Time is a capricious yet critical element of climate change science and policy. Our science is more confident about the outcomes of change than it is about the timing of these changes, and our policies focus more on what can be done than on when things are to be done. Indeed, time is a paradox in climate change policy in many ways. No other policy community is informed by projections of change in 100 years time, yet asked to take urgent action now to avoid dangerous futures; and the imperatives of this distant future bring with them uniquely challenging uncertainties.

This talk seeks to nail down three of the elements of time that are elusive in thinking about climate change adaptation. First, it addresses the degree to which adaptation is an urgent policy activity, arguing that projections of dangerous futures bring problems into the present, and that careful decisions are more important than rushed decisions. Second, it explains the way people's understandings of time are not all alike and differ from those that inform adaptation policy. Third, it explains one way in which adaptation practices that begin now can be sustained over very long periods of time.

Jon Barnett is a Professor in the Department of Resource Management and Geography at Melbourne University. He is a political geographer whose research investigates the impacts of and responses to climate change on social systems, with a focus on risks to human insecurity, hunger, violent conflict, and water stress. He has done extensive field-work in the South Pacific, China, and East Timor. Jon is a Lead Author for the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC. He is the Executive Editor of the adaptation domain of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change.