Adapting to climate change

 
Editorial
Pierre Couveinhes

Foreword
Paul-Henri Bourrelier

 
I - Adaptation

 
Reflections on the climate
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Histoire humaine et comparée du climat counts three major volumes on the history of the climate and, like Montesquieu, on the relations between history and climate: Canicules et glaciers XIIIe-XVIIIe, Disettes et révolutions (1740-1860) and Le réchauffement de 1860 à nos jours. In an article in the summer 2009 issue of Commentaire, he presented his “reflections on the climate”, which mainly focuses on the 20th century. This article can serve as an introduction to the trilogy, without being a summary of it. We thank the author and the journal Commentaire for allowing us to reprint this article in our current issue.

 
Ideas about the changing climate: From God’s creation to man’s responsibility
René Favier

Is the climate changing? Do humanity’s actions affect this change? Raising such questions amounts to a sacrilege. A short while ago, Courrier International ran the headline “Climate: Global warming does not exist” on its cover. But this title was prudently followed by an asterisk referring to a politically correct subtitle at the bottom of the page: “At least, some thinks so”.

 
Lessons from geological history and the great extinction of species
Patrick de Wever

Talk about biodiversity often refers to endangered species, such as the Pyrenees bear (since Cannelle died on 1 November 2004), or the comeback of the wolf in the Alps or the elephant in Africa… animals that are symbolic, nearly mythical — the teddy bear of our younger years, held in our arms while listening to stories about the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, or Babar. Now that we have grown up, we should not forget that other living beings — worms, insects, bacteria, etc. — are becoming extinct. Whether considered to be useful, pleasant or harmful, they are a part of biodiversity.

 
Climate, adaptation, evolution and biodiversity
Gilles Escarguel

The biosphere — the thin layer surrounding our planet wherein living beings evolve — is a complex adaptative system, a network of multiple interactions where the existence of each being, regardless of its attributes, is linked to the existence of surrounding beings. The major physical, mathematical properties of this complexity are now known: nonlinearity, metastability, self-organization, emergent properties, invariance to scale, irreversibility, sensitivity to initial conditions, chaos… They have numerous biological, ecological and environmental implications.

 
Local areas faced with climate change
Martine Tabeaud

Various parties are involved in actions for attenuating global warming and adapting to a changing climate: international organizations, groups of nation-states, regions, local authorities, nongovernmental organizations, political parties, labor unions, banks, insurance companies, researchers, transnational firms, small businesses, mass marketing, transportation, the media and citizens.

 
From extreme events to figures of catastrophes
Paul Henri Bourrelier and Jean Dunglas

Major climate-related events have a place in myths about the origin and destruction of the world. The Flood in the Bible has an equivalent in all religions. It is not surprising that the announced climate change has revived literally apocalyptic predictions, in other words: revelations.

 
Adapting to what? What is humanity’s place in nature?
Michel Juffé

Adapting to a changing climate or to any other disturbance in the biosphere does not just call for technical or economic considerations, nor for a “political economy”. Everyone around us is talking about “sustainable development” and the need to more “soberly” consume energy and to imagine a “different” growth (often without any specifics). We are under pressure from two sources: those who invoke a “natural” world whose equilibrium we must preserve and those who advocate a “cultural” (human) world whose originality we must maintain.

II - Public policies and citizen actions

 
The place of adaptation in climate policies
Marc Gillet

Given inevitable changes, there are two forms of prevention. Released in 2007, the fourth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has dispelled any doubts that might yet exist about whether or not global warming has started and is caused by human activities and about its intensification during the coming decades.

 
France’s policy for adapting to climate change
Pascal Dupuis

France’s policy for adapting to climate change has two pillars: reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (“attenuation”) and prepare for the inevitable changes to come (“adaptation”). Most sectors now feel concerned in the process of attenuation, given the compulsory objectives set at the international and European levels. However it is also important for them to become involved in the process of adaptation.

 
Tilling the planet: More biomass, less greenhouse gas
François Papy

The 21st century will have to take up two challenges. First of all, the production of crops on the planet has to increase in order to satisfy the growing needs of a population of about eight or nine billion by 2050: first of all, the need for food (which, under certain hypotheses, will double) but also needs related to energy (in various forms), textiles and products used by industry. The second challenge is to attenuate the climatic changes already under way and adapt to them: attenuate in order to remain within limits that allow for adaptation, since it is wise to take into account an always possible acceleration of the processes under way.

Imagining and planning urban agglomerations: A few examples from Europe
Brigitte Mazière

More than 70% of the European population — and 80% of the French — is concentrated in an urban environment. The growth of urban areas is a general trend. In the past few years, a few major events have illustrated how natural catastrophes can affect urban agglomerations: the December 1999 storms that swept over western Europe, the exceptional flooding in central Europe during the summer of 2002, and the heat wave in the summer of 2003. Outside Europe, other events have recently completed the picture: the December 2004 tsunami in Asia or hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans in August 2005.

For a dynamic management of coastal areas
Nicole Lenôtre

The coastline is increasingly attracting the attention of policy-makers, managers and citizens. The United Nations estimates that 80% of the world’s population will be living on a 100 km-wide strip along the coast by 2010. Eight out of ten of the biggest agglomerations are located on the coast: New York, Tokyo, Bombay…. France cannot dodge this trend: the coastal population is growing at an annual rate of 3,8% as compared with only 3,3% for the country as a whole.

Financial coverage of extreme events related to the climate
Erwann Michel-Kerjan

In the context of climate-related events that will be potentially ever more devastating, who will cover the costs of disasters? In industrialized lands, insurance traditionally plays a leading role, by covering individuals and firms in the case of major natural risks with an economic impact. Parties to an insurance contract pay moderate premiums compared with potential losses. Insurance is now a major revenue-generating industry worldwide. But traditional insurance systems are showing their limitations, as they deal with major catastrophes, which no longer happen on the average of once every twenty years (thus allowing the companies time to collect enough premiums), but more and more often…

 
Ethics, the guideline for adaptations

 
A discussion between Paul-Henri Bourrelier (Ingénieur général des Mines), Alain Grimfeld, (chairman of the Comité Consultatif National d’Ethique), Yves le Bars (president of GRET, a professional association of solidarity and international cooperation) and Claudine Schmidt-Lainé (scientific director of CEMAGREF)