Ethics and Climate Adaptation
In the context of climate policies, adaptation as a response to climate change aims not to prevent environmental impacts but to reduce the effects of the physical changes on key interests. Therefore, it is necessary to consider what kinds of things—what interests—should adaptation seek to protect from the effects of climate change. Any account of justice in adaptation must take a position on what interests adaptation measures should protect. The increasing convention in discourses on adaptation is to assume that protection of basic material interests of individuals is the proper goal of adaptation. Occasionally, it has been mooted that policies to safeguard economic interests can also count as adaptation. This chapter suggests that an interest in secure cultural identity is also relevant and that adaptation policies should take it into account.