Equitable Adaptation Research Articles

Accounting for Multisectoral Dynamics in Supporting Equitable Adaptation Planning: A Case Study on the Rice Agriculture in the Vietnam Mekong Delta

AbstractThe need for explicitly considering equity in climate change adaptation planning is increasingly being recognized. However, evaluations of adaptation often adopt an aggregated perspective, while disaggregation of results is important to learn about who benefits when and where. A typical example is adaptation of rice agriculture in the Vietnam Mekong Delta (VMD). Efforts focused on flood protection have mainly benefitted large‐scale farmers while harming small‐scale farmers. To investigate the distributional consequences of adaptation policies in the VMD, we assess both aggregate total output and equity indicators, as well as disaggregated impacts in terms of district‐level farming profitability. Doing so requires an adequate representation of the multisectoral dynamics between the human and biophysical systems which influence farming profitability. We develop a spatially explicit integrated assessment model that couples inundation, sedimentation, soil fertility and nutrient dynamics, and behavioral land‐use change and farming profitability calculation. We find that inter‐district inequality responds in a non‐linear way to climatic and socio‐economic changes and choices of adaptation policies. The patterns of who wins and who loses could change substantially when a different policy is implemented or if a slightly different uncertain future materializes. We also find that there is no simple ranking of alternative adaptation policies, so one should make trade‐offs based on agreed preferences. Accounting for equity implies exploring the distribution of outcomes over different groups over a range of uncertain futures. Only by accounting for multisectoral dynamics can planners anticipate the equity consequences of adaptation and prepare additional measures to aid the worse‐off actors.

Introducing the Multi-Dimensional Injustice Framework: a case study in climate-related health risks

Recent years have seen a shift in focus from research that asks how adaptation to climate change can be achieved, to research that asks how fair and equitable adaptation to climate change can be achieved, reflecting a broader turn in the climate literature towards pathways for just transitions in the face of the climate crisis. This paper introduces the Multi-Dimensional Injustice Framework (MDIF) as a normative framework for understanding, articulating, and tackling issues of justice and fairness in complex development challenges such as climate adaptation. The MDIF provides a set of indicators to identify distributive and procedural injustices that can be utilised within development and adaptation policy and planning. The paper further demonstrates how the MDIF can be applied in practice using a case study of climate-related health risks in the informal settlements of Lusaka, Zambia.

Preparing education for the crises of tomorrow: A framework for adaptability.

The COVID-19 crisis has disrupted learning globally, exacerbating regional and global disparities that predated the pandemic. This rupture presents a unique opportunity to reimagine our educational system in times of both calm and crisis. Drawing on the work of political scientist Kathleen Thelen and economist and philosopher Amartya Sen, this article introduces a Framework for adaptability that outlines examples of flexible and equitable adaptation to change. The authors define adaptability as the ability of educational systems to respond to rapidly changing circumstances while maintaining stability, promoting equality, and expanding substantive freedoms and well-being. The key components of educational adaptability are: (1) cooperation, (2) inclusion, and (3) flexibility. This article describes how adaptability in education might be facilitated at individual, community, state and global levels. The authors call attention to a critical need to collectivise our approach to risk at the level of national governance. They suggest that this can be achieved by coordinating various professional, scientific, corporate, community and governmental stakeholders in order to ensure continuity in educational service provision, promoting lifelong learning and overall workforce participation.

Moving up or going under? Differential livelihood trajectories in coastal communities in Vietnam

