Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 56

2006; Smit and Wandel 2006; Cutter et al. 2008; IPCC 2012a); indeed, some
maintain that the two are mutually conflicting (e.g. Barrett and McPeak 2005;
Young 2010). Similarly, adaptation policies often overlook local strategies, seeing
them as 'coping' and not long-term improvements. However, the differentiation
between coping and adaptation seems counterproductive, as it is far from clear-
cut and also very context-specific (see e.g. Béné et al. 2012). There is reason
to investigate to what extent the local coping efforts of city dwellers form part
of a system that represents more long-term adaptive capacity and stimulus for
change. The terms coping strategy and coping practice denote here both short-
and more long-term risk-reducing activities.
Sustainable urban transformation refers to 'structural transformation
processes - multi-dimensional and radical change - that can effectively direct
urban development towards ambitious sustainability goals' (McCormick et al.
2012:1). From a disaster risk reduction perspective, it can be understood as the
altering of fundamental system attributes (IPCC 2012b) by addressing the root
causes 5 of risk and vulnerability in urban societies. This is crucial because solely
incremental approaches to adaptation that build on existing structures (instead
of altering them) may support the same development pathways that have created
risk in the first place, further reproducing risk (Adger et al. 2005; Pelling 2010).
In the disaster literature, disasters (and related risk) are commonly understood
as the result of an interaction between hazards (e.g. floods, windstorms, fires and
sea-level rise) and vulnerable conditions. Simply put, disaster vulnerability refers
to the conditions, characteristics and circumstances that make communities or
societies '…susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard' (UNISDR 2009:30).
This can also be termed contextual vulnerability, which proves a useful perspective
for studying coping strategies, power structures and alternative development
pathways related to climate change (O'Brien et al. 2007). In contrast, climate
adaptation literature typically presents vulnerability as a function of exposure,
sensitivity and adaptive capacity, also called outcome vulnerability (O'Brien et al.
2007).
Our framework bridges risk and adaptation literatures and suggests three
main dimensions for analysing local strategies for coping and adaptation . 6 First,
they can be analysed on the basis of their objectives , divided into four types of
risk-reducing activities (Wamsler 2014):

1 hazard reduction and avoidance: ability to reduce or avoid existing (and

future) hazards

2 vulnerability reduction: ability to reduce existing (and future) susceptibility

to hazards and/or drivers of vulnerability

3 preparedness for response (or ad hoc action): having functioning and

flexible mechanisms and structures for disaster response in place

4 preparedness for recovery (or ad hoc action): having functioning and

flexible mechanisms and structures for disaster recovery in place.