The Sustainable Coastal Systems cluster has invited Dr. Jochen Hinkel (Global Climate Forum - Berlin) to visit UCF between January 9-12. He will give a presentation entitled "Determinants of Adaptation to Sea-Level Rise: A Global Perspective" at 3:00 p.m. on January 9 in TA-117 (Teaching Academy).
This paper will address the question of Can we adapt to sea-level rise? in light of a set of diverse cases including Bangladesh, Catalonia, Jakarta, the Maldives, New York and the Netherlands. The question of whether societies can adapt to sea-level rise is made operational through the concepts of limits and barriers to adaptation. The focus lies on the following four limits and barriers that have found to be most important for coastal adaptation in previous comparative case study research: i) technological limits, which arise when there are no technological measures available to effectively mitigate the impacts of sea-level rise; ii) economic barriers, which arise if the implementation and maintenance of adaptation options is more costly than the impacts avoided through the options; iii) financing barriers, which arise if it is difficult or impossible to access financial resources for adaptation; and iv) institutional barriers, which arise whenever stakeholders' conflicting interests impede or exacerbate adaptation.
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