Introduction - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 2

The rate and magnitude of climate change and its social impacts are linked to
the dominant developmental pathways currently driving accelerated warming
and heightened vulnerability (Olsson et al. 2014). These pathways, based on
fossil-fuel-driven economic growth, are the product of systems, policies,
practices and actions at many levels. Development and aid interventions form
part of such practices and actions. Here a key question is: to what extent are they
contributing to, or countering, current development pathways that are based on
fossil-fuel-driven economic growth?
In response to increased adaptation finance through, for example, developed
country commitments to the climate change convention (United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)), governments,
development agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are funding
and implementing an increasing number of adaptation projects in developing
countries. For example, the Adaptation Fund has spent more than USD 225
million over three years to finance adaptation projects and programmes in 34
developing countries (Adaptation Fund 2014). The Green Climate Fund (GCF),
an output of COP15 in Copenhagen, is intended to become the main multilateral
climate financing mechanism to support climate action in developing countries.
It is expected to channel over USD 100 billion a year in climate financing to
developing countries from 2020, to support them in limiting or reducing their
GHG emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Here the larger
objective is to promote a 'paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-
resilient development pathways' (Green Climate Fund 2014).
However, we know less about how such interventions actually fare in terms
of addressing the underlying reasons why people and areas are vulnerable to
climate change. There is a large literature showing that vulnerability is closely
linked to development processes and pathways, including issues of power, access,
livelihoods, rights and voice, and - not least - poverty (Liverman 1990; Watts and
Bohle 1993; Adger and Kelly 1999; Luers 2005; Eakin 2006). Nonetheless, the
IPCC recently concluded that poverty dynamics are insufficiently accounted for
in climate change research; further, an evaluation of the limited experience to
date with mitigation and adaptation policies indicates that they have had at best
a negligible effect on poverty - in some cases they may have even undermined
the livelihoods of marginalized groups (Olsson et al. 2014). A critical
question is whether adaptation measures are merely incremental adjustments
to 'development as usual', or whether they can indeed influence current
development pathways in ways that bring about fundamental transformations
and paradigm shifts. This question emerges from a growing body of research
showing that many local and global responses to climate change, such as forestry
programmes and sea walls, contribute to business-as-usual development and
land grabbing that may in fact exacerbate vulnerability to climate change, rather
than reduce it (Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2011; Marino and Ribot 2012).
This topic is a collection of case studies that contribute to critical understandings
of the relationship between climate change adaptation and development. In