• Dynamics of livelihoods in small-scale fishery communities in Vietnam significantly changed with the introduction of aquaculture. • Three distinct livelihood trajectories – Accumulating, fluctuating, and marginalizing - emerged among fisheries-dependent communities. • Adoption of aquaculture as a new livelihood strategy has benefited the adopters but caused detrimental consequences fishing households. • Recognising differential livelihood trajectories and struggles is essential for designing equitable adaptation policies. Transformations from artisanal fishing to aquaculture are now ubiquitous in many small-scale coastal fishing communities worldwide, often in response to the economics of fisheries and climate change. Understanding the long-term dynamics of community livelihoods is an important step in designing appropriate fishery management and adaptation policies to navigate the effects of such transformations. The literature has focused predominantly on addressing snapshots of livelihood conditions, with less attention being paid to how present conditions have emerged over time, and for whom. Using an integrated analytical approach, this study investigates the longitudinal livelihood trajectories in two small-scale fishery villages around the Tam Giang Lagoon in Vietnam, with particular attention paid to the changes since the introduction of aquaculture in the late 1980s. Three distinct livelihood trajectories — accumulating, fluctuating, and marginalising — represent the differential pathways available to fishing- and aquaculture-dependent households. In this constrained yet shared resource space, the transformational adaptation through aquaculture has benefitted the adopters and enhanced their livelihood resilience; yet, it has had detrimental consequences for the artisanal fishers who find themselves locked into a state of heightened vulnerability. The findings provide evidence of differential and unintended consequences of new adaptations to livelihood struggles in small-scale fishery communities, and they point to the need for well-targeted policies to reduce rather than exacerbate growing inequalities. Fishery management policies and interventions in this lagoon, and similar contexts, need to take into account the heterogeneity in livelihood trajectories and unequal social vulnerability to inform more just adaptation strategies and improve the wellbeing of fishery communities.

Applying intersectionality to climate hazards: a theoretically informed study of wildfire in northern Saskatchewan

ABSTRACT Impacts and losses as a result of climate hazards are experienced unevenly across communities and can prove devastating to the health and well-being of local residents. Contextual approaches for understanding vulnerability and adaptation have focused on why diverse individuals and groups experience the effects of climate change differently, while values-based approaches place emphasis on identifying the subjective values individuals and communities wish to preserve. Both approaches contribute to locally responsive adaptation, but are rarely applied simultaneously. In this paper, we propose intersectionality as a framework that links and builds upon contextual and values-based approaches and demonstrate its efficacy through an empirical example of a major wildfire event in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. An intersectional framework identified how impacts and losses to locally significant values differed across intersections of location, race, ethnicity, gender and age and how these differences were influenced by broader social structures and power relationships, such as histories of colonization and gendered norms and expectations. Practical implications for the development of inclusive and equitable adaptation policy and planning were also identified, including the need to: (a) expand the range of impacts considered and recognize how outcomes differ across social groups; (b) enhance diverse community members’ participation in planning efforts, and (c) acknowledge and build upon what local residents are already doing in response to hazards in their communities. Key policy insights Failure to consider how impacts and invisible losses are experienced across intersections of identity can lead to adaptation policy and practice that reinforce existing social inequalities. An intersectional analysis revealed a suite of context-specific, locally-relevant values and systems of power that shaped how communities experience, respond to, and plan for climate hazards. The application of an intersectional framework can provide practical direction for adaptation policy that: (1) responds to differing experiences and values across social groups; (2) recognizes agency and builds on what people are already doing; and, (3) addresses root causes of vulnerability.

Climate justice and the built environment

Highlights Climate justice is explained and explored in relation to how decisions about the built environment in the climate context intersect with human wellbeing. Key features in the built environment are identified that impact upon climate injustice. Specific processes, decisions and actions are identified to reduce these injustices and to reduce current gaps both in knowledge and practices. A conceptual and practical context is provided for integrating concerns about climate justice into research and decision-making about the built environment by addressing four underlying questions: 1. What is climate justice and why is it a significant issue? 2. Why is the built environment important in addressing climate injustice, and why is climate justice essential for the built environment community to consider? 3. What processes can be used to reduce inequities and injustices in the built environment? 4. What roles might the academic community, governmental entities, and practitioners in construction, design and real estate, have in facilitating deeper integration of climate justice? A capabilities approach is proposed to systematically uncover and address underlying patterns of injustice. A multi-valent approach involving distributive, procedural and recognition justice can be harnessed to constitute a justice framework. A process of change is needed to: (i) reframe, reposition and extend current built environment research to engage with wider issues of justice, (ii) build and make accessible the evidence base for the identification and mitigation of inequities in climate risk exposures, vulnerabilities, and effective and equitable adaptation pathways and (iii) define responsibilities for different actors.

