Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation (10 page)

The preceding discussion on the antecedents of adaptation reveals the framing behind contemporary understandings of adaptation. This is not always explicitly acknowledged in the climate change literature but can be felt, for example, in the pervasive influence of systems thinking. Systems theory has had a far-reaching
influence with its promise of providing a mechanism to integrate the social and natural. It is used in cybernetics, adaptive management and to a lesser extent in coevolution as well as in contemporary adaptation studies, particularly through work on resilience (Folke, 2006). The aspect of adaptation given prominence in each application reflects fashions in social scientific research as much as the underlying use of systems theory in each case. Cybernetics, developed at a time when positivism was seen as providing new scope for generalisable theory, sought to apply a value neutral, technical epistemology. It is reductive, opening scope for mathematical modelling of behaviour but not able to incorporate the significance of competing values and power asymmetries in shaping action. Adaptive management acknowledges the role of difference in access to information and decision-making capacity in shaping adaptive processes and outcomes, but does not have power as a focus of analysis; like cybernetics the focus is on technical aspects but in this case with a view to informing policy learning. Coevolution orients adaptation less towards the search for ways in which to manage risk and change and is more interested in adaptation as a process, a state of living with uncertainty. It stands back from technical and management analysis to examine the bigger picture of historical change where contesting values are included as a driver for change alongside knowledge, technology, organisational forms and the natural environment. Coping is the outlier in offering a legacy for adaptation that is grounded not in systems theory but in development studies. Connections between nature and society are context specific and hard to generalise from, although a common language has been developed through work on vulnerability (partly originated as a critique of the cybernetic school) that acknowledges both the roots of coping in political-economy but also the influence of values and social viewpoint in shaping decisions and options for adaptation. These four approaches highlight a tension in understandings of adaptation which persists today. This is between policy friendly but reductive analysis on the one hand, and holistic, value sensitive and critical but potentially unwieldy work on the other.

The antecedents also offer guidance on the qualities that promote adaptive capacity. These include parsimony (that the best adaptive choice is that which expends least resource); flexibility; diversity; monitoring to facilitate appropriate change (as distinct from managing to maintain stasis); learning as a facet of policy systems and organisations as well as individuals; and a realisation that observed adaptation, while a positive attribute, is also a sign of stress and a play-off that can signify approaching collapse and reduced wellbeing. These ideas have been taken up by resilience thinking and have a strong influence on contemporary framings of adaptation (see below). They also set adaptation apart from other logics for assessing development, perhaps most important that of economic maximisation, a cornerstone of economic globalisation. This argues economies should invest in what they do best, leading to a concentration of assets and closing off options for diversity and flexibility in the productive sectors (Pelling and Uitto, 2001).

The aim of this section is to examine the contemporary conceptualisation of adaptation in detail. We review a typology of adaptation, discuss the influence of resilience on the conceptualisation of adaptation and the significance of social thresholds as tipping points for adaptive change, and compare economic and ethical frameworks for evaluating adaptive choices. This sets the context for the proposal of the three adaptation pathways – resilience, transition and transformation – that are then developed throughout the remaining chapters.

Following the technocentric bias of its antecedents, much of the early work on adaptation was theorised as a technical act of adjusting economic or other functions to a changing external environment. This bias has gradually been eroded. An important literature in this regard has been that focusing on adaptation in developing country contexts (Adger
et al.
, 2003; Nelson
et al.
, 2007) including urban (Satterthwaite
et al.
, 2009) and rural (Tanner and Mitchell, 2008) contexts. Contributions have also been made from work demonstrating the need to include values, feelings and emotions in decision-making (O’Brien, 2009).

As summarised in
Chapter 1
, a sizable and fundamental literature on adaptation is directed towards differentiating adaptations (see Smit
et al.
, 2000; Smit and Pilifosova, 2001).
Table 2.3
presents a typology of adaptation to be taken forward in this framework, and also distinguishes between the impacts of different adaptive actions. These include actions that respond to perceived positive as well as negative impacts of climate change; those that are felt directly (heat events), indirectly (the price of food or water) or through perturbations in socio-ecological systems (political instability). They are acts unfolding within many sectors (urban planning, water management, agriculture development, transport planning and so on) and using a range of vehicles (technical innovation, legislative reform, market adjustment, professional training, behavioural change). They describe both the nature of an adaptive action and its scope of impact.

Table 2.3
A typology of adaptation

Adaptation is purposeful when directed towards a recognised hazard or opportunity (retro-fitting of a building) and incidental when undertaken in response to some other pressure that has consequences for exposure, susceptibility or adaptive capacity (economic opportunities leading to migration out of a flood-prone location). Proactive adaptation is that which takes place before a risk manifests into hazard (disaster risk reduction); reactive adaptation takes place during or after an event (disaster reconstruction). The scope of adaptive action can be distinguished between that which seeks to change material assets or practices set against less direct institutional change (see Pelling and High, 2005). This is reflected in the potential targets of climate change which may be proximate (crop variety), intermediary (local decision-making systems) or root causes (political–economic structures and development visions). Timescale acknowledges that adaptation can have immediate (changing built forms) or delayed (investing in health and education) benefits. The impacts of adaptation on the future wellbeing of others are indicated by acts that could be termed as climate proofing (the integration of mitigation) or maladaptation (adaptation that increases vulnerability); socially regressive or progressive depending on redistributive consequences, and autonomous to (isolated and contained) or integrated in (undertaken with awareness of and aiming at synergies with the actions of others) development.

