Responding to Climate Change: Adaptation and Mitigation – Climate Change (Senior 6 Geography) | Ganzaa

Climate Change

Lessons

Senior 6 · Geography

Climate Change

4 lessons

Lesson 3 of 4

Responding to Climate Change: Adaptation and Mitigation

25 min

Two different questions

A farmer in Gicumbi whose maize failed in a dry season asks: "How do I get a harvest next year, whatever the rain does?" A minister drafting Rwanda's climate plan asks: "How do we stop adding to the problem as the economy grows?" The first question is about adaptation; the second is about mitigation. Every serious response to climate change needs both, because the warming already under way cannot be undone quickly, and unchecked emissions would overwhelm any amount of adaptation.

Definition

Mitigation: action that reduces the emission of greenhouse gases or removes them from the atmosphere, so that less warming happens. Example: replacing a diesel generator with solar panels.

Adaptation: adjusting human and natural systems to the actual or expected climate and its effects, to reduce harm or use new opportunities. Example: building terraces so that heavier rain does not wash the soil away.

Resilience: the ability of a community or system to absorb a shock, such as a flood, and recover quickly.

Carbon sink: anything that absorbs more carbon than it releases, such as a growing forest or the ocean. Net zero: the state in which any greenhouse gases still emitted are balanced by those removed.

Maladaptation: a response that increases vulnerability, now or later, for the same people or for others.

Mitigation measures

Sector	Measures	Example
Energy supply	Replace coal, oil and gas with hydro, solar, wind and geothermal power; cut waste in power lines	Solar farms and hydropower stations feeding Rwanda's grid
Households	Clean cooking with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biogas or efficient stoves instead of charcoal and firewood	Improved cookstoves that need less charcoal or firewood for each meal
Transport	Public transport, electric vehicles, walking and cycling routes, compact cities	Electric motorcycles and buses in Kigali
Forests and land	Stop deforestation; plant trees and restore degraded land so that it stores carbon	Forest restoration in Gicumbi (photograph below)
Agriculture	Better manure management, biogas digesters, careful fertiliser use	A biogas digester turns cattle dung into cooking gas and cuts methane
Industry	Energy efficiency, low-carbon cement, phasing down fluorinated gases	The Kigali Amendment (below)

Adaptation measures

System at risk	Adaptation measures
Farming	Radical and progressive terraces on steep slopes; drought-tolerant and early-maturing crop varieties; small-scale irrigation; agroforestry; crop and livestock insurance, such as Rwanda's National Agricultural Insurance Scheme launched in 2019 (MINAGRI, 2019)
Water	Rainwater harvesting tanks and ponds; protecting catchments and river banks; storage dams
Settlements	Moving households out of high-risk zones; drainage channels; enforcing building codes; restoring urban wetlands that absorb floodwater
Disaster risk	Weather forecasts and early warnings (Meteo Rwanda); emergency plans and drills
Health	Malaria control as mosquitoes spread to higher, warmer altitudes; safe water after floods

The international response

Figure 1: milestones in the international response to climate change.

Under the Paris Agreement each country publishes a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC): its own plan to cut emissions and adapt. In May 2020 Rwanda became the first Least Developed Country to submit an updated NDC (Ministry of Environment, 2020). The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, agreed in Kigali on 15 October 2016, commits countries to phase down hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), refrigerant gases with very high warming potentials; the UN Environment Programme estimates that it can avoid up to 0.4 °C of warming by 2100.

Worked example 1: Rwanda's 2030 target

Problem. Rwanda's updated NDC (2020) projects business-as-usual (BAU) emissions of about 12.1 million tonnes of CO₂e (Mt CO₂e) in 2030 and pledges a 38% cut below BAU: 16% unconditionally and 22% conditional on international support. Find each cut in Mt CO₂e. The base-year emissions in 2015 were 5.3 Mt CO₂e; by what percentage would BAU emissions grow from 2015 to 2030?

Solution.

0.38 \times 12.1 \approx 4.6\,\text{Mt}, \qquad 0.16 \times 12.1 \approx 1.9\,\text{Mt}, \qquad 0.22 \times 12.1 \approx 2.7\,\text{Mt}

\frac{12.1 - 5.3}{5.3} \times 100\% \approx 128\%

Even with the full cut, 2030 emissions (about 7.5 Mt CO₂e) would be above 2015's. The target slows growth rather than reversing it, which is typical for a low-income country whose emissions per person are very small. More than half of the cut depends on outside finance.

Worked example 2: choosing measures for a hillside village

Problem. A village on steep slopes suffers soil loss in heavy rain and food shortage in dry spells. Evaluate three options: (A) radical terraces, (B) a large concrete wall along the valley stream, (C) agroforestry with rainwater tanks.

Solution. Judge each against clear criteria.

Criterion	A Terraces	B Stream wall	C Agroforestry and tanks
Reduces soil loss on the slopes	High	None	Medium
Helps in dry spells	Medium (holds water in the soil)	None	High (stored water, shade, fodder)
Mitigation co-benefit	Low	None (cement emits CO₂)	High (trees store carbon)
Cost and labour	High labour	High cost	Low to medium

Judgement. B tackles the wrong problem and could push floodwater onto neighbours downstream: a risk of maladaptation. A and C together give the best result: terraces control erosion, while trees and tanks add water security and store carbon. The best adaptations often mitigate too.

