Communication of assessment findings poses challenges:

•

The issues are complex.

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Potential consequences and adaptation strategies have many uncertainties.

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Issues are not salient - there is a lag in the occurrence of impacts, and impacts are diffuse.

•

There is a sense of powerlessness.

Much of the effort over the past two decades has been to convince people that climate change is an issue.  As a

result, only a limited number of sectors and stakeholders have effectively changed the way they do business in

anticipation of future climate change.  There is a continuing need to make climate change real for stakeholders.

With increased awareness of the sensitivity of outcomes to climate change, stakeholders can effectively change

the way they do business.  Society is beginning to adapt to impacts, for example, Canadian ports, coastal zone

protection, health monitoring and surveillance, wildlife migration corridors, and ski resorts.

Decision support tools would help resource managers:

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Depict potential impacts.

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Place effects of climate change into context with other stresses.

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Display implications and tradeoffs of alternative management decisions.

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Facilitate decision making under uncertainty.

For example, risk maps can be developed as decision support tools to guide public health interventions, such as

for the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome outbreak in the southwestern U.S. in 1993, where high-risk areas can

now be predicted in advance.  U.S. EPA has developed TEAM (Tool for Environmental Assessment and

Management), an interactive web-based tool to help water resource managers include considerations of climate

change in their day-to-day decision making, utilizing decision criteria and objectives defined by the user.

Climate change impact assessment will never be “perfect” and without uncertainties, but existing assessments

already provide timely and useful information for decision-makers and resource managers about potential

consequences of climate change and possible adaptation strategies.  For example, wastewater conveyance

systems can be designed and constructed to take account of combined sewer overflows and effects of climate

change on precipitation.  Society has the opportunity to be anticipatory and proactive, rather than waiting to

react in the midst of a crisis.  Decisions will have to be made.  Making no decision is equivalent to making a

decision, and an informed decision is better than an uninformed one.

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