Guarding the vulnerable

Over time, particularly in the 21st century, COPs have broadened their focus from mitigation to include adaptation strategies—such as water management, resilient agriculture, urban planning, etc.—to protect vulnerable regions and humans worldwide

- Krishna Gupta

As noted in the first part of this two-part article, most discussions in all COPs focused on Mitigation. It was only in the sixth COP at The Hague and Bonn in 2000 that Adaptation issues were discussed in some detail and an Adaptation Fund was agreed on. After that, the seventh COP at Marrakesh in 2001 saw Adaptation issues being included in the Marrakesh Accords. The Third Assessment Report of IPCC published in 2001 also gave a great deal of importance to Adaptation issues. The tenth COP at Buenos Aires also gave fair importance to Adaptation and included it in the Buenos Aires Programme on Adaptation (BAPA). The thirteenth COP at Bali saw Adaptation get equal importance to mitigation and the fourteenth COP at Poland saw the launch of the Adaptation Fund, which was agreed at the sixth COP. Most COPs after that have given Adaptation measures as much importance as Mitigation issues. The UNEP also began publishing the Adaptation Gap Report since 2014, which focuses on ways to adapt to various climate change challenges.