Regional Climate Change Adaptation Based on the PSR Model—Multi-Case Comparative Analysis on a Global Scale

Abstract

Regional climate change is affected by global warming, large-scale inter-regional circulation, and land use/cover. As a result of different ecological, economic, and social conditions, climate adaptation actions vary from region to region, including community-based adaptation in small island developing states, enhancing flood resilience in Europe, weather index insurance promotion in Africa, climate change adaptation based on traditional knowledge in the Polar Regions, and global joint decision-making in terms of regional issues of the Ocean. This paper takes the above five typical cases as the research objects, and the multi-case comparative research method is adopted to discuss regional climate change adaptation based on the pressure–state–response framework. It found that: (1) regional climate change adaptation faces significant pressure from cross-regional flows of finance, population, and species under climate change; (2) climate change hotspot maps based on climate change projections show regional climate vulnerability; (3) responses for regional climate change adaptation require active promotion of multi-level governance with horizontal and vertical cooperation. In the future, regional climate change adaptation should focus on inter-regional climate justice and equality, regional climate change adaptation pathways optimization, and how to effectively learn from typical regional climate adaptation cases.