Abstract
Adaptation to climate change has become a major policy and project focus for donors and governments globally. In this article, we provide insight into how adaptation projects mobilize distinct imaginaries and knowledge claims that create territories for intervention (the objects) as well as targeted populations (the subjects) to sustain them. Drawing on two emblematic climate change adaptation projects in Ecuador, we show how these objects and subjects are created through a knowledge production process that (a) creates a discursive climate change rationale; (b) sidesteps uncertainty related to climate change impacts; (c) fosters a circular citational practice that (self-)reinforces the project’s expert knowledge; and (d) makes complex social variables commensurable based on the project’s rationality, interests, and quantifiable indicators. The emerging hydrosocial territories ‘in need of intervention’ require subjects that inhabit, produce and reproduce these territories, in accordance with specific climate change discourses and practices. To manufacture and align these subjects, projects employ participatory practices that are informed by recognition politics aimed at disciplining participants toward particular identities and ways of thinking and acting. We analyze these distinct strategies as multiple governmentalities enacted through participatory adaptation projects seeking to produce specific climate change resilient hydrosocial territories and corresponding subjects.
Highlights
As global action on climate change mitigation remains inadequate (UNEP, 2019), donors are placing increasing emphasis on supporting adaptation projects in developing countries (Khan et al, 2019)
We examine the practices and techniques embedded in the recognition politics mobilized in both PACC and FORECCSA, exploring three shared strategies: outsourced participation mechanisms, procedural control of participation outcomes, and state-centered representation
Without clear methodological direction from MAE, each consultancy group drew on differing analytical approaches such as rapid rural vulnerability appraisal approaches, the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s (IISD) Community-based Risk Screening Tool – Adaptation and Livelihoods (CRiSTAL) model, and Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere’s (CARE) Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis (CVCB) tool
Summary
As global action on climate change mitigation remains inadequate (UNEP, 2019), donors are placing increasing emphasis on supporting adaptation projects in developing countries (Khan et al, 2019). We contribute to this emergent field of inquiry by providing a structured analysis of the governmentality embedded in two climate change adaptation projects in the Ecuadorian highlands (PACC: Adaptation to Climate Change through Effective Water Governance in Ecuador and FORECCSA: Enhancing Resilience of Communities to the Adverse Effects of Climate Change Effects on Food Security project) These projects mirror both the multi-scalar governance structure and strategies of many adaptation projects since the same international agencies and donors involved in PACC and FORECCSA are funding, designing, and implementing internationally-funded adaptation initiatives across Latin America and the Global South.
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