Financing a Green New Deal

The Great Depression galvanized the New Deal in the United States to recover the economy, relieve the poor and unemployed, and reform the financial backbone of the country. Today, the impending adverse effects of climate change have governments proposing analogous Green New Deals. Recently in Energy Research & Social Science, Galvin and Healy critically examine the economic viability and wide-spanning societal, monetary, and environmental implications of the US Green New Deal proposals.

Country ownership of adaptation: Stakeholder influence or government control?

Adaptation to climate change needs to reflect local level priorities. Principles for country ownership of adaptation within the UNFCCC emphasise on intra-state multi-stakeholder engagement. Multilaterally-funded projects therefore embed multi-level stakeholder collaborations (MSCs) into their approaches. MSCs enable integration of diverse stakeholder voices into adaptation decision making. This supports equitable adaptation, as these stakeholders can highlight local level vulnerabilities and addresses adaptation needs. This paper uses a case study of a project in Tanzania administered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to understand whether multi-stakeholder engagement in MSCs enables intra-state stakeholder influence in adaptation decision making. Social exchange theory is used to understand power and influence in MSC decision-making. Influence is framed as a factor of resources exchanged, organisational and institutional structures, and rules determining stakeholder engagement. Results from interviews with adaptation stakeholders (n=47) show that most stakeholders perceived government's control of adaptation finance as a country ownership principle acting as enabling disproportionate government influence and exclusion of other stakeholders from adaptation decision making. The project's national level structures and the international level country ownership requirements limited the engagement of non-government and local actors in project design. These findings suggest that in seeking to implement projects that reflect country ownership principles, multilateral finance mechanisms may be reproducing injustices by creating structures that reinforce marginalization and exclusion of local level communities. The research recommends a re-evaluation of approaches for achieving country ownership, e.g. through identification of practical options for direct engagement with non-government and local level actors.

Powering and puzzling: climate change adaptation policies in Bangladesh and India

South Asia is a region uniquely vulnerable to climate-related impacts. Climate change adaptation in India and Bangladesh evolves using powering and puzzling approaches by policy actors. We seek to answer the question: how do powering and puzzling approaches influence the climate change adaptation policy design and implementation processes in Bangladesh and India? We adopted two strategies to collect and analyze data: semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis. We found that adaptation policymaking is largely top-down, amenable to techno-managerial solutions, and not inclusive of marginalized actors. In Bangladesh, power interplays among ministerial agencies impair the policy implementation process and undermine the success of puzzling. Local-scale agencies do not have enough authority or power to influence the overall implementation processes occurring at higher scales of governance. The powering of different actors in Bangladesh is visible through a duality of mandates and a lack of integration of climate adaptation strategies in different government ministries. The powering aspect of India’s various adaptation policies is the lack of collective puzzling around the question of differentiated vulnerability by axes of social difference. Paradoxically, India has a puzzling approach of hiding behind the poor in international negotiations. Moving forward, both countries should strive to have more inclusive and equitable adaptation policymaking processes that enable the participation of marginalized populations and represent their anxieties and aspirations. Identifying policy-relevant insights from South Asia using the powering and puzzling approaches can foster adaptation policy processes that facilitate empowerment, the missing piece of the adaptation policymaking puzzle.

From Progressive Cities to Resilient Cities: Lessons from History for New Debates in Equitable Adaptation to Climate Change

Planners and activists are identifying ways to promote equitable adaptation that counter climate injustice. This article explores how this progressive turn in adaptation compares with past progressive movements. I argue urban progressive politics have cyclical tendencies toward liberalism and radicalism, and that the evolution of planning for climate adaptation mirrors these waves. I review 10 recent guidance documents that recommend strategies for enhancing racially just adaptation. I then assess how these recommendations advance the three pillars of progressive reforms: redistribution, expansion of democracy, and structural reform. I find that proposed strategies for racially just resilience are a welcome advance from mainstream, unjust resilience planning. However, history suggests that the focus on procedural justice for oppressed communities seen in recent discourse may limit their scope and durability. I conclude with suggestions for areas where climate activists and scholars can expand given emerging political space for ambitious thinking under a Green New Deal.

