Climate Adaptation Laws Are Booming — But Still Falling Short

Last June, South Africa unveiled a ‘Climate Adaptation Response Plan’ for its coastal sector. It described a framework for mitigating and managing collapsing marine ecosystems, the erosion of sandy beaches, and the gutting of oceanside economies —among many other challenges.

That same year, Japan published its ‘Plan for Global Warming Countermeasures’, outlining its efforts to combat rising greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to their consequences. In the final stretch of the Biden administration, the US followed suit with its first-ever National Adaptation Plan. In fact, adaptation laws and policies have been booming the world over — and now, a timely study from the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE) has put numbers to that surge, explaining what measures are gaining the most traction and where major blind spots remain.

This matters beyond the fusty corridors of the world’s legislative buildings and the nerdy bubble of international think-tanks. Markets are contoured by a mesh of government rules and policies, while capital flows along the regulatory grooves etched by official bodies. In other words, the degree to which adaptation takes off among corporates and financial institutions may very well depend on what laws and policies are enacted — and how quickly.