Managing climate change: mitigation and adaptation
There are only two things you can do about climate change: emit less, or cope better. Almost every policy you will ever read about is one or the other, and the best answers say which.
Part of your national curriculum
- Human and physical geography: Understand the use of natural resources, including energy, food, minerals and water
- Human and physical geography: Understand how human and physical processes interact to influence, and be influenced by, climate change
Lesson overview
What you'll learn in this lesson
Compare strategies that reduce emissions with strategies that manage consequences.
Key learning points
- • Mitigation: cutting the cause
- • Adaptation: managing the effect
- • Weighing the strategies
- • Scales of action
This lesson at a glance
- 25 minutes
- 17 parts to scroll through
- 4 quick checks
- Marked quiz at the end
- Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses
Words to know
Scroll down — the lesson carries on below
Watch & discover
Part 1 of 17
Watch first
Managing climate change: mitigation and adaptation
An English teaching video on this topic from iNewittAll. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.
In a nutshell
Compare strategies that reduce emissions with strategies that manage consequences.
Learning cycle
Part 2 of 17
Learning cycle 1 of 2
Part 1 · Mitigation: cutting the cause
A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.
Explore the idea
Part 3 of 17
Learn
Mitigation: cutting the cause
Renewable and low carbon energy such as wind, solar, hydro, tidal and nuclear replaces coal and gas generation. Improved insulation, heat pumps and efficient appliances cut demand. Electrifying transport and improving public transport reduce oil use. Afforestation and peatland restoration lock carbon back into ecosystems. Carbon capture and storage and international agreements setting national targets try to make the change happen at the scale required.
Explore the idea
Part 4 of 17
Learn
Adaptation: managing the effect
Adaptation accepts a degree of change and prepares for it: flood barriers and raised buildings in coastal cities, drought-resistant and faster-maturing crop varieties, water metering and reservoir management, changed planting calendars, urban tree planting and reflective roofs to reduce heat, and managed retreat where defending a coastline is no longer affordable.
Quick check
Part 5 of 17
Quick check
Which is a mitigation strategy?
Quick check
Part 6 of 17
Quick check
Which is an adaptation strategy?
Learning cycle
Part 7 of 17
Learning cycle 2 of 2
Part 2 · Weighing the strategies
A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.
Reset break
Part 8 of 17
Pause
That's sitting 1 of 2 done
Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.
Explore the idea
Part 9 of 17
Learn
Weighing the strategies
Mitigation attacks the cause and benefits everyone, but it is slow, expensive up front and requires countries that emit least to be helped by those that emit most. Adaptation delivers protection to a specific place quickly, but it does nothing to stop warming and the wealthiest places adapt best, which widens inequality. Serious policy uses both: mitigate to limit how bad it gets, adapt to survive what is already locked in.
Explore the idea
Part 10 of 17
Learn
Scales of action
International agreements set targets and finance. National governments tax, subsidise and legislate, for example ending sales of new petrol cars or funding offshore wind. Local councils run recycling, cycle lanes and tree planting. Individuals choose diet, flights, heating and consumption. A strong evaluation notices that individual action alone cannot deliver the scale needed, but public pressure changes what governments can pass.
Quick check
Part 11 of 17
Quick check
A criticism of relying on adaptation alone is that
Quick check
Part 12 of 17
Quick check
Why is international agreement needed for mitigation?
Explore the idea
Part 13 of 17
Worked example
Worked answer: 'Adaptation is a more realistic response to climate change than mitigation.' Evaluate (9 marks)
For: some warming is already locked in by past emissions, so places must adapt regardless; adaptation delivers measurable protection quickly and can be funded locally, for example flood defences or drought-tolerant crops. Against: adaptation treats the symptom, so if emissions continue the cost of adapting rises without limit, and poorer countries that contributed least can least afford it, making the response unjust. Compare: mitigation is slower and needs international cooperation that has often fallen short, but only mitigation stops the problem growing. Judgement: adaptation is realistic in the short term and necessary everywhere, but it is only sustainable alongside mitigation, so the statement is true about timescale and false about long-term effectiveness.
Challenge round
Part 14 of 17
Game · Sort it
Which of these are true?
Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.
True
Not true
Challenge round
Part 15 of 17
Game · Fill the gaps
Finish the sentences
Choose the word that belongs in each gap.
Electrifying transport and improving public transport ____ oil use.
Mastery quiz
Part 16 of 17
Marked quiz
End of lesson quiz: Managing climate change: mitigation and adaptation
4 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.
1. Which is a mitigation strategy?
2. Which is an adaptation strategy?
3. A criticism of relying on adaptation alone is that
4. Why is international agreement needed for mitigation?
Lesson round-up
Part 17 of 17
Lesson round-up
Ready when you are
Quiz score
Not sat
Games
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Points this lesson
0
Best run
0 in a row
Luna: 0 out of 4 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?
Ask LunaDo the work
Your written work for this lesson
This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.
Flooding on the River Calder
The town of Harbrook sits where a steep valley opens onto a flat floodplain. In December 2015, 120 mm of rain fell in 36 hours onto ground that was already saturated. The river rose 2.4 m in five hours, and 380 homes and 54 businesses flooded. Two roads and the railway closed for eleven days.
Geographers pointed to physical causes — steep slopes, impermeable rock, heavy rainfall — and human causes: moorland drained upstream, new housing built on the floodplain, and drains designed for smaller storms.
Since then the town has planted 40 hectares of woodland upstream, built leaky dams in small streams, and raised flood walls to 1.8 m. In the storm of 2020 the peak river level was 0.3 m lower and 40 homes flooded, not 380.
Written for Good Learning Co.
Reading questions
- List two physical and two human causes of the 2015 flood.
- Explain how planting woodland upstream lowers the river's peak level.
- Using the figures, judge how successful the scheme has been. Quote data in your answer.
Case study notes
WritingWrite the place, the facts and the figures from this lesson so you can revise them later.
Half a page
Explain answer
WritingAnswer in full sentences, giving causes and effects. Use one figure or place name as evidence.
8–10 sentences
Map or sketch
DiagramDraw the map, cross-section or field sketch with a key, title and labels, then photograph it.
1 map with a key
Data work
Working outPlot your figures as a graph on paper and write one sentence about the pattern.
1 graph + 1 sentence
Saved as you type.
Part 1 of 17 · Watch & discover
How this is going
- Not looked at yet
Understand the use of natural resources, including energy, food, minerals and water
- Not looked at yet
Understand how human and physical processes interact to influence, and be influenced by, climate change