Planning and implementing climate adaptation in cities and settlements can be hampered by incomplete scientific knowledge, a lack of awareness of cascading impacts , mismanagement of actions, human capacity and financing deficits, as well as opportunities for eroding long-term sustainable development priorities . These tensions can become acute in fragile and conflict affected states . It is important to differentiate between the climatic drivers of risk and social drivers that may compound risk exposures and experiences , especially since technically- and scientifically-informed adaptation actions can be redirected depending on socioeconomic, political or cultural conditions on the ground . The implementation of adaptation, whether by government, private sector or civil society actors, can therefore lead to unanticipated and unintended amplification of political, economic and ecological risks . Many cities are still in the phase of piloting or testing out appropriate adaptation actions, although there is emerging consensus that adaptation plans and projects should acknowledge trade-offs, intentionally avoid past development mistakes, not lock-in detrimental impacts or further risks arising from implementation and explicitly anticipate the risks of maladaptation in decision making . Maladaptation describes actions that lead to increased vulnerability or risk to climate impacts or diminish welfare. Urban examples include green gentrification which offers nature-based solutions to the few, social safety nets that promote risk inducing subsidies. Whether an action is maladapted can depend on context, for example air conditioning can reduce risk for the individual but is maladaptive at a societal level . It is informed by process; corruption can distort
IPCC
Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
IPCC Report