Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation
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Authors: Mark Pelling
Tags: #Development Studies
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
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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
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© 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
List of acronyms and abbreviations
Adaptation as a contemporary development concern
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
Organisations as sites for adaptation
Pathways for organisational adaptation
4
Adaptation as transition: risk and governance
A vision of adaptation as transition
Urban regimes and transitional adaptation
5
Adaptation as transformation: risk society, human security and the social contract
A vision of adaptation as transformation
Disasters as tipping points for transformation
PART III
Living with climate change
6
Adaptation within organisations
7
Adaptation as urban risk discourse and governance
8
Adaptation as national political response to disaster
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
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
The resilience–transition–transformation framework
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 4.2 Linking visions of the city to pathways for managing vulnerability
Table 4.3 Urban disaster risk reduction: multiple activities and stakeholders