To mitigate climate change, we must reduce or prevent the emissions linked to human activities.
While climate mitigation is one important dimension of our work our projects look forward to achieving climate adaptation and building climate resilience – providing depth to ensure genuine impact and sustainability.
Mitigation addresses the root causes of climate change, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while adaptation seeks to lower the risks posed by the consequences of climatic changes. Both approaches are necessary, because even if emissions are dramatically decreased in the next decade, adaptation will still be needed to deal with the global changes that have already been set in motion.
Global emissions of greenhouse gases are still on the rise. Even with commitments to cut net global emissions to zero, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to increase for the coming decades, and average global temperatures will climb.
Mitigating (or reducing) climate change, is described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “reducing the flow of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”. This is done by either reducing emissions of these gases (for example, by reducing the burning of fossil fuels and biomass for electricity, heat or transport) or enhancing the “sinks” that accumulate and store these gases (such as in oceans, forests and soil). The goal of mitigation is to avoid significant human interference with the climate system, and “stabilize greenhouse gas levels in a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner”.
