The latest report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) brings new evidence to bear on the real and potential impacts of climate change, emphasizing the need to manage risks and build resilience. In a dramatic, slickly produced video accompanying the much-anticipated Working Group II contribution to the report, released on March 30, several of the working group’s dozens of authors discuss key issues addressed in their section, which covers “impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.”

The video, like the one released for Working Group I in November 2013, seemingly reflects a continued effort by the IPCC to engage a broader audience. The IPCC has come under fire in the past for failing to effectively communicate its findings, prompting the organization to develop a new communications strategy in 2011.

The Working Group II contribution is the second of three parts that, along with a synthesis report, will comprise the full IPCC Fifth Assessment Report scheduled for completion this fall.

“The role of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to assess what’s known and what’s not known in the scientific body of literature about impacts of climate change,” says Chris Field, co-chair of the working group and founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology:

What are the physical changes that have occurred and will occur in the future? What’s the vulnerability – who’s susceptible to harm and why? And adaptation – what can be done to cope as effectively as possible with the climate changes that can’t be avoided?

Risk, Uncertainty, and Resilience

The findings presented in the report paint a sobering picture. Climate impacts are already taking a significant toll on humans and ecosystems, the IPCC warns, and with changing conditions outstripping adaptation efforts, the prognosis appears bleak.

“What we’re observing is a significant adaptation deficit in both the developing and developed countries,” says Andy Reisinger, coordinating lead author of the chapter on Australasia:

Society at large is actually more vulnerable and more exposed to climatic extremes even in the current climate than one might expect, and that tells us something about the challenge of moving forward into a changing climate, where we have yet to catch up with where we’re at now.

Adaptation and mitigation are “complementary activities” that can both reduce risk, says Leonard Nurse, who led the chapter on small islands. But while adaptation brings immediate benefits, mitigation has a longer-term payoff. “Investments in mitigation in the short-term really lead to an era of climate options in the long-term,” says Field.

Benjamin Preston, the coordinating lead author for the chapter on adaptation opportunities, constraints, and limits, notes that, “a key aspect of climate risk management is making choices under conditions of uncertainty.” What is certain, he says, is that both adaptation and mitigation require human and financial resources, governance and institutions, and “effective leadership from the top down and the bottom up.”

Climate-related risks occur where three different sets of factors overlap: hazards, exposure, and vulnerability, explains Field. Understanding local and regional context is therefore critical, as not every place is vulnerable in the same ways, says Debra Roberts, lead author of the chapter on urban areas. “What climate change brings is another layer of risk, and the question is how do we look at this new risk in relation to existing risk?” Adaptation measures that increase resilience in resource-rich countries may not be as relevant in developing countries, suggests Roberts. “With the Global South already dealing with so many challenges, they can’t afford for climate change adaptation to be a new agenda. So what we need to do is find ways of using existing resources, existing work streams, and existing people to tackle this new challenge.”

“Living at the margin of society and being highly exposed – like living in a floodplain or being homeless – makes people vulnerable to climate change,” says Petra Tschakert, coordinating lead author of the chapter on livelihoods and poverty. “It’s about these inequalities that exist in every society, both in the North and the South, that make people vulnerable.”

That challenge takes on new dimensions in this report, which for the first time introduces a chapter on human security to the IPCC process. The poorest, most vulnerable populations stand to be disproportionately affected by climate change, raising the specter of increased conflict. Though the relationship between climate change and conflict is highly contested in research and policy, the working group acknowledges that climate change is not likely to cause violence directly, but is instead one of many interlinking factors that can contribute to conflict under certain circumstances, particularly when changes are sudden or unexpected.

As climate change accelerates, so do the risks. Responding to those risks through adaptation, says Field, is about “trying to find a way to build a society that is more vibrant, more secure, richer, and fundamentally, more resilient.” The critical question, posed at the end of the video, is “how are we going to achieve that?”