Sink or swim: how the world needs to adapt to a changing climate

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding are reshaping lives and ecosystems across the world. Adaptation efforts to date have largely been incremental and insufficient for the scale of change now underway. In this book talk, Dr Susannah Fisher discussed her new book, Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate, which argues that the world is approaching a series of unavoidable and deeply political choices about how we adapt in a future of 1.5°C warming and beyond. The book draws and global examples and explores what transformative adaptation could look like in practice. Fisher examines difficult but necessary questions, including how to support communities to relocate away from vulnerable coastlines, how to fairly manage shifting fish stocks, how to build food systems and global trade that are both resilient and productive, and what role the military may play in adaptation efforts. This event was co-hosted by the IDS-led RELIABLE project and Climate and Development Seminar Series.