Resilience is popularly understood as the degree of elasticity in a system, its ability to rebound or bounce back after experiencing some stress or shock. It is indicated by the degree of flexibility and persistence of particular functions. That resilience is not simply synonymous with adaptation has been well demonstrated by Walker
et al.
(2006a) who argue that adaptation can undermine resilience when adaptation in one location or sector undermines resilience elsewhere, where management focus on a known risk distracts attention from emergent hazard and vulnerability, and that increased efficiency in adaptation (through risk management, for example) can lead to institutional or infrastructural inertia and loss of resilient flexibility.

Resilience has been contrasted both with stability and vulnerability. Stability, according to Holling (1973), is an attribute of systems that return to a state of equilibrium after a disturbance. This compares with resilient systems that might be quite unstable and undergo ongoing fluctuation but still persist. Stability is more desirable in circumstances where environmental perturbations are mild; resilience is most useful as an attribute of systems living with extremes of impact and unpredictability. Within the disaster risk community, resilience has been interpreted as the opposite of vulnerability. The more resilient, the less vulnerable. But this belies the complexity of the conceptual relationship between these terms which have also been constructed as nested – with vulnerability being shaped by resilience (Manyena, 2006) which for some in turn incorporates adaptive capacity (Gallopin, 2006). Stability and vulnerability provide useful bounding concepts
for resilience. They suggest that resilience is about the potential for flexibility to reduce vulnerability and allow specific functions to persist. What it does not tell us is how these functions are identified or who decides (Lebel
et al.
, 2006). This requires a more critical engagement with social processes shaping resilience (see Chapters
3
,
6
,
7
and
8
).

Working with the idea of resilience, and especially efforts that seek to measure it are made difficult because of its multifaceted character. The processes and pressures determining resilience for a unit of assessment change with spatial, temporal and social scale – a community may be resilient to climate change associated hurricane risk (through early warning and evacuation, for example) but less resilient to the long-term inflections of climate change with the local and global economy. The subjects of analysis are also wide, bringing diversity but also fragmentation to the study of resilience. Cutter
et al.
(2008) identify studies attributing resilience and related metrics to ecological systems (biodiversity), social systems (social networks), economic systems (wealth generation), institutional systems (participation), infrastructure systems (design standards) and community competence (risk perception) (Folke, 2006; Paton and Johnston, 2006; Rose, 2004; Perrow, 1999; Vale and Campanella, 2005).

One of the first critical engagements with resilience from the perspective of environmental risk management came from Handmer and Dovers’ (1996) proposal of a three-way classification of resilience. This insightful framework has echoes of Burton
et al.
’s (1993) classification for coping and still offers a great deal. It highlights both the contested and context specific character of adaptation that this book argues for, and is worth describing in some detail. The three-way classification presented resilience as: (1) resistance and maintenance; (2) change at the margins; and (3) openness and adaptability.

Resistance and maintenance is commonplace, particularly within authoritarian political contexts where access to information is controlled. It is characterised by resistance to change; actors may deny a risk exists with resources being invested to maintain the status quo and support existing authorities in power. When risk is undeniable these systems typically delay action through a call for greater scientific research before action is possible. Vulnerability can be held at bay by resource expenditure; for example, in food aid or through containing local hazard risk through hard engineering ‘solutions’. But this can generate additional risks for other places and times through global flows of energy, resources and waste. This type of resilience offers an easy path for risk management, there is little threat to the status quo and considerable stress could be absorbed. However, when overcome the system would be threatened with almost complete collapse – Diamond’s (2005) thesis on the collapse of ancient civilisations reminds us of this possibility.

Change at the margins is perhaps the most common response to environmental threat. Risk is acknowledged and adaptations undertaken, but limited to those that do not threaten core attributes of the dominant system. They respond to symptoms, not root causes. Advocates argue that this form of resilience offers an incremental reform, but it is as or more likely to delay more major reforms by offering a false
sense of security. Preference for near-term stability over radical reform for the wellbeing of future generations provides a strong incentive for this form of resilience. This approach is well illustrated by the Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Management, which sets forth an international agenda agreed by nations for managing disaster risks including those associated with climatic extremes. Not surprisingly given the vested interests of dominant voices in the international community for the status quo, the framework is limited. It calls for the integration of risk management policy into development frameworks, the increasing of local capacity for risk reduction and response, and for new systems of disaster risk identification and information management (ISDR, 2005).