Environmental Systems and Societies · Topic 6: Atmosphere and climate change
ES6.3 — Climate change: mitigation and adaptation
Environmental Systems and Societies · SL / HL · syllabus-mapped notes
Global action and decarbonization
Why avoiding catastrophic change needs coordinated global action rather than isolated states, and what decarbonization and carbon neutrality mean.
Mitigation strategies
The three categories of mitigation, reducing the process of warming, reducing GHG production, and removing CO₂, with at least two examples of each.
Adaptation strategies and plans
Structural and non-structural adaptation with examples, plus adaptation plans such as NAPAs and the role of the UN Development Programme.
Responses, the UN and IPCC scenarios
Government and non-governmental responses across four levers, the UNFCCC-IPCC-COP framework and the Kigali Amendment, and the IPCC emissions scenarios.
Technology, barriers and geoengineering
Technologies that aid mitigation, the five barriers to implementing climate strategies, and geoengineering weighed for and against.
Perspectives, stakeholders and the commons
How stakeholders shift perspectives, why views on urgency vary between groups, and the tragedy of the commons applied to the shared atmosphere.