Farmers level of Awareness and Adaptation Practices about Climate Change and Climate Smart Technologies

The impact of climate change on agriculture is varying over space and time. The consequences highly uncertain are heterogeneous in nature. Agricultural sector must focus on adopting climate smart technologies to successfully achieve food security and climate change challenges.Climate Smart Technologies in agriculture is clearly a crucial response for an effective and equitable adaptation and mitigation strategy. To shift the focus towards climate smart agricultural technologies in India, innovation will be the key. The present study focused on level of awareness and adaptation strategies of farmers about climate change and Climate smart technologies. Farmers’ knowledge and perceptions about climate change, and adoption of climate smart technologies, will help development practitioners, researchers and policy makers to develop more promising technologies according to the needs and interests of farmers. The paper advocates various agricultural innovations including technological innovations, managerial innovations and traditional agriculture as a climate-smart approach for sustainable food production.

A qualitative comparative analysis of women’s agency and adaptive capacity in climate change hotspots in Asia and Africa

There is growing concern about sustainable and equitable adaptation in climate change hotspots, commonly understood as locations that concentrate high climatic variability, societal vulnerability and negative impacts on livelihood systems. Emphasizing gender within these debates highlights how demographic, socioeconomic and agro-ecological contexts mediate the experiences and outcomes of climate change. Drawing on data from 25 qualitative case studies across three hotspots in Africa and Asia, analysed using qualitative comparative analysis, we show how and in what ways women’s agency, or the ability to make meaningful choices and strategic decisions, contributes to adaptation responses. We find that environmental stress is a key depressor of women’s agency even when household structures and social norms are supportive or legal entitlements are available. These findings have implications for the effective implementation of multilateral agreements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction and the Sustainable Development Goals. Qualitative comparative analysis of 25 case studies across climate change hotspots in Africa and Asia shows that male migration and women’s poor working conditions combine with either institutional failure or poverty to constrain women’s agency, which limits their adaptive capacity.

Contested grounds: Adaptation to flooding and the politics of (in)visibility in São Paulo’s eastern periphery

As flood events become more intense and frequent, cities throughout the world increasingly devise projects for flood management and control, including hard and soft infrastructural solutions. Among these, an emblematic example is the project Parque Várzeas do Tietê (PVT) – or Tietê Lowlands Park – a 75 km-long floodplain restoration scheme proposed by the government of São Paulo, Brazil, to allegedly solve the city’s flooding problem. The project’s execution, however, is contingent on the removal of approximately 7500 low-income families, raising questions on the intertwined relationship between adaptation to flooding and the exclusion of informal urban settlements. Drawing on urban and feminist political ecology, we use the PVT as a case study to examine the politics and uneven outcomes of adaptation in São Paulo’s eastern periphery. We combine archival and ethnographic work to expose the persistent politics of invisibility that sustain the project’s exclusionary contours. In the process, we also demonstrate the various ways floodplain residents reshape their invisibility to contest, negotiate, and resist the PVT in the spaces of their everyday lives. As a result, the analysis identifies the project’s perverse effects but also opportunities for productive engagements between the government and local communities towards more just, inclusive, and equitable adaptation futures in São Paulo, and beyond.

