IB Geography 2.3.2 Government-led Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies Notes

Adaptation Reduces Harm While Mitigation Limits Future Hazard

1. Adaptation is adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects to reduce harm or use beneficial opportunities.
2. Mitigation is human intervention that reduces greenhouse-gas sources or enhances sinks.
3. A flood barrier is adaptation because it changes the consequences of high water, while replacing coal generation with low-emission electricity is mitigation because it changes future emissions.
4. Some policies serve both purposes, as restoring mangroves can store carbon while reducing wave energy and coastal erosion.
5. Adaptation benefits are often local and immediate, whereas mitigation benefits accumulate globally and over longer periods.
6. Government is central because laws, taxes, public investment, planning and international negotiation can change risks beyond the capacity of individual households.

National Adaptation Planning Connects Climate Risk to Public Investment

1. A government can map hazards and vulnerable groups, set building standards, restrict development in high-risk zones and fund protective infrastructure.
2. Early-warning systems combine forecasting, communication, evacuation routes and trusted local organizations rather than relying on a forecast alone.
3. Public-health adaptation includes heat alerts, cooling spaces, disease surveillance and plans for hospitals during extreme weather.
4. Water adaptation can combine reservoirs, leakage reduction, aquifer management, drought rules and changes to crop support.
5. Ecosystem-based adaptation uses wetlands, forests, dunes or mangroves to reduce hazards while supporting biodiversity and livelihoods.
6. Social protection, accessible shelters and recovery finance can reduce unequal impacts when they are designed around vulnerable groups.

National Adaptation Plans Turn Separate Projects into a Development Process

1. The UNFCCC established the National Adaptation Plan, or NAP, process to identify medium-term and long-term adaptation needs and develop strategies to address them.
2. The NAP process aims to reduce vulnerability and integrate adaptation into development policies, programmes and planning across sectors and levels.
3. Country-driven planning can align water, health, agriculture, transport and housing decisions instead of treating each hazard in isolation.
4. The UNFCCC guidance calls for participatory, gender-sensitive and transparent planning informed by science and relevant Indigenous and local knowledge.
5. Implementation can still be constrained by limited finance, data, administrative capacity, short political cycles and competition with immediate development needs.

The UNFCCC Creates a Negotiating System Rather than a World Climate Government

1. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, is the treaty framework through which governments negotiate collective climate action.
2. The annual Conference of the Parties, or COP, makes decisions by negotiation among states with different emissions, wealth, exposure and development priorities.
3. The IPCC assesses scientific evidence but does not negotiate targets, enforce policy or represent a government.
4. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities recognizes a shared climate problem alongside differences in historical contribution and national capacity.
5. International agreements can coordinate reporting, finance, technology and common goals, but implementation still depends heavily on national policy.
6. Geopolitical bargaining therefore affects whose emissions are constrained, who provides finance and how quickly collective ambition rises.

Kyoto Bound a Limited Group, While Paris Uses Universal National Pledges

1. The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, set binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and economies in transition plus the European Union.
2. Across the first commitment period from 2008 to 2012, those targets averaged about 5 percent below 1990 emissions.
3. Kyoto placed quantified obligations on a defined developed-country group and created emissions trading, Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism.
4. Its narrow coverage reflected differentiated responsibility but left rapidly growing emissions in countries without binding caps and lost further reach when some major emitters did not participate fully.
5. The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 and in force since 2016, applies a common framework to almost every country.
6. Paris is a legally binding treaty, but the emissions outcome of each nationally determined contribution, or NDC, is nationally set rather than imposed as one enforceable global quota.

The Paris Cycle Uses Transparency and Review to Raise Ambition

1. The Paris temperature goal is to hold warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
2. Parties submit successive NDCs on a five-year cycle and report information that allows progress to be tracked.
3. The global stocktake assesses collective progress every five years and is intended to inform stronger subsequent NDCs.
4. The first global stocktake concluded at COP28 in 2023 and called for measures including tripling renewable-energy capacity and doubling the rate of energy-efficiency improvement by 2030.
5. The same outcome called for a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner.
6. Paris also establishes a global adaptation goal and links finance, technology and capacity-building with mitigation and resilience.

Carbon Pricing Makes Emissions a Cost in Government Decisions

1. A carbon tax fixes a price per unit of greenhouse-gas emissions and allows the quantity reduced to respond to that price.
2. An emissions trading system, or ETS, fixes a cap and lets the allowance price emerge through trading.
3. Under cap and trade, each regulated emitter must surrender allowances equal to its verified emissions.
4. Firms with low abatement costs can reduce more and sell unused allowances, while firms facing high costs can buy allowances.
5. Auctioning allowances can raise public revenue for low-carbon investment, household support or other government priorities.
6. Monitoring, reporting, verification and penalties are essential because a carbon price has little integrity when emissions cannot be measured or rules are not enforced.

The EU ETS Shows How a Cap Can Tighten Across Sectors

1. The EU Emissions Trading System began in 2005 and applies a cap-and-trade system across energy, industry, aviation and maritime activities within its scope.
2. The European Commission reports that it covers about 10,000 installations as well as specified aircraft and shipping operators.
3. The covered sectors account for roughly 40 percent of total EU emissions, according to the Commission's 2025 progress report.
4. The Commission reports that emissions from electricity, heat and industrial production covered since launch had fallen by about 50 percent by 2025.
5. A declining cap strengthens scarcity, while auction rules, free allocation and a market-stability reserve shape the price signal and political acceptability.
6. Using some revenue for innovation, modernization or vulnerable households can address investment needs and distributional effects.

