Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Yet vulnerability to climate change and other social stressors is not created by the
impact of climate change alone: social factors such as inequity, marginalization,
lack of access and rights to resources, and poverty are also involved (O'Brien
et al. 2007). Development interventions themselves may add to vulnerability
or reduce adaptive capacity (Barnett and O'Neill 2010). For example, in the
Pacific island of Niue, development aid undermined existing government
structures and legitimacy, providing the financing for adaptation while eroding
the capacity to adapt (Barnett 2008). Lessons from community-based adaptation
also show that adaptation is first and foremost a process whereby communities
become increasingly enabled and empowered to make choices about their own
lives and livelihoods (Ensor and Berger 2010; Schipper et al. 2014). Since social
adaptation to climate change is not a politically neutral process, addressing the
underlying drivers of vulnerability will also necessitate challenging some of the
key dependencies, inequities and power structures.
Climate change is thus as much a problem of development as for development,
because the risks are closely linked to past, present and future development
pathways. As Pelling (2011: 25) argues, 'the vastness of climate change and
the multitude of pathways through which it can affect life and wellbeing for
any individual or organization make it almost impossible for “climate change”
in a holistic sense to be the target of adaptation'. Seeing climate change not
as an external threat to development, but instead both a driver and product
of development, he contends that we should not be talking about adapting to
climate change, but about adapting with climate change.
What do these insights mean for the growing field of 'adaptation and
development'? First, more than a simple integration of adaptation into
'development-as-usual' paradigms is required in order to avoid perpetuating
many of the factors that contributed to vulnerability in the first place. Merely
adapting to the impacts without transforming development paradigms and
practices is likely to contribute to increasingly negative outcomes, especially for
those who are currently most vulnerable to shocks and stressors of all sorts.
Second, fossil-fuel-based global development pathways driven by goals of rapid
economic growth are likely to fuel the dynamics of vulnerability over time:
as the rate and magnitude of climate change increases, the costs of adaptation
rise dramatically, while the possibilities become more and more limited (IPCC
2014a). For these reasons, climate change is not just another issue to absorb
or mainstream into current development paradigms and practices. It calls for a
different type of development - one that can take adaptation seriously.
development as usual
Climate change has strong links to development, whether in relation to
the causes and consequences of climate change or to responses related to
adaptation and mitigation (Leary et al. 2008). As noted in the IPCC 'Summary
for Policymakers' in Mitigation of Climate Change (2014b: 4), 'a comprehensive
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search