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Authors: Mark Pelling

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Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation

BOOK: Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation
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Adaptation to Climate Change

 

The impacts of climate change are already being felt. Learning how to live with these impacts is a priority for human development. In this context, it is too easy to see adaptation as a narrowly defensive task – protecting core assets or functions from the risks of climate change. A more profound engagement, which sees climate change risks as a product and driver of social as well as natural systems, and their interaction, is called for.

Adaptation to Climate Change
argues that without care, adaptive actions can deny the deeper political and cultural roots that call for significant change in social and political relations if human vulnerability to climate change associated risk is to be reduced. This book presents a framework for making sense of the range of choices facing humanity, structured around resilience (stability), transition (incremental social change and the exercising of existing rights) and transformation (new rights claims and changes in political regimes). The resilience– transition–transformation framework is supported by three detailed case study chapters. These also illustrate the diversity of contexts in which adaption is unfolding, from organisations to urban governance and the national polity.

This text is the first comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions to climate change adaptation. Clearly written in an engaging style, it provides detailed theoretical and empirical chapters and serves as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in climate change, geography and development studies.

Mark Pelling
is a Reader in Geography at King’s College London and before this at the University of Liverpool and University of Guyana. His research and teaching focus on human vulnerability and adaptation to natural hazards and climate change. He has served as a lead author with the IPCC and as a consultant for UNDP, DFID and UN-HABITAT.

Adaptation to Climate Change

 

From resilience to transformation

 
 

Mark Pelling

 
 
 

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

 

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk
.

© 2011 Mark Pelling

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Pelling, Mark, 1967-
Adaptation to climate change / Mark Pelling.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-47750-5 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-415-47751-2 (pbk.)
1. Climatic changes. 2. Climate change mitigation.
3. Human beings—Effect of climate on. 4. Acclimatization. I. Title.
QC903.P44 2010
304.2′5—dc22
2010013609

ISBN 0-203-88904-5 Master e-book ISBN

 

ISBN: 978–0–415–47750–5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978–0–415–47751–2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978–0–203–88904–6 (ebk)

Copyright © 2010 Mobipocket.com. All rights reserved.

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For Ulli and Lilly

 
Contents
 

List of illustrations

List of acronyms and abbreviations

Acknowledgements

PART I
Framework and theory

1
The adaptation age

Adapting to climate change

The idea of adaptation

The IPCC–UNFCCC frame

The costs of adapting

Conceptual development

Structure of the book

2
Understanding adaptation

An adaptation lexicon

The antecedents of adaptation

Cybernetics

Coevolution

Adaptive management

Coping mechanisms

Adaptation as a contemporary development concern

A typology of adaptation

Resilience and adaptation

Adaptation thresholds

Evaluating adaptive choices: economics and ethics

Three visions of adaptation: resilience, transition and transformation

PART II
The resilience–transition–transformation framework

3
Adaptation as resilience: social learning and self-organisation

A vision of adaptation as resilience

Framing of resilience

Social learning

Self-organisation

Organisations as sites for adaptation

Pathways for organisational adaptation

Conclusion

4
Adaptation as transition: risk and governance

A vision of adaptation as transition

Governance and transition

Socio-technical transitions

Urban regimes and transitional adaptation

Conclusion

5
Adaptation as transformation: risk society, human security and the social contract

A vision of adaptation as transformation

Modernity and risk society

The social contract

Human security

Disasters as tipping points for transformation

Conclusion

PART III
Living with climate change

6
Adaptation within organisations

Context: policy and methods

Case study analysis

The Environment Agency

Grasshoppers farmers’ group

Conclusion

7
Adaptation as urban risk discourse and governance

Context: policy and methods

Case study analysis

Cancun

Playa del Carmen

Tulum

Mahahual

Conclusion

8
Adaptation as national political response to disaster

Context: policy and methods

Case study analysis

1970, East Pakistan (Bangladesh): the Bhola Cyclone and the politics of succession

1998, Nicaragua: Hurricane Mitch, a missed opportunity for transformation

2005, New Orleans, USA: transformation denied by political dilution

Conclusion

PART IV
Adapting with climate change

9
Conclusion: adapting
with
climate change

How to adapt
with
climate change?

Diversify the subject and object of adaptation research and policy

Focus on social thresholds for progressive adaptation

Recognise multiple adaptations: the vision effect

Link internal and external drivers of adaptation

A synthesis of the argument

The age of adaptation

The adaptation tapestry

The resilience–transition–transformation framework

Sites of adaptive action

From theory to action

References

Index

List of illustrations
 

Box 4.1 Lessons in making transitions from community-based disaster risk management

Box 9.1 Other voices make the case

Figure 1.1 Global distribution of vulnerability to climate change

Figure 2.1 Adaptation intervenes in the coproduction of risk and development

Figure 2.2 The coping cascade: coping and erosion of household sustainability

Figure 2.3 Adaptation thresholds

Figure 3.1 Adaptation pathways within an organisation

Figure 7.1 Quintana Roo and study sites

Table 1.1 Frameworks of the analysis of adaptation

Table 2.1 Barriers for the implementation of adaptive management

Table 2.2 Distinctions between coping and adaptation

Table 2.3 A typology of adaptation

Table 2.4 Attributes of adaptation for resilience, transition and transformation

Table 3.1 Five adaptive pathways

Table 4.1 Transition pathways

Table 4.2 Linking visions of the city to pathways for managing vulnerability

Table 4.3 Urban disaster risk reduction: multiple activities and stakeholders

Table 5.1 Adaptation transforming worldviews

Table 5.2 Disasters as catalysts for political change

BOOK: Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation
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