A closer look at mainstreaming adaptation

Climate change can endanger human health and life – either directly through disasters or by damaging the productivity of critical development resources such as crops and livestock, forest, fisheries and water. To avoid this, we have to consider and anticipate climate change risks when deciding, e.g. where and how to build infrastructure, what crops to plant and when to plant them, what species to reforest, which health services to provide in the future, etc. Thus, the idea of mainstreaming adaptation is to systematically include climate risk and adaptation considerations in decisionmaking and planning processes instead of only implementing ‘stand-alone’ adaptation measures. This can take place at different levels (international, national, sub-national level; sectoral and project level) and in different areas of decisionmaking (policy-making, planning, budgeting, implementation and monitoring).