Climate Change and development - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 285

and perceptions, as well as new or expanded approaches to measure value
and performance in an adaptation context. The latter might include building
on multi-criteria analysis (MCA), which permits balancing among multiple,
potentially competing objectives, including social, environmental, technical
and economic objectives, or on flexible and forward-looking decision-making
(FFDM) (see Jones et al. 2014). Several frameworks have emerged to guide
the selection of adaptation projects, and the monitoring and evaluating of
their outcomes, including the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience results
framework (Climate Investment Funds 2012). There are also a growing number
of frameworks that focus on local vulnerability, risk management, adaptation
strategies and livelihoods, such as the International Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies 'Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment' (VCA) and the
International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)-driven 'Community
based Risk Screening Tool - Adaptation and Livelihoods' (CRiSTAL).
While such frameworks often capture vulnerability at the local level and
provide insight into the national institutional context, they seldom examine
the political and social relations and processes involved in adaptation and the
contribution of adaptation actions to transforming development pathways.
Importantly, since adaptation as a social process is driven by changes in all
sectors, not just by formal adaptation interventions, all development sectors
need to systematically include analysis of underlying social structures and the
vulnerability context of each project or investment. This means identifying the
most vulnerable groups and individuals, the social and political relations that
create such vulnerability, how practical actions may affect the intersectionality
of relations of gender, caste, ethnicity and livelihood groups, as well as the
contribution of the intervention to transformations in the practical, political
and personal spheres, and to climate-resilient development pathways more
generally. The chapters in this volume provide several examples of how this
can be done.
Recommendation 6: challenge assumptions and introduce
learning and relexivity into adaptation processes
Perhaps the most important, yet also most difficult, entry point for transformative
change is to challenge the beliefs, assumptions, worldviews and paradigms that
influence adaptation processes and practices. As noted in several contributions
to this volume, adaptation is a process that involves learning and reflection. For
example, Nightingale points out that formal adaptation policy processes should
include regular revision mechanisms in order to take account of the dynamic
character of vulnerability. Further, Wilk et al. (this volume, p. 173), argue that
recognizing spinoffs from development that can support adaptive capacity
'requires ongoing, conscious open-minded appraisal of new technological and
socio-economic phenomena, and weighing of their advantages, disadvantages
and potential uses'.