Adaptive Capacity Assessment

Adaptive capacity assessment evaluates the ability of a community, sector, or system to adjust to climate variability and change, to moderate harm, and to seize opportunities. It is the third and most actionable component of the IPCC vulnerability framework, the part that captures why two equally exposed and sensitive places can fare very differently. Barry Smit and Johanna Wandel's influential synthesis reframed vulnerability assessment around adaptive capacity and argued for a bottom-up, practitioner-oriented approach grounded in local knowledge of real exposures and coping. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report chapter on adaptation, by Adger and colleagues, catalogued the determinants of adaptive capacity, economic resources, technology, information, infrastructure, institutions, and equity, and the barriers that limit it in practice. Rather than producing a single index number, the assessment builds a rich, context-specific picture of what enables and constrains adaptation. Its purpose is to identify concrete entry points for strengthening the capacity to cope with a changing climate.