Promise and paradox of metropolitan regional climate adaptation

Over the past decade, regions worldwide have developed initiatives to tackle climate change adaptation at the metropolitan scale. Faced with barriers to adaptation planning and implementation at the local level, growing numbers of practitioners have turned to the metropolitan region as a new scalar platform for climate adaptation planning. This study examines regional adaptation planning in Los Angeles, Miami, and Boston, three metropolitan areas that have significant exposure to the impacts of climate change and typify the high levels of administrative fragmentation found in the United States. I ask, what regional adaptation strategies have they deployed? What local adaptation challenges do they try to overcome? Given their progress, what are the implications for this scale of adaptation planning? Drawing on case studies of these efforts, I find that regional collaborations promisingly get more cities to start planning for the impacts of climate change, even in states where governments oppose climate action, by increasing access to information, providing opportunities for networking and technical assistance, helping secure additional funding, and strengthening coordination among vertical levels of government. However, local-centric regional adaptation efforts have had less success in addressing horizontal coordination challenges across municipalities, particularly as they relate to land use planning, fiscal constraints, spillovers effects, and social equity. These findings suggest that scaling up adaptation to the metropolitan region is no panacea for overcoming structural limits to local adaptation in places with weak regional governance institutions. More critical and reflexive regional adaptation planning can help pave the way to difficult conversations around regional institution building so that governance at this scale can achieve its promise of producing more effective and equitable adaptation.

Advancing values-based approaches to climate change adaptation: A case study from Australia

Coastal flooding affects physical and social place attachments. Values-based approaches to climate change adaptation examine how risks to place attachments are distributed within and among communities, with a view to informing equitable adaptation policies. In this nascent body of research, divergent theoretical frameworks and empirical approaches to measuring social values are evolving. While some studies explore the things people value about their everyday lives generally—the lived values approach, others locate specific social and cultural values in geographic space—the landscape values mapping approach. This study aims to compare the explanatory value of these two approaches for understanding the social risks of sea-level rise, and appraise whether either or both approaches are likely to meet local adaptation planning needs. It does this by examining the potential social impacts of sea-level rise in Kingston Beach, Australia, informed by a mail-out survey of the community. The lived values approach identified that the natural environment, scenery, relaxed lifestyle and safety are highly important to local residents, while the landscape values mapping approach revealed that Kingston Main Beach is the most highly valued of eight coastal landscape units. Incorporating the landscape values mapping into the lived values cluster analysis revealed that while Kingston Main Beach is highly important for its recreational value to some members of the community, for others manmade features such as community halls or sports ovals may be of higher importance because they facilitate social interactions. There is potential to further integrate these two approaches to better inform adaptation policy about how lived and landscape values are distributed among communities, where they are located in space and whether they change over time. A deeper understanding of such assigned values can lead to improved engagement with coastal residents to inform adaptation policy now and into the future.

Can community-based adaptation increase resilience?

A central claim of community-based adaptation (CBA) is that it increases resilience. Yet, the concept of resilience is treated inconsistently in CBA, obscuring discussion of the limitations and benefits of resilience thinking and undermining evaluation of resilience outcomes in target communities. This paper examines different participatory assessment activities carried out as part of CBA case studies in Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands. The activities and their outputs were assessed against 10 characteristics of resilience previously identified in a systematic review. The findings offer support to the claim that CBA can build resilience in target communities, revealing the inherent strengths of CBA in relation to resilience. However, it is necessary for CBA assessments to simultaneously incorporate activities that consider cultural, political, economic and ecological factors influencing resilience within and between communities. This may demand multiple staff with different skills. The findings also highlight the importance of politics and power in shaping adaptive capacity. In particular, addressing the highly context specific nature of social, cultural and political relations demands an approach that is situated in and responsive to local realities. Overall, our case studies suggest that using the 10 characteristics as an analytical framework offers support to practitioners looking to develop, implement or evaluate CBA assessment activities. Yet within this, it is critical that a focus on increasing resilience through CBA does not preclude transformation in social relations. Realising the potential to support resilience and transformation requires CBA practitioners to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of resilience, whilst also paying close attention to multiple potential barriers to equitable adaptation.

