In Sink or Swim, Susannah Fisher explores how the world needs to adapt to climate change, and offers an introduction to the key problems and hard choices that lie ahead for the global community. Action to adapt to climate change until now has been incremental. Governments, financial institutions and local groups have tinkered around the edges of current systems, trying to cope with changing seasons and worsening floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts without making major changes to how we live our lives. In many cases this will not be enough. Some programmes to adapt to climate change have not worked, and some have made things worse. The tools the international community uses to pay for adaptation and the way governments have tried to adapt to climate change have fundamental flaws and cannot address the major challenges ahead. Many people and places are reaching the limits of this incremental adaptation. Communities in New Orleans, Miami and Mumbai now experience regular flooding, destroying roads and filling their homes with filthy water. Street-food sellers in Vietnam, farm workers in Australia and builders in Qatar are out all day in the burning sun. Eventually the extreme heat will make working outside just too dangerous for human health. The world is not facing up to these choices. They require new approaches, challenging current systems and coming up with new ones, with this particularly difficult with our short-term political and economic cycles. Agreeing what society wishes to protect will require engagement with diverse communities, a willingness to go against powerful interests, and working with uncertainty about what the future holds.
