What is adaptation to climate change (versus more general climatic variability)?
Who or what adapts–and how? How does community-based adaptation fit with larger-scale adaptation policies and programs? Early debates about community-based adaptation, and adaptation in general, are grappling with these questions. In addition, examples in vulnerable communities in Bangladesh help illuminate the role and value of community-based adaptation, its limitations, and its potential to help integrate concerns about vulnerability and development into wider climate change policy. Approaches to Adaptation Adaptation was not a major part of the debate when climate change came onto the international policy agenda at the UN General Assembly in 1988. Initial approaches to managing climate change generally focused on mitigation through reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the source or increasing carbon sequestration through reforestation and better land use management. (7) The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 mentioned adaptation only five times,
