Questions and answers: “On adaptation, Sweden must address cascade risks for the climate”
Adaptation is usually thought and acted in a territorial and local context. This includes Sweden, where much of the responsibility for implementing measures to adapt to climate change lies with municipalities or counties and the focus is often on physical infrastructure. Measures such as flood control will be quickly considered in connection with climate adaptation. But even if this is of course very important, the adaptation to cascade climate risks clearly goes beyond what each individual municipality can do.
When it comes to trading effects, it can also go beyond what individual companies can do, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Even where it would be possible for large Swedish companies to get out of high-risk trade relations or diversify trade relations, this could lead to outcomes that are not in Sweden’s foreign or development policy interest.
Let’s say that Sweden and other large European importers of Brazilian Arabica coffee began to buy their coffee from other countries in order to avoid importing climate risks, so to speak. This is entirely hypothetical because current forecasts do not provide any alternative producing regions with less climate risk. But let’s just assume for our argument here that players would move to move imports from Brazil to other places.
It would jeopardize the livelihoods of many Brazilian coffee farmers and could lead to regional political instability. In the case of so-called bread basket products that are essential for food security worldwide, such as wheat, rice and maize, the abandonment of production areas in climate-risk regions can even lead to global systemic effects, food price crises and food shortages worldwide. On the other hand, international cooperation on adaptation would yield better results for all.
But this is not just a question of what best serves our self-interest in having, for example, climate-resistant food systems globally. It is also a question of justice: given that we in developed countries are the ones who caused the climate crisis in the first place, important questions should arise with regard to our responsibility as players in global markets. Both Sweden and the EU as a whole are working to integrate justice and adapt the concept of fair resilience in adaptation plans and policies with the aim of “leaving no one behind”, which is the central promise in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.