Governing Climate Change Risks: Implications for Mitigation and Adaptation

This article analyzed climate change risks from the perspective of contemporary environmental risks and how they have been internalized by policy. In order to do so, the main characteristics of this type of risk were analyzed based on the contributions from social theory authors on contemporary environmental risks. Next, the implications of these characteristics for the production of policy responses to climate change risks were discussed. The two main types of policy responses to climate change in the literature were presented: mitigation and adaptation. Finally, their interaction, differences and possibilities for synergy were analyzed. Understanding climate change as a contemporary environmental risk, the way it was presented in this article, implies a radical change in the development bases of society, since greenhouse gases emissions from human activities contribute to the aggravation of global warming. Climate change challenges the traditional ways of governing in many ways, since climate change policy should involve the questioning of the current processes of development. Profound changes in ways of thinking and established political action are needed.