All climate-sensitive systems of society and the natural environment, including agriculture, water resources (water is commonly becoming the new oil and agriculture is one of the key ways in which this crucial  resource becomes unevenly allocated), forestry, human health, coastal settlements, and natural ecosystems, will need to adapt to a changing climate or possibly face diminished productivity and health.  However, some degree of future climate change will occur regardless of how stringent future mitigation policies will be. 

Adapting to or coping with climate change will therefore become necessary in certain regions and for certain socioeconomic and environmental systems. Adaptation options can involve a range of actions, such as investment in flood protection, planting different crops, and early warning systems. They need to include actions by producers, industry and policy makers.  However, adaptation alone is not expected to cope with all the projected effects of climate change, and especially not over the long term as most impacts increase in magnitude.  Therefore, both mitigation and adaptation will need to be considered.  Adaptation to climate change, which is particularly important in some developing countries, is now recognized as a complementary response to mitigation strategies. 

Climate change will also present crop producers with both opportunities and risks. It is likely to lead to a decrease in agricultural activities, to a greater risk of crop yields and losses in quality of crops in many regions leading to an unstable economic and social situation. In many countries, farmers are already responding to climate change, but the magnitude and complexity of climate change-related extreme events (such as violent storms, changing rainfall patterns and the arrival of new pests and diseases), will challenge their adaptive capacity.

Adaptation activities on cropland management can also simultaneously deliver mitigation effects, such as more diversified crop rotations and farm activities. Cropland management and grassland management represent today the highest global biophysical mitigation potential of agriculture.