Abstract/Summary

This article questions the need for substantive legal developments aimed at promoting adaptation to the impacts of climate change. It does so by arguing that climate change adaptation should not be conceived of as a separate policy or legal field, but rather as a consideration to be mainstreamed in various policy and legal regimes. For instance, climate change adaptation should be integrated with disaster risk reduction, the protection of human rights, economic development, and ecological conservation. This method of integration is better than to view adaptation as a separate legal field, as it is likely impossible to attribute particular events (e.g., an individual’s migration or a disaster) to climate change. Overall, causal attribution is not relevant to determining how societies ought to respond to these events. If a “law” on adaptation is necessary, it is only as a minimal set of procedural norms aimed at ensuring that the objective of adapting to climate change is considered in other fields of law.