2021-11-15 GC Agenda - Item 7 - Attachment 2 - Coastal Hazards Adaptation Plan with tracked changes

Appendix 1: Glossary
Accept: An adaptation approach that recognises the validity of climate science and the intensifying
threats of climate change, subsequently acknowledging there is a need to implement adaptive
strategies.

Accommodate: An adaptation approach that seeks to allow the continued or extended use of
vulnerable areas by reducing the sensitivity and/or exposure to sea level rise and other coastal
hazards. For example, elevated floor requirements, increased setback requirements, hazard
insurance, improved drainage and the preparation of emergency evacuation plans.
Accommodation measures are often cost effective in a transitional strategy and are particularly
suitable for areas with modest to higher value assets where exposure to climate change risk is low
to medium.

Adaptation pathways: A series of adaptation choices involving trade-offs between short-term and
long-term goals and values. These are processes of deliberation to identify solutions that are
meaningful to people in the context of their daily lives and to avoid potential maladaptation.

Avoid: An adaptation approach where planned actions are taken to avoid the impacts of climate
change and coastal hazards on assets. For example, to avoid the impacts of coastal and estuarine
flooding and inundation, building codes and regulations can be implemented. Early acceptance of
climate change impacts is needed so that planners and decision makers have sufficient time to
adjust legislation and building codes.

Carbon Reduction (emissions reduction): Human interventions to reduce the sources or enhance
the sinks of greenhouse gases.

Climate: What we experience as the day-to-day state of the atmosphere at a particular place and
time regarding heat, rain, wind, cloudiness, humidity etc. is the ‘weather’ and it is recorded at
hourly or daily timeframes. Climate is the weather of a particular place averaged over a period of
time, most often 30 years (though sometimes longer).

Climate Change: A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g. using statistical
tests) by changes in the mean and/or variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended
period.

Defend: An adaptation approach where actions are taken to physically protect assets. See protect.


Greenhouse Gas: Gases in the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb infrared
radiation and trap the heat from the sun, contributing to the greenhouse effect (the warming of
Earth’s surface and the air above it).

Maladaptation: Actions that may, as an unintended consequence, lead to increased risk of
adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased GHG emissions, increased vulnerability
to climate change, or diminished welfare, now or in the future.

Protect: An adaptation approach which involves the continuation of use of vulnerable areas and
assets from inundation and sea level rise by using hard or soft defensive measures. Hard
defensive measures include sea walls, breakwaters, storm tide barriers; and ‘soft’ defensive
measures include beach nourishment, dune management and restoration.

Resilience: The capacity of social, economic, and environmental systems to cope with a
hazardous event, trend, or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their


Noosa Council – Coastal Hazards Adaptation Plan                                               Page 87