• Energy Research

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthesis of the resulting 1,682 articles presents a systematic and comprehensive global stocktake of implemented human adaptation to climate change. Documented adaptations were largely fragmented, local and incremental, with limited evidence of transformational adaptation and negligible evidence of risk reduction outcomes. We identify eight priorities for global adaptation research: assess the effectiveness of adaptation responses, enhance the understanding of limits to adaptation, enable individuals and civil society to adapt, include missing places, scholars and scholarship, understand private sector responses, improve methods for synthesizing different forms of evidence, assess the adaptation at different temperature thresholds, and improve the inclusion of timescale and the dynamics of 536 responses.

Community risk and resilience to high-latitude wildfires has received limited conceptual attention, with a comprehensive, integrated framework that unpacks the complex human–fire–climate relationship in high-latitude environments largely missing. In this paper, we use insights from both the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction literature to build a conceptual framework to understand the factors and dynamics of risk and resilience to wildfires at the community level in high-latitude regions. Using an illustrative case study, the framework demonstrates how unique social and ecological features of high-latitude communities elevate their risk of wildfires and emphasizes the need to think holistically about the different spatial–temporal interactions and interdependencies between fire, humans, and climate in these regions. We find that remoteness, indigeneity, subsistence-based activities, and colonial practices, along with accelerated climate warming, are notable features influencing community risk and resilience to wildfires in high-latitude regions. This framework can help unravel the complex nature of wildfires, guide stakeholders through each phase of the disaster process, and facilitate the development and design of wildfire-related policies and strategies in high-latitude regions.