Index for climate change adaptation in China and its application

With the increasing awareness of the risks and impacts of climate change, scholars tend to pay more attention to the applications of indicators, which access the effectiveness of climate change adaptation. This study aims to evaluate the overall progress of climate change adaptation in China during 2010–2018 in a quantitative manner. The Index for Climate Change Adaptation in China (ICCAC) has been thus developed by adopting the analytic hierarchy process weighting and expert scoring method. Namely, ICCAC is composed of national climate change impacts, adaptation actions in key sectors, adaptation progress in key sectors, and the national adaptation policy framework. Overall, the ICCAC and its four sub-indexes increased significantly from 2010 to 2018, on a yearly-basis. Each sub-index implied that the socio-economic impacts caused by climate change in China have been alleviated gradually; specifically, the mainstream endeavor of key sectors has witnessed remarkable progress, however, it is worth noting that the gap between individual adaptation actions and policies still exists; the implementation effect of policies in key sectors is not as affluent as that of actions; the current adaptation endeavor in key areas is still closely related to the mainstream business of corresponding competent ministries rather than adaptation-aimed actions; the national adaptation policy framework has been primarily formed, but there are still some deficiencies. As a result, the gap in China's adaptation process could be mainly manifested in the following five aspects: i) adaptation effectiveness assessment in forestry and urban infrastructure is urgently needed; ii) policies in marine and water resources sectors need structural reforms; iii) evaluation criteria for national adaptation are not necessarily sufficient; iv) the improvement of adaptive management efficiency has stagnated recently; and v) the adaptation works of relevant Ministries should be coordinated and put forward the corresponding strategies. Finally, this study presents four proposals: conducting an evaluation of adaptation actions in all key sectors, integrating climate change impacts into sectoral planning decisions, launching concrete action plans for adaptation, establishing a complete policy framework on adaptation.