I have written a popular science book about adapting to climate change.
OUT NOW in the UK. Coming November 4th to the US.
Sink or Swim: how the world needs to adapt to a changing climate.
Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding caused by climate change are already impacting people and nature. Adaptation until now has been incremental with governments and institutions tinkering around the edges of current systems. This will not be enough.
In my new book I make the case that adaptation so far has not gone far or fast enough, and there are a set of hard policy and political choices coming up around how best to adapt in a world of 1.5 degrees warming and beyond.
Choices such as how to support communities to relocate away from coastlines, how to fairly account for moving fish stocks, how to make the food system and global trade more resilient whilst also increasing productivity, and what role the military should play in adaptation.
These hard choices will require political debates and new solutions to create a liveable world in the next century and beyond.
Will we sink or swim?
Reviews:
‘Sink or Swim shows us that adapting to climate change is a critical part of climate justice. Through a compelling and meticulously researched narrative, Susannah Fisher highlights the urgent need to face up to the scale of climate impacts and sets out how people can be at the heart of a fair and just response.’
Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN Special Envoy on Climate
‘A crucial roadmap for turning climate paralysis into action, brilliantly outlining how climate adaptation must happen with people, not for people’
Christiana Figueres, author of The Future we Choose, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
‘Sink or swim summarises the choice we face right now. This big-picture take on the unfolding global crisis and the part we all need to be playing right now is carefully researched and action-oriented. It is realistically stark but hopeful.’
Mike Berners-Lee, author of A Climate of Truth
'If you only read one book about climate adaptation, Sink or Swim should be it. Susannah Fisher takes us to the heart of the hard choices we now face about how to adapt to climate crisis, from managing people on the move, to how we grow food, sustain nature and avoid conflict. An impassioned but grounded and highly accessible account of the science, politics and ethics of trying to protect life on a rapidly warming planet.'
Professor Peter Newell, author of Power Shift