The trouble with deficits

Abstract

In their recent paper, “Misperceptions of climate-change risk as barriers to climate-change adaptation: a case study from the Rewa Delta, Fiji,” Lata and Nunn (2012) argue that “lack of awareness” and “cultural impediments ... such as short-term planning perspectives, spiritual beliefs, traditional governance structures” are barriers to climate change adaptation in Fiji’s Rewa Delta (p. 169). Understanding how vulnerable, often marginalized people can or will adapt to the future effects of climate change is a core concern of human dimensions of climate change scholars and the policy community more broadly. We thus feel obliged to point out that this paper has substantial methodological and conceptual shortcomings. These shortcomings seriously undermine the authors’ conclusion that public deficits, in their many manifestations in this paper, are barriers to climate change adaptation in the Rewa Delta. We begin with the methodological shortcomings by asking: Of whom can the authors legitimately speak? The study focuses on one urban (Nausori Town, population approx. 25,000) and one rural location (Vutia, population approx. 900, distributed across three villages) in the Rewa Delta, Fiji. 32 inhabitants from each location were selected for interview in a non-random manner (both samples were purposive, and apparently haphazard), rendering the authors’ generalisations to each population invalid. Equally troubling, one criterion for inclusion in the study—eligible participants had to have lived in the area continuously for at least 30 years—excluded 92 % of the rural population from the study. Those excluded were “foreigner” family groups, those who in the past 20–30 years had Climatic Change (2013) 118:501–504 DOI 10.1007/s10584-013-0750-3