Climate Change and development - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 279

this, as they show that food and seed distribution to vulnerable households and
villages in Nepal does not reduce vulnerability in the long term, but actually
reinforces inequities and vulnerability, particularly when poor or low-caste
groups are barred from risk-spreading strategies or pushed to lower-yield lands.
Vedeld and colleagues ( Chapter 7 ) emphasize that adaptation is a process, rather
than an outcome. Central here is the capacity of cities and urban communities
to act and deliberately change or adjust urban development plans. Participation
is as much about having influence and taking ownership (both top-down and
bottom-up processes) as it is about creating channels for exchange of adaptation
knowledge.
Contributions in this volume also show how shifting the focus of adaptation
to the political sphere is a way of facilitating inclusion and distributional justice.
Gabrielsson ( Chapter 5 ) draws attention to the need for increasing the political
voice of women to enable them to influence future development, which
means narrowing the gender gap in local political leadership. Limited room to
manoeuvre in the political sphere undermines individual and collective agency
and access to the practical adaptations that can directly reduce vulnerability,
whether through loans, farming education, or access to and use of drought-
resistant seeds. Similarly, Kronik and Hays ( Chapter 14 ) call for moving beyond
improving technical adaptation skills, to include application of indigenous
rights to land and resources, and to consultation and free and informed consent.
This is particularly important in the case of extractive industries, which have
put increasing pressure on livelihoods, access to assets and available options for
adaptation. Securing rights to land and resources is critical to building adaptive
capacity among indigenous peoples.
Adaptation through transformation in the personal sphere
It is important to recognize that actions in the political sphere are influenced
by the subjective views and perceptions associated with the personal sphere
of transformation. The personal sphere represents individual and collective
assumptions, beliefs, values, worldviews and paradigms. These are often used
to define the goals or objectives of systems, who can and should benefit, and in
some cases even the role of individual and collective agency in making changes
within the political and practical spheres. Although many assume that systems
and structures are fixed or given, the personal sphere draws attention to the
social and cultural constructions of rules, norms and behaviours that influence
social-ecological systems.
Several authors in this volume show that beliefs and assumptions play an
important role in how systems and actors are viewed. The beliefs that adaptation
practitioners bring to the project can influence the types of responses and
outcomes achieved. Challenging the assumption that the poor are passive
victims and instead recognizing them as highly adaptive implies that their social
innovation can play an important role in adaptation (Wilk et al. this volume).