Editing IPCC:AR6/SR15/Chapter-1 (section)

== 1.4.1 Classifying Response Options ==

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Key broad categories of responses to the climate change problem are framed here. '''Mitigation''' refers to efforts to reduce or prevent the emission of greenhouse gases, or to enhance the absorption of gases already emitted, thus limiting the magnitude of future warming (IPCC, 2014b) <sup>[[#fn:r242|242]]</sup> . Mitigation requires the use of new technologies, clean energy sources, reduced deforestation, improved sustainable agricultural methods, and changes in individual and collective behaviour. Many of these may provide substantial co-benefits for air quality, biodiversity and sustainable development. Mal-mitigation includes changes that could reduce emissions in the short-term but could lock in technology choices or practices that include significant trade-offs for effectiveness of future adaptation and other forms of mitigation (Chapters 2 and 4).

'''Carbon dioxide removal''' (CDR) or ‘negative emissions’ activities are considered in this report as distinct from the above mitigation activities. While most mitigation activities focus on reducing the amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases emitted, CDR aims to reduce concentrations already in the atmosphere. Technologies for CDR are mostly in their infancy despite their importance to ambitious climate change mitigation pathways (Minx et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r243|243]]</sup> . Although some CDR activities such as reforestation and ecosystem restoration are well understood, the feasibility of massive-scale deployment of many CDR technologies remains an open question (IPCC, 2014d; Leung et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r244|244]]</sup> (Chapters 2 and 4). Technologies for the active removal of other greenhouse gases, such as methane, are even less developed, and are briefly discussed in Chapter 4.

Climate change adaptation refers to the actions taken to manage the impacts of climate change (IPCC, 2014a) <sup>[[#fn:r245|245]]</sup> . The aim is to reduce vulnerability and exposure to the harmful effects of climate change (e.g., sea level rise, more intense extreme weather events or food insecurity). It also includes exploring the potential beneficial opportunities associated with climate change (for example, longer growing seasons or increased yields in some regions). Different adaptation pathways can be undertaken. Adaptation can be incremental, or transformational, meaning fundamental attributes of the system are changed (Chapter 3 and 4). There can be limits to ecosystem-based adaptation or the ability of humans to adapt (Chapter 4). If there is no possibility for adaptive actions that can be applied to avoid an intolerable risk, these are referred to as hard adaptation limits, while soft adaptation limits are identified when there are currently no options to avoid intolerable risks, but they are theoretically possible (Chapter 3 and 4). While climate change is a global issue, impacts are experienced locally. Cities and municipalities are at the frontline of adaptation (Rosenzweig et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r246|246]]</sup> , focusing on reducing and managing disaster risks due to extreme and slow-onset weather and climate events, installing flood and drought early warning systems, and improving water storage and use (Chapters 3 and 4 and Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 5). Agricultural and rural areas, including often highly vulnerable remote and indigenous communities, also need to address climate-related risks by strengthening and making more resilient agricultural and other natural resource extraction systems.

'''Remedial measures''' are distinct from mitigation or adaptation, as the aim is to temporarily reduce or offset warming (IPCC, 2012b) <sup>[[#fn:r247|247]]</sup> . One such measure is solar radiation modification (SRM), also referred to as solar radiation management in the literature, which involves deliberate changes to the albedo of the Earth system, with the net effect of increasing the amount of solar radiation reflected from the Earth to reduce the peak temperature from climate change (The Royal Society, 2009; Smith and Rasch, 2013; Schäfer et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r248|248]]</sup> . It should be noted that while some radiation modification measures, such as cirrus cloud thinning (Kristjánsson et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r249|249]]</sup> , aim at enhancing outgoing long-wave radiation, SRM is used in this report to refer to all direct interventions on the planetary radiation budget. This report does not use the term ‘geo-engineering’ because of inconsistencies in the literature, which uses this term to cover SRM, CDR or both, whereas this report explicitly differentiates between CDR and SRM. Large-scale SRM could potentially be used to supplement mitigation in overshoot scenarios to keep the global mean temperature below 1.5°C and temporarily reduce the severity of near-term impacts (e.g., MacMartin et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r250|250]]</sup> . The impacts of SRM (both biophysical and societal), costs, technical feasibility, governance and ethical issues associated need to be carefully considered (Schäfer et al., 2015 <sup>[[#fn:r251|251]]</sup> ; Section 4.3.8 and Cross-Chapter Box 10 in Chapter 4).

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