“We need to put adaptation on the same footing as mitigation,” Su Wei, China’s lead climate negotiator, said yesterday in Lima. “The impacts of climate change are not in the future. It’s happening now.” reports Alex Morales for Bloomberg.com.
Having failed to prevent global warming from taking hold after two decades of discussions, more countries are focusing on how to live with its effects. The idea is rising to the top of the agenda at two weeks of United Nations climate talks that began on Monday in Lima.
Morales goes on to give an overview of a number of the adaptation techniques in the world, including traditional measures such as the famed Inca terraces, and the pre-Inca “waru waru” system of raised fields surrounded by shallow water-filled canals, which reduce the risks of floods and droughts by creating small microclimates.