Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
nature and culture that plays out with or without our deliberation (Guillet
et al. 1983). Because adaptation is what happens anyway, it not always
leads to desirable outcomes. By contrast to evolutionary adaptation, in
planned climate change adaptation such maladaptations (see Carey et al.
(2012) for an interesting case study on unintended effects of adaptation)
can be avoided prior to their emergence through foresight and planning
in a holistic approach. Above all, adaptations that bear negative mitigation
consequences need to be avoided. Energy intensive air-conditioning as
a reaction to warmer temperatures serves as the stereotypical negative
example of a maladaptation that solves one problem (overheated buildings)
and exacerbates a range of others (resource scarcity, urban heat islands,
operational overheads and climate change).
Over the last decade or so it has become increasingly clear that all efforts
to prevent dangerous levels of global warming are too late. This fi nding
should by no means defl ate continued efforts of emissions reduction, but
it means that global climate change is inevitable and that adaptation to its
impacts will and must occur. Since the 4th IPCC report it is clear that there
is now a common understanding that climate change mitigation must be
complemented by strategies to adapt to its impacts and that in many cases
the latter is the more urgent call (Parry et al. 2007). This paradigm shift
from a focus on mitigation to a concentration of efforts in climate change
adaptation brought with it a growing role of the social sciences to the fi eld
of climate change that was hitherto a realm of natural sciences alone.
Adaptation to climate change needs a strong involvement of political
sciences, sociology, anthropology, development studies and the range
of emerging 'hybrid disciplines' mentioned above. The importance of
contextualizing climate change within societal processes is pivotal and has
been understood as such particularly within an integrative geography that
spans physical and human dimensions. Carey et al. (2012) observe that,
“geographers and many other scientists and social scientists
studying climate change readily recognize the benefi ts from
the intertwined analysis of coupled natural and human systems
that go beyond token consideration of the 'social' dimensions”,
and further that
“this intertwined, dialectic relationship that plays out among
multiple human and non-human actors is precisely why scholars
have recently devoted so much attention to technonatures, social-
ecological systems, coupled natural and human systems, hybrid
landscapes, Actor Network Theory, and the hydro-social cycle.”
Climate change adaptation is foremost about human decision making
and social processes. Notions of behavioural psychology, communication,
Search WWH ::
Custom Search