Policy without politics: technocratic control of climate change adaptation policy making in Nepal

As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This article critiques the ways in which the politics of representation and climate science are framed and pursued in the process of climate policy development, and contributes to an understanding of the relative effectiveness of globally framed, generic policy mechanisms in vulnerable and politically volatile contexts. Based on this analysis, it also outlines opportunities for the possibility of improving climate policy processes to contest technocratic framing and generic international adaptation solutions.Policy relevanceNepal's position as one of the countries most at risk from climate change in the Himalayas has spurred significant international support to craft climate policy responses over the past few years. Focusing on the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and the Climate Change Policy, this article examines the extent to which internationally and scientifically framed climate policy in Nepal recognizes the unfolding political mobilizations around the demand for a representative state and equitable adaptation to climate risks. This is particularly important in Nepal, where political unrest in the post-conflict transition after the end of the civil war in 2006 has focused around struggles over representation for those historically on the political margins. Arguing that vulnerability to climate risk is produced in conjunction with social and political conditions, and that not everyone in the same locality is equally vulnerable, we demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the politics of representation for climate policy making in Nepal. However, so far, this policy making has primarily been shaped through a technocratic framing that avoids political contestations and downplays the demand for inclusive and deliberative processes. Based on this analysis, we identify the need for a flexible, contextually grounded, and multi-scalar approach to political representation while also emphasizing the need for downscaling climate science that can inform policy development and implementation to achieve fair and effective adaptation to climate change.

Adaptation policy and adaptation realities: local social organization and cross-scale networks for climate adaptation on Mount Kilimanjaro

Least developed countries have prepared national adaptation programs of action (NAPAs) to coordinate international adaptation funding to reduce social vulnerability to climate change. The adaptation programs have been written for consistency with existing sectoral policies and development agendas—policies which have thus far led to inequitable and incomplete decentralization of responsibility to organize and manage adaptation at the local level. The capacity of local social organization and of cross-scale networks and flows of knowledge and resources from higher levels of government is insufficient to facilitate socially equitable and sustainable adaptation to climate change. Tanzania’s NAPA, poverty reduction strategy paper, and sectoral policies for forest, water, and agriculture/livestock illustrate the coordination of adaptation plans with existing policies. National and regional statistics and a survey of households on Mount Kilimanjaro—a regional priority for climate adaptation in Tanzania—demonstrate significant gaps in local social organization and cross-scale networks for adaptation. Challenging existing structural causes of vulnerability will be difficult under adaptation plans written for complementarity with the very policies that have produced social inequality. Outside of a few development projects of limited geographic extent, there is limited evidence for socially equitable and sustainable adaptation outcomes. Sustainable adaptation will require substantial new commitments to developing local capacity and cross-scale networks.

Culture, law, risk and governance: contexts of traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation

Traditional knowledge is increasingly recognized as valuable for adaptation to climate change, bringing scientists and indigenous peoples together to collaborate and exchange knowledge. These partnerships can benefit both researchers and indigenous peoples through mutual learning and mutual knowledge generation. Despite these benefits, most descriptions focus on the social contexts of exchange. The implications of the multiple cultural, legal, risk-benefit and governance contexts of knowledge exchange have been less recognized. The failure to consider these contexts of knowledge exchange can result in the promotion of benefits while failing to adequately address adverse consequences. The purpose of this article is to promote awareness of these issues to encourage their wider incorporation into research, policy, measures to implement free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and the development of equitable adaptation partnerships between indigenous peoples and researchers.

Spending Adaptation Money Wisely

The discussions about adaptation finance have mostly been about process: how money should be raised and how adaptation spending should be governed and monitored. This paper seeks to move the focus of the debate back towards the substance of adaptation by asking what 'good adaptation' in developing countries would look like. We argue that the best use of funds in the short term may be for 'soft', or less tangible developmental activities that increase adaptive capacity. Building a minimum level of adaptive capacity everywhere is central to efficient, effective and equitable adaptation and yields immediate benefits irrespective of future climate regimes. We discuss a number of operational challenges in delivering this kind of adaptation, including a preoccupation with additionality – which makes the integration of adaptation and development harder – and a preference for 'concrete' and more readily visible adaptation projects. We leave open the question of whether and how the adaptation regime that is emerging from the Cancun Agreements will be able to deliver wise adaptation decisions, but our analysis recognizes that further institutional development is required.