Limited room For manoeuvre - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 253

described as sequential and pre-deterministic ('changes under way': O'Brien
2011), in fact, at each level, actors are influenced by particular goals (Berkhout
et al. 2006), interests, worldviews, opportunity structures and other factors.
One way to respond to the questions posed by this volume is to ask: how
can approaches to climate-change adaptation and mitigation serve to maximize
people's 'room for manoeuvre' as individuals and as groups? Are current
approaches to development doing this or are they - perhaps unintentionally
- squeezing indigenous peoples into even tighter spaces? This chapter argues
that the success of indigenous peoples' adaptation strategies depends not only
upon the quality and appropriateness of cultural, technological and other
practices, cultural institutions, and knowledge systems and their ability to
interpret climate-change phenomena, but also upon the socio-economic, legal
and political room for manoeuvre that they experience - and on their ability to
challenge this space by exercising their rights.
To examine these dynamics, the studies described here looked at four
overarching factors, as outlined in Table 14.2 . The first is the general impact of
climate change upon indigenous peoples - the specific ways in which climate change
is altering earlier conditions in the regions in which the cases are situated. The
second factor is the vulnerability context , which concerns how these changes relate
to the particular livelihood strategies of indigenous groups, which often vary
significantly from those of other sectors of the population. Following Adger
(2006), we see vulnerability as a function of susceptibility to harm, sensitivity
and lack of capacity to adapt. The third factor is the livelihood and adaptation
strategies of indigenous peoples - including the nature of cultural practices and social
structures that form a key component of maintaining access to resources.
In this chapter, we focus specifically on the fourth factor - how current shifts
in climate and environmental conditions are related to shifts in livelihood strategies, and
cultural and social contexts - and how all these are part of a broader global context
in which multiple pressures influence people's room for manoeuvre in the face
of drastic changes. We argue that 'development as usual', by focusing only on
certain aspects of indigenous peoples' vulnerability, not only fails to address
some of the most important limitations that they are confronting in the face of
climate change (Adger et al. 2009), but in some cases serves to limit their room
for manoeuvre even more. Further, a constructive approach to development
must be based on a rights-based approach. We describe what this means in
relation to indigenous peoples and climate change.
assets and adaptation strategies in different vulnerability
contexts
The research described in this chapter forms part of larger projects investigating
indigenous peoples' adaptations to climate change (Kronik and Verner 2010a,
2010b; Kronik 2011; Kronik and Clément 2013). Here, the focus is on the
interrelationships between various dimensions of adaptation to climate change