Offsets Move a Claimed Reduction Across Places, so Integrity Depends on the Baseline

1. A carbon offset is a credit representing an avoided or removed quantity of emissions used to compensate for emissions elsewhere.
2. Offset projects can include forest protection, methane capture, renewable energy or carbon dioxide removal, depending on the standard and rules.
3. Additionality asks whether the reduction would have happened without the offset revenue.
4. Permanence asks whether stored carbon will remain out of the atmosphere for the period claimed.
5. Leakage occurs when reducing emissions in one place causes them to rise elsewhere.
6. Double counting occurs when more than one actor claims the same reduction.

Paris Article 6 Links International Cooperation to Carbon Accounting

1. Article 6 allows voluntary cooperation among parties through market and non-market approaches.
2. Internationally transferred mitigation outcomes can help a country meet its NDC only when reliable accounting prevents the seller and buyer from counting the same outcome.
3. A corresponding adjustment changes national accounts to reflect an authorized transfer and reduce double counting.
4. Article 6.4 establishes a UN-supervised crediting mechanism intended to support mitigation and sustainable development.
5. Trading can lower compliance costs and direct finance to mitigation opportunities, but weak baselines or poor safeguards can create credits without equivalent atmospheric benefit.
6. Social and environmental safeguards matter because a carbon project can alter land rights, livelihoods, biodiversity and local development.

Climate Technology Ranges from Emissions Control to Deliberate Planetary Intervention

1. Technology supports mitigation when it replaces high-emission processes, improves efficiency, captures emissions or removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
2. Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, separates carbon dioxide from an industrial or energy source, compresses it, transports it and stores it underground.
3. CCS applied to fossil carbon reduces emissions at the source but does not count as carbon dioxide removal because the carbon was not taken from ambient air.
4. CCS becomes the storage component of removal when paired with direct air capture or with sustainably produced biomass.
5. The IPCC identifies CCS as a possible option for hard-to-abate industry where suitable storage exists, while noting cost, energy, infrastructure, public-acceptance and governance barriers.
6. Government can support research, shared transport and storage networks, standards, liability rules and monitoring of stored carbon.

Carbon Dioxide Removal Addresses Residual Emissions but Cannot Replace Rapid Cuts

1. Carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, deliberately removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it durably in vegetation, soils, geological formations, oceans or products.
2. Methods include afforestation, soil-carbon management, biochar, bioenergy with CCS, direct-air carbon capture and storage, enhanced weathering and some ocean-based approaches.
3. Methods differ in maturity, cost, land and energy demand, storage duration, monitoring needs, co-benefits and ecological risk.
4. The IPCC concludes that some CDR is unavoidable in pathways reaching net zero because residual emissions remain in hard-to-abate sectors.
5. The same assessment states that CDR cannot substitute for deep emissions reductions because large-scale deployment faces feasibility and sustainability limits.
6. Government choices determine which residual emissions receive removals, who bears land or energy costs and how reversal is monitored.

Solar Radiation Modification Masks Warming Without Removing Greenhouse Gases

1. Solar radiation modification, or SRM, proposes altering Earth's radiation balance so that more incoming sunlight is reflected.
2. Proposals include injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere or brightening marine clouds, although large-scale deployment remains unproven.
3. SRM could lower global mean temperature relatively quickly, but it would not remove carbon dioxide or stop ocean acidification.
4. Regional rainfall, monsoons, ozone and ecosystems could respond unevenly, creating cross-border risks and disputes over control.
5. A sudden sustained stop after long deployment could produce rapid warming in a high-carbon atmosphere, which the IPCC identifies as a major termination risk.
6. Research, deployment thresholds, liability, consent and monitoring raise governance questions because consequences would cross national borders.

Effective Government Policy Combines Instruments and Tests Their Distributional Effects

1. Regulation can set minimum standards, carbon pricing can reward further reductions, and public investment can provide infrastructure the market will not build alone.
2. A policy mix can fail when one instrument cancels another, such as fossil-fuel subsidies weakening a carbon price.
3. Mitigation should be assessed through emissions reduced, time scale, additionality, leakage, cost and technological readiness.
4. Adaptation should be assessed through risk reduced, coverage of vulnerable groups, lifetime, flexibility, maintenance and avoidance of maladaptation.
5. International action should be assessed through participation, ambition, implementation, finance, transparency and fairness.
6. Distribution matters because energy prices, land requirements, taxes and protection can impose different costs and benefits on social groups and places.

A Defensible Judgement Matches the Instrument to the Risk

1. Governments should use adaptation where climate impacts are already occurring or unavoidable, while mitigation limits the growth of future hazard.
2. Carbon pricing is strongest where emissions can be monitored and firms can respond to a credible long-term signal.
3. Offsets require stricter scrutiny because their result depends on a counterfactual baseline and conditions at another place and time.
4. CDR is most defensible for residual emissions after rapid gross reductions rather than as permission to delay them.
5. SRM presents the largest governance challenge because a decision by a few actors could alter risks across many states.
6. Both SL and HL students should connect scale, mechanism, evidence and equity when comparing government-led strategies.