Climate change mitigation seeks to lower global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases by decreasing emissions and strengthening sinks, such as cutting back on fossil fuel use, adopting regenerative agricultural practices, protecting forests and protecting critical ecosystems.
Mitigation can provide multiple co-benefits that assist broader societal goals like sustainable development, biodiversity conservation and human health. Some examples include:
What is Mitigation?
Mitigation refers to any activity which lessens the severity of an event. Mitigation techniques may be employed to thwart emergency events from occurring altogether or lessen their repercussions – including emergency preparedness efforts, risk reduction strategies or by lessening their harmful impacts.
The most effective mitigation strategies involve reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This can be accomplished either through cutting back on emissions sources (such as switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy) or increasing sinks of emissions ( such as restoring forests).
Some mitigation pathways produce co-benefits, or results that provide advantages beyond simply lowering greenhouse gas levels, such as reduced air pollution levels, resilient communities or sustainable energy systems. Examples may include reducing air pollution levels or creating resilient communities.
Historically, climate actions have been divided into two distinct categories: mitigation to lower risks associated with climate change and adaptation to prepare for its impacts. We must seek both types of activities simultaneously. Furthermore, in the future we will also need to develop negative emission technologies known as carbon sinks to remove excess greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.
Mitigation Strategies
Developing countries must create options for climate change mitigation in their energy sectors, including those to reduce demand and production; improve building energy efficiency; and optimise transmission and distribution networks. Energy accounts for two-thirds of human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which has serious ramifications on climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified GHG emission reduction strategies as key strategies for mitigating risk and impact associated with climate change, such as decreasing GHG emissions while expanding sinks (e.g. land use changes).
Local governments are at the forefront of responding to climate change impacts by building flood defenses, planning for heat waves, rerouting road construction around vulnerable areas, and conserving open space near water bodies to reduce flooding. To increase their chances of success and decrease associated risks, adaptation efforts should be coordinated with mitigation initiatives – for instance encouraging climate-smart development practices while informing citizens about climate impacts and vulnerabilities as well as encouraging energy efficient choices among other things.
Mitigation Technologies
Technology plays an essential role in both carbon abatement and adaptation strategies. To combat climate change, we must develop new low-carbon technologies to power cars and generate electricity efficiently as well as make fossil fuels less attractive options.
In terms of energy systems, that translates to creating distributed production and distribution networks to minimize disruption at any one point in the supply chain, as well as replacing centralized systems with distributed renewables that better adapt to weather variability while being less vulnerable to outages at central power plants.
Climate mitigation involves improving “sinks” that gather and store atmospheric GHGs, such as oceans, forests and soils. Analysis of trends in climate-mitigation innovation indicates the significance of public policy to climate-mitigation innovation; China’s rapid solar PV growth likely being spurred on by government policies; additionally a study on diffusion indicates inventors respond to domestic and foreign environmental regulations when making innovations to combat climate change.
Mitigation Measures
Mitigation measures refers to any measures taken by humans that reduce or avert climate change caused by humanity. These could include harnessing new technologies, encouraging renewable energies, improving efficiency of older energy systems or altering management practices and consumer behavior – or even creating sinks to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (see Council on Environmental Quality 2014a and 2014b for definition of mitigation).
An analogy could be made between plugging leaks on a boat in order to prevent its sinking and managing flooding of water already into it, and climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies being pursued simultaneously.
Climate change mitigation requires an international effort, to ensure no single country falls behind when cutting fossil fuel emissions. That is why the Paris Agreement on climate change offers cooperation among nations contributing different levels of global emissions; its aim is to reach zero by 2050.