Climate change is here. Trying to mitigate it is no longer enough

EVERY year, the world breaks another climate record. Temperatures climb higher. Floods become more destructive. Wildfires grow more intense. Heatwaves last longer. 

Across Europe and Asia, extreme heatwaves have pushed temperatures to dangerous levels, leading to mounting heat-related deaths. In June 2026, France recorded 5,764 more heatwave-related deaths than usual, the highest excess mortality rate during a heatwave in the country since 2003.

Climate change is no longer tomorrow’s problem – it is today’s reality.

Despite more than three decades of international climate negotiations, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. In 2025, they rose 0.4 per cent from a year earlier, hitting a record.

The world has become remarkably good at discussing climate change, yet far less successful at mitigating it. 

This uncomfortable reality forces us to confront an equally uncomfortable question: Have we become so focused on preventing future climate change that we have neglected preparing people for the climate that already exists? 

In other words, have we mixed up our priorities by emphasising mitigation over adaptation?

The answer is not to abandon mitigation. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains indispensable if the world hopes to limit future warming.

Climate policy, however, has become disproportionately focused on mitigation, often treating adaptation as a secondary concern. 

That hierarchy no longer reflects reality. Adaptation deserves to stand alongside mitigation, not as an afterthought, but as one of the central pillars of climate policy.

Why mitigation alone cannot deliver

Climate change is a global problem, but economic priorities remain national. This simple reality explains why climate negotiations have made slower progress than many had hoped.

Countries face very different economic priorities. Advanced economies generally have greater capacity to pursue ambitious climate goals, while many developing countries continue to focus on establishing reliable electricity, decent housing, quality healthcare, stable employment and rising incomes. 

Asking countries at different stages of development to decarbonise at the same pace inevitably creates tensions between environmental ambitions and economic expansion.

International climate agreements have evolved to recognise these differences. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol imposed binding emissions targets primarily on developed countries, while the 2015 Paris Agreement allows countries to determine their own climate commitments according to their national circumstances. 

The change to self-decided targets reflects an important reality: governments must balance climate ambitions with domestic economic and social priorities. As long as those trade-offs remain, political realities will continue to shape the pace of climate mitigation.

Climate change seems a distant problem

Mitigation faces another obstacle that is discussed less often: climate change is psychologically distant.

The benefits of reducing emissions are delayed, globally shared and largely invisible. Citizens are asked to bear higher energy prices, adjust their lifestyles and comply with new regulations today in exchange for benefits that may only materialise decades later. 

Even then, those benefits are shared with the rest of the world rather than enjoyed exclusively by those making the sacrifice. 

Unsurprisingly, public support becomes difficult to sustain.

More importantly, people do not directly experience carbon emissions; they experience the consequences of carbon emissions. 

Carbon dioxide itself is invisible, odourless and intangible. What people see are flooded homes, unbearable heat, crop failures, damaged infrastructure and disrupted livelihoods. These are immediate realities that threaten lives, reduce incomes and impose significant economic costs.

Therefore, climate policy becomes more meaningful to people when it addresses the effects experienced by many everyday rather than focusing solely on the invisible gases that caused them.

Adaptation makes climate action visible

This is precisely where adaptation offers its greatest strength.

Mitigation seeks to reduce the causes of climate change. Adaptation reduces its consequences. 

Mitigation aims to lower future risks. Adaptation protects people from the risks that already exist. 

Mitigation relies heavily on international cooperation because the climate is a global public good. Adaptation, by contrast, can be implemented regardless of what other countries choose to do. 

Most importantly, adaptation produces benefits that citizens can see, experience and appreciate almost immediately.

Singapore illustrates this principle well. As a low-lying island city-state, Singapore recognises that climate risks cannot simply be negotiated away. 

Hence, the country has expanded drainage systems to reduce flash flooding, while developing long-term coastal protection plans to prepare for rising sea levels. 

These investments are expensive, yet their benefits are unmistakable. When communities are better protected from flooding and rising sea levels, climate policy ceases to be an abstract environmental objective and becomes something that improves daily life.

Adaptation achieves something mitigation often struggles to accomplish: it makes policy visible.

Policies should reflect local realities

Giving adaptation greater prominence does not mean governments should pursue every resilience project that appears attractive. Climate resilience is expensive, and public resources remain limited.

For this reason, every adaptation measure should be supported by rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

Governments should evaluate not only engineering and construction costs, but also wider economic, environmental and social impacts, including biodiversity, heritage conservation and community well-being. 

Evidence, not symbolism, should determine investment priorities.

Many developing countries face an even greater challenge. They are among the most vulnerable to climate change while possessing the fewest financial resources to respond to it.

Accordingly, international climate finance should prioritise evidence-based adaptation strategies that strengthen resilience and build local capacity.

Domestically, every country must design climate policies that reflect its geography, economic structure and resource constraints. There is no universal climate solution.

Human behaviour is the real challenge

Ultimately, the climate debate extends beyond mitigation and adaptation. 

Moreover, mitigation and adaptation are not mutually exclusive. A project can tackle both simultaneously. Sustainable agriculture, for example, reduces emissions while helping farmers respond to a changing climate.

But at its core, climate change is not merely an environmental problem. It is behavioural.

For decades, governments have relied heavily on carbon taxes, emissions caps, regulations and financial penalties to make up their climate policies.

These instruments remain necessary because they shape incentives and discourage environmentally harmful behaviour. Yet, incentives alone rarely change values.

A business that complies only because it fears financial penalties is likely to do only what regulations require. A citizen who behaves sustainably only because recycling facilities are convenient may stop once that convenience disappears.

People should not merely respond to penalties; they should understand the purpose behind them.

Lasting climate progress requires something regulation alone cannot create: intrinsic motivation. 

Citizens must see themselves not as passive recipients of environmental policy, but as active partners in building climate resilience. Businesses should embrace sustainability not simply because regulators demand it, but also because long-term competitiveness increasingly depends upon it.

Governments, in turn, must move beyond enforcement towards genuine partnerships with businesses, communities and civil society. 

Climate resilience is built not only through better infrastructure, but through stronger public trust, shared responsibility and collective ownership as well.

The conversation must change

For too long, climate policy has centred almost exclusively on preventing future warming. That objective remains essential. The reality, however, is that the climate has already changed, and communities are already paying the price.

The challenge before us is no longer simply preventing tomorrow’s crisis. It is protecting today’s communities while preparing for tomorrow’s uncertainties.

Mitigation remains indispensable because future generations deserve a stable climate. Adaptation deserves equal prominence because today’s generations deserve protection from the climate they already face.

Behavioural change binds both together because neither mitigation nor adaptation can succeed without public support and participation.

The question is no longer whether we should mitigate or adapt. The real question is whether we can afford to keep treating adaptation as an afterthought when it has already become one of humanity’s first lines of defence.

Professor Euston Quah, president of Economic Society of Singapore (ESS), is the Albert Winsemius chair professor of economics and director of the Economic Growth Centre at Nanyang Technological University. Dr Eugene Or, honorary assistant secretary of ESS, is a lecturer at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.