofing, better insulation, and cooling systems to combat rising temperatures
- Providing training and resources to help individuals and businesses prepare for climate risks
- Establishing climate risk insurance, emergency funds, and economic policies to support recovery after disasters
These strategies help communities and businesses withstand, adapt to, and recover from climate-related challenges.
How Flood Risk America Addresses Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation & Resilience
At Flood Risk America, we’ve seen firsthand how the climate crisis has affected towns and cities. Warmer weather brings increasingly destructive storms and rising sea levels brings the steady increase of flooding. These catastrophes lead to homes being destroyed, businesses closing, loss of income, and families uprooted with nowhere to go. The repercussions are truly devastating and it’s a crisis that we must face head-on - but to do so requires societal involvement and education.
While our mission is to provide effective flood protection systems for commercial and residential properties, we are also committed to educating the public on climate risk and what we can do together to build a prosperous future for the next generation.
The climate crisis is a global issue, but it’s the communities we live and work in that are at the frontline of change. Climate mitigation can take years and decades to make a significant difference and climate adaptation is ever-evolving. As we push our national governments and international leaders to establish and partake in climate change responses and policies, we can do our part in finding solutions to improve climate change resilience for businesses and communities.