Adaptation benchmarking survey: initial report

[摘要] This document reports on research into the current level of adaptation planning in Australian organisations. The project is being conducted jointly by CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship and the Australian Government Department of Climate Change (DCCEE), and involves a longitudinal survey of public- and private-sector organisations that would ideally play a significant part in Australia’s efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The project is designed to benchmark the current level of adaptation activities in sampled organisations, to allow for tracking of changes in adaptation activities, and to attribute observed changes to the impact of the DCCEE, the Climate Adaptation Flagship, and other agencies where appropriate. The project is also intended to raise levels of awareness of the Flagship and climate adaptation in general, and to provide information that could be used to help estimate the financial impact of the Flagship’s activities.Initial telephone surveys were conducted in late 2008, and included state and local government groups, infrastructure management organisations and a variety of industry representatives and individual businesses. The survey measured the type and extent of adaptation activities these organisations are currently undertaking. Survey results indicate that although most businesses recognise the challenge posed by climate change, and accept that both mitigation and adaptation are important, the nature and extent of adaptation activity was highly variable. Only 59% of surveyed organisations have conducted a formal vulnerability assessment, and less than 40% have implemented any specific planning or other changes aimed at adapting to future climate change impacts. Other specific findings of interest from the telephone survey are:•There is a degree of confusion between mitigation and adaptation. Many respondents described mitigation activities when asked about adaptation activity, even after formal definitions of both adaptation and mitigation had been given to them.•Adaptation activity appears to be linked to knowledge and beliefs about climate change issues. Organisations that rated climate change, adaptation and (to some extent) mitigation as more important, and those with higher knowledge of adaptation and mitigation, were more likely to have conducted vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning.•Adaptation activity appears to be more likely to occur in organisations with longer planning horizons. There is also some indication that larger organisations (reflected by annual turnover and staff numbers) were somewhat more likely to have conducted vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning than smaller organisations.•Adaptation activity appears linked to contact with outside organisations. Respondents who reported contact with outside organisations (including the DCCEE and CSIRO) were more likely to have conducted vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning.•Once vulnerability assessment has been conducted, especially if it indicates that the organisation’s vulnerability is high, subsequent adaptation planning is more likely. This finding suggests that prompting organisations to conduct vulnerability assessments may be expected to have flow-on impacts on levels of adaptation planning.

[发布日期] 2010-07-20 [发布机构] CSIRO

[效力级别] Industrial and Organisational Psychology [学科分类] 地球科学(综合)