Sustainable adaptation under adverse development? - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 194

Our study has shown fundamental differences in the power of various
categories of agents (e.g. the Afar herders versus top-level bureaucrats and
policy-makers who determine the national modernization pathway). It also
indicates that these power differences between 'recipients' and designers of
development models and adaptation plans are structural, and need to be tackled.
Therefore, our findings lead us to conclude that an additional, fifth, normative
principle is needed for sustainable adaptation:
Principle 5: empower vulnerable groups in influencing development
pathways and their climate change outcomes.
This principle emphasizes that sustainable adaptation must go beyond discrete
local actions, and instead significantly influence the formation of pathways
to equitable development. Precisely because Afar vulnerability contexts are
fundamentally driven by development pathways, it will be impossible to achieve
equity and environmental sustainability through a narrow focus on ameliorating
the outcomes of climate change vulnerability.
Sustainable adaptation pathways require a focus on decisions, practices and
actions as elements of particular development outcomes (rather than just climate
outcomes) - including emission levels, consumption patterns, wellbeing,
environmental integrity, equity and poverty. Such outcomes vary in space and
time, and may yield 'unintended' outcomes (Eriksen and Selboe forthcoming).
It is therefore illusory to approach adaptation as a neat process that can be
planned and implemented through a top-down strategy like modernization.
Adaptation must be recognized and analysed as part of political development
processes. Livelihoods in Afar are being transformed through the interaction
between environmental change, development interventions, and local adaptation
strategies, with greater vulnerability as an unintended outcome. A sustainable
adaptation pathway would involve a transformation of relations, with priority
accorded to local practices, interests, knowledge and problem understandings as
part of (debated) development goals and paradigms.
Conclusions
The Afar case study presented here has shown how the four normative principles
of sustainable adaptation can be employed empirically to illuminate how deep-
seated social structures and development pathways may constrain the ability to
adapt. It also points to the changing and political character of these structures,
and their dependence on the evolving nature of development pathways. Even
when adaptation is to some extent negotiated, if it is based on structures and
processes that ignore the four principles of sustainable adaptation, the result
may be greater vulnerability and inequity for already vulnerable groups. With
Young (2010), we argue that those who suffer from structural injustices by
having their opinions and visions excluded from adaptation plans and general