What is the difference between climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation?
Climate change adaptation refers to the process of adjusting to the impacts of climate change (these can be current or future impacts) to reduce our vulnerability as a society to these impacts. Sometimes the term resilience is used interchangeably with the term climate adaptation.
Climate change mitigation refers to action which reduces the impacts of climate change (or makes the impacts less severe) by preventing or reducing Greenhouse gases from being emitted into the atmosphere.
“Carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that has driven recent global warming, lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and the planet (especially the oceans) takes a while to respond to warming.”