Evaluating the responses

Mitigation is global; adaptation is local. A tonne of CO₂ avoided in Kigali benefits the whole world, decades later. A terrace benefits its owner next season. This is why governments find adaptation easier to fund and mitigation harder to agree.
Fairness. Countries that emitted little, such as most of Africa, carry heavy adaptation costs. In 2009 developed countries pledged to mobilise US$100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020; how much has really been delivered, and how much as loans rather than grants, remains disputed.
Limits to adaptation. The IPCC (AR6 WGII, 2022) warns that some systems, such as coral reefs and small mountain glaciers, are already reaching hard limits: beyond a certain warming no adjustment can save them. The more warming, the more limits are reached, so adaptation is not a substitute for mitigation.

Discuss

Should a country like Rwanda, whose emissions per person are among the lowest in the world, spend scarce money on mitigation at all, or put everything into adaptation? Use Worked example 1 in your answer.

Warning

Common mistakes

Mixing up the two terms. Ask: does it cut the cause (mitigation) or reduce the harm (adaptation)? Planting trees on a slope can do both, and you should say so.
Listing measures without evaluating. At A-level, say who pays, who benefits, how well it works and what could go wrong.
Treating any wall or dam as adaptation. A measure that shifts the risk onto others is maladaptation.

Tip

Exam technique. For an "assess the measures" question, build a short criteria table in your head: effectiveness, cost, who benefits, side-effects and time scale. Then reach a judgement. A conclusion that says "it depends" must say on what.

United Nations (UNDP): "How do we adapt to climate change? – Climate Action Explained". Note the examples of adaptation the film gives, and decide which of them also mitigate.

✦

Practice

Define mitigation and adaptation, giving one Rwandan example of each.
Classify each measure as mitigation, adaptation or both: (a) rainwater tanks; (b) solar mini-grids; (c) planting trees on a steep slope; (d) moving families out of a landslide zone; (e) biogas digesters.
State the purpose of the Paris Agreement and of a Nationally Determined Contribution.
A country's BAU emissions for 2030 are 40 Mt CO₂e and it pledges a 25% cut below BAU. Calculate its target emissions.
Explain what is meant by maladaptation, with an example.
Explain why the Kigali Amendment matters for climate change even though it was made under an ozone treaty.
"Adaptation is a better use of Rwanda's money than mitigation." Evaluate this statement.

Show answersHide answers

Mitigation cuts emissions or removes gases (for example solar power, clean cooking or tree planting); adaptation reduces harm from the changing climate (for example terraces, insurance or early warnings).
(a) adaptation; (b) mitigation; (c) both: trees store carbon and hold the soil; (d) adaptation; (e) mainly mitigation (cuts methane and firewood), with a household benefit.
The Paris Agreement aims to hold warming well below 2 °C and pursue 1.5 °C; an NDC is each country's own plan to cut emissions and adapt, updated every five years.
40 × (1 − 0.25) = 30 Mt CO₂e.
A response that increases vulnerability, for the same people or others: for example a wall that pushes floodwater onto downstream neighbours, or irrigation that drains a river others rely on.
HFCs, which replaced ozone-depleting gases, are powerful greenhouse gases; phasing them down could avoid up to 0.4 °C of warming by 2100 (UNEP).
For: Rwanda emits very little, faces high exposure, and adaptation pays back locally and quickly. Against: many measures do both (trees, clean cooking, renewables), low-carbon growth avoids future fossil-fuel costs and attracts finance, and adaptation has limits if global warming continues. A balanced judgement prioritises adaptation but chooses measures with mitigation co-benefits.

Summary

Mitigation tackles the cause (emissions); adaptation reduces the harm; resilience is the capacity to recover.
Key agreements: UNFCCC (1992), Kyoto Protocol (1997), Paris Agreement (2015) and the Kigali Amendment (2016).
Rwanda's updated NDC (2020) pledges 38% below BAU by 2030, about 4.6 Mt CO₂e, 22 percentage points of it conditional on support.
Good responses are judged on effectiveness, cost, fairness and side-effects; maladaptation shifts risk to others.

Sources and credits

Rwanda's targets: Rwanda Announces Ambitious Climate Action Plan and the Updated Nationally Determined Contribution, Ministry of Environment, Republic of Rwanda, May 2020. Cited, not copied.
Limits to adaptation: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers, IPCC, 2022. Cited, not copied.
Climate change adaptation, Climate change mitigation and Kigali Amendment: Wikipedia contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, adapted by Ganzaa.

Photo: Ishyamba rya Green Gicumbi (UWIMPUHWE Va, CC BY 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Video: "How do we adapt to climate change? – Climate Action Explained", United Nations, embedded from YouTube.

Figure 1, the worked examples and the exercises were drawn and written by Ganzaa.

This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1Two different questions

2Mitigation measures

3Adaptation measures

4The international response

5Evaluating the responses

6Discuss