The analysis, conducted by an international consortium of researchers from 20 institutions, including Penn State, in 12 countries, published in"The evidence suggests that individuals and households are the primary adaptation actors -- the ones actually implementing ways to adapt to the changes wrought by climate change," said study co-author Christine Kirchhoff, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and of law, policy and engineering at Penn State.
The study, led by Jan Petzold of Ludwig-Maximillians-University of Munich, is a deeper dive into findings from the Global Adaption Mapping Initiative , which was developed to systematically assess the peer-reviewed scientific literature as the evidence base on adaptation progress. The researchers found that adaptation implementation by individuals -- who were by far taking the most documented adaptation actions -- was incremental, more shallow and less connected to institutional change. While government actors were generally less prominent, especially when it came to implementing adaptations.
Even in high-resource countries with governments leading planning efforts or providing financial support for adaptations, Kirchhoff said, implementation still falls primarily to individuals. In the United States, for example, the government may offer guidance on flood proofing homes, but individuals are responsible for paying for these improvements. In more resource-constrained countries, the burden is even heavier.
University of the West Indies in Jamaica; University of Glasgow and University of Leeds in the United Kingdom; University of Waterloo and University of Prince Edward Island in Canada; and University of Copenhagen in Denmark.