p.167 Assessing current vulnerability and Assessing future climate
risks: Vulnerability assessments must form the basis for strategies to enhance adaptive capacity.
Similarly, the nature of adaptive capacity and appropriate adaptation strategies is partly determined by the nature
of the hazards to which systems must adapt; factors relating to development, economic well-being, health and education
status are important determinants of adaptive capacity.
p.167 Formulating an adaptation strategy: Identifying existing adaptive
capacity and developing strategies for enhancing capacity are essential prerequisites for designing and implementing adaptation
strategies.
p.168 Adaptive capacity is the property of a system to adjust its
characteristics or behaviour, in order to expand its coping range under existing climate variability, or future climate conditions.
In practical terms, adaptive capacity is the ability to design and implement effective adaptation strategies, or to
react to evolving hazards and stresses so as to reduce the likelihood of the occurrence and/or the magnitude of harmful outcomes
resulting from climate-related hazards. The adaptation process requires the capacity to
learn from previous experiences to cope with current climate, and to apply these lessons to cope with future
climate, including surprises.
p.178-179 adaptation will only occur if the system is
able to adjust its characteristics or behaviour, so that its coping range is expanded under future climate, including
variability. However, external barriers to adaptation often exist and the adaptation process does not automatically
occur if capacity in the system is constrained. It follows that an adaptation project can be designed to catalyse a change
process if the key capacity constraints are removed.
p.179 A prerequisite to enhancing adaptive capacity is the baseline
analysis of adaptive capacity to cope with current climate. Because adaptive capacity cannot be directly measured,
it is characterised by examining potential changes of the sensitivity of human and ecological systems
to climate. A capacity assessment includes an examination of the willingness and resources necessary to adapt to
climate hazards. An assessment should avoid the potential pitfall of trying to identify a comprehensive list
of quantitative capacity indicators. It is more important to understand and to characterise the adaptation process
in a pragmatic manner.
