Integrating Climate Change Actions into Local Development

To date, climate change adaptation and mitigation have been treated separately both in research and in the climate negotiations. However, a growing body of literature is now being developed that points to actual and potential synergies and trade-offs between responses to climate change and sustainability. This literature has evolved in a spontaneous way with diverse approaches and no common methodology to help practitioners explicitly plan for these synergies. This special issue of the Climate Policy journal addresses this gap between scientific knowledge and practitioners' needs by focussing on linkages between climate change and sustainable development at the level of conceptual framework and methods. In particular, the papers address in an integrated way local development options involving both adaptation and mitigation in order to promote resilience to climate change in human and natural systems. The special issue provides policy and methodological guidelines for linking local deveopment pathways with responses to climate change, based on collaboration between local practitioners, the public and scientists.

Linking Climate Change and Sustainable Development at the Local Level (Editorial)Scale and Sustainability Making Integration of Adaptation and Mitigation Work: Mainstreaming into Sustainable Development Policies? A Framework for Explaining the Links Between Capacity and Action in Response to Global Climate Change Understanding and Managing the Complexity of Urban Systems Under Climate Change Vulnerability, Poverty and the Need for Sustainable Adaptation Measures Structured Decision-making to Link Climate Change and Sustainable Development Integrating Adaptation into Policy: Upscaling Evidence from Local to Global (Outlook)

Livia Bizikova and Stewart Cohen are at Adaptation and Impacts Research Division (AIRD), Environment Canada, and John Robinson is at the Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at the University of British Columbia, Canada.