Who Pays for Climate Action?

Until a decade ago, climate change adaptation was a concern mostly for vulnerable nations on the front lines of climate change, including small island developing states and least developed countries. Industrial nations, it seemed, minimized adaptation in favor of mitigation efforts.However, the escalation of recent climate change impacts, such as the severe 2021 floods in Belgium and Germany, and the wave of hurricanes that batter the US coastline each year, emphasize the need for both climate change mitigation and adaptation in nations throughout the world.Looking first at the ideas of mitigation and adaption, and then the contemporary need to integrate these two ideas, this webinar series seeks to understand how national governments have, or have not, addressed them. We will look at the political opposition to prioritizing climate adaptation over climate mitigation, how “agenda setter” priorities heavily emphasize one set of priorities over another, and how there is little overlap, in most nations, between mitigation and adaptation policies.Finally, this webinar series will examine the most pressing questions facing nations in the realm of climate change mitigation and adaptation: how can nations and the international community pay to mitigate and adapt at a more meaningful level? How can fossil fuel interests and the influence they exert be reduced so that space can be made for “green” industries and interests? In the world’s most vulnerable nations, how can climate change adaptation be addressed as separate from disaster relief management, which, at present, gets the most attention?

Sponsored by:

American University School of Public Affairs

Time: –  (5:30 – 7:00 pm UTC)

Location: Virtual

Date: Thursday, May 12, 2022

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