Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation (21 page)

The drawing down of analytical and policy lenses from the state to individual through human security complements well the observed need for social contracts to work beyond the state as nation-states become arguably less powerful than the globalising international superstructure populated by private sector and civil society interests and unelected inter-governmental or super-national bodies. Many perceive the emerging global institutional structure of governance to be as potentially threatening (or as potentially unresponsive) as the states it has so recently marginalised. As Duffield (2007) points out, the consolidation of supranational administrative bodies has not subsumed the power of metropolitan states, but rather aligned them alongside supranational powers in contraposition to the weak, underdeveloped and thus potentially dangerous states of the political periphery. From the perspective of global powers, the major threat to the security of the North is not from aggressive states, but from failed ones (Hoffmann, 2006). Thus the stage is set for unprecedented amounts of North–South interventions.

Nevertheless, it is the depth of these interventions rather than the number that is worrying to some analysts. There is an assumption that new forms of governance are no longer primarily concerned with the disciplining of individual subjects as docile citizens of particular states (though that continues) but now are combined with unprecedented levels of coordination and penetration (from supranational organisations to village committees) to produce desperation-free zones, thereby diminishing the threat of the South to the North. Human security is one of those frameworks. This is a serious warning, but in bringing together needs and rights approaches human security has the potential to bridge the public– private dichotomy that under the global liberal consensus has seen a marginalising of the state in favour of private actors. The importance of regulating private behaviour and the need to build capacity in local and national government is supported by human security but held in constructive tension with the rights of individuals. As with the social contract, context, history and the viewpoint of those at risk are arguably the most significant features in judging legitimacy and determining whose security is being prioritised and at what cost through adaptation.

We have seen through risk society the dangers of a naturalised modern worldview operating across all scales. The social contract has described the distribution of rights and responsibilities in society and shown this to be held in place through a balance of legitimacy and power. Human security adds to this an understanding that the rights and basic needs of individuals do not always coincide with those of the state and that play-offs in rights and risk are part of everyday development. In this discussion it has also been asserted that disaster events associated with climate change related hazards provide a distinct moment of challenge to established values and organisational forms that embody power relations. This section reviews existing secondary evidence to support this assertion as a precursor to detailed case study analysis in
Chapter 8
. The aim is to establish the extent to which disaster events provide leverage for academic study and also for practical movement that might be described as transformational. This should not be seen as suggesting that developmental periods outside of disaster are any less important, but simply that their review is outside the scope of this book.

The literature reveals that scholars and practitioners have long observed that the socio-political and cultural dynamics put into motion at the time of catastrophic natural disasters create the conditions for potential social (Carr, 1932) and political (Pelling and Dill, 2010) change, sometimes at the hands of a discontented civil society (Cuny, 1983). Pelling and Dill (2006) review a number of studies showing a government’s incapacity or a lack of political will to respond quickly and adequately to a disaster representing a break in the social contract, while simultaneously revealing a provocative (albeit temporary) absence of instrumental state power. The destruction/production dