05 Sustainable solutions: mitigation and adaptation
Mitigation — attacking the cause
- Energy efficiency in buildings, industry and appliances; district heating; waste-heat recovery.
- Renewable electricity and heat, with storage and grid interconnection (see the companion lesson on renewable energy and green hydrogen).
- Transport: mass transit, electric vehicles charged from clean power, cycling and walking, rail freight, and efficient shipping and aviation fuels.
- Industry: green steel and cement chemistry, capture at process sources, circular economy and recycling, which reduces the emission embedded in new material.
- Agriculture and land use: water management in rice, better manure handling, reduced food waste, and afforestation and protection of existing forests and wetlands as sinks.
Adaptation — living with the effect
- Coastal defence with sea walls, breakwaters and beach nourishment; controlled retreat from the most exposed land.
- Water: canal lining, modern irrigation, treated-waste-water re-use, desalination and rainwater harvesting.
- Crops: heat- and salt-tolerant varieties, shifted planting dates, resilient seed banks and insurance for smallholders.
- Cities: cool roofs, green corridors, drainage sized for extreme rain, and early-warning systems for heat waves.
The agreements: the UNFCCC (1992) set the framework; the Kyoto Protocol (1997) bound only industrialised countries; the Paris Agreement (2015) made pledges universal (NDCs) with a long-term goal of well below 2 °C and efforts toward 1.5 °C; COP27 (Sharm El-Sheikh, 2022) created the loss-and-damage fund; adaptation goals and the phase-down of HFCs and coal follow in later decisions.