Potential tipping points for climate change adaptation costs

ABSTRACT

The achievement of adaptation objectives will require increased investment with the increasing warming, but adaptation cost curves are not yet well quantified. We propose here that tipping points (sharp increases) in adaptation costs may emerge as key warming levels are exceeded, with important implications for policymakers and planners. We explore this proposition using selected African agriculture and ecosystem-based livelihoods examples, considering how adaptation responses might progress from a coping phase (with low-cost efforts), through a tipping point into a phase of proactive or planned (‘incremental’) adaptation that requires a sharp increase in adaptation investment, and through a further tipping point into a technology and capital-intensive (‘transformative’) phase requiring a further sharp increase in investment. Tipping points in adaptation costs may result as a series of limits to adaptation are breached, but the associated sharp cost transitions are not well recognized in the literature. Adaptation research could usefully focus on identifying the likely timing of these tipping points and in what sectors they may occur. Emerging analyses of joint mitigation/adaptation response options may need to account for these tipping points.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate impact
• climate risk
• hard limit
• incremental adaptation
• soft limit
• transformative adaptation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) of the UK, through the Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) programme.

Notes on contributors

Guy F. Midgley

Guy F. Midgley has worked on climate change and social-ecological systems since the 1990s, served as Co-ordinating Lead Author for Africa-, Biodiversity- and Adaptation- related IPCC and IPBES report chapters, and since 2022 as Acting Director of the School for Climate Studies, University of Stellenbosch.

R. Arthur Chapman

R. Arthur Chapman is a Research Fellow in the Global Change Biology Group at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, and is a research consultant with a background in hydrology, disaster risk and climate change studies.

Julio Araujo

Julio Araujo is a Research Officer for the Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) programme and Programme Manager at SouthSouthNorth, Cape Town, South Africa, as well as contributing to a pilot project for Rwanda’s climate and environment fund (FONERWA). He trained as an agro-climatologist.