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development pathways should be accorded priority in planning processes. This
is not only because such actors are in danger of being impacted more severely
by climate change, but also because they will often have unique insights into
the sources and impacts of injustice, significant interest in changing the current
situation, and determination for proposing alternative solutions. Our analysis
indicates that this is indeed the case with Ethiopian pastoralists.
What the Afar case underscores is that the voices of the vulnerable should
have special political influence in deciding not only adaptation strategies but
also development strategies more generally. This is an important insight and a
routinely missed opportunity of analyses that argue for the mainstreaming of
adaptation
into
existing development plans. It is, we contend, the development
plans themselves that need to be adjusted to adaptation strategies that draw on
the views and experiences of vulnerable groups. This reflects the arguments of
development theorists that we need multiple alternative development pathways
based on a 'dialogue of equals' (Tucker 1999), and takes the idea further by
proposing that such equality is in fact possible only by 'tilting the negotiation
table' to favour the vulnerable - which is the focus of our proposed fifth
normative principle of sustainable adaptation. The severity and urgency of the
climate problem, as well as the availability of significant international financial
support for adaptation (such as the Green Climate Fund), offer important
opportunities for influencing general development pathways toward courses
that can be conducive to strong sustainability and adaptation. However, this can
be achieved only if the donor countries that contribute to adaptation funds take
political responsibility toward achieving this goal.
acknowledgements
This chapter is based on a study funded by the Norwegian NGO 'Development
Fund' and conducted in collaboration with APDA, Afar Pastoralist Development
Association who carried out the data collection. The full study was published as
a Development Fund report entitled 'Pastoral Pathways'. The current chapter
represents further theoretical and empirical development of this work. Thanks
to Lutgart Lenaerts, Noragric, for assisting with rainfall data. We are also grateful
to anonymous reviewers as well as Lenaerts for comments on an earlier draft.
references
Adams, W.M. (2001).
Green Development Environment and Sustainability in the Third World
,
London: Routledge.
Afar State Adaptation Plan of Action (2010).
Afar National Regional State Programme
of Plan on Adaptation to Climate Change
, Environmental Protection Authority of
the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
http://www.epa.gov.et/Download/
program.pdf
(accessed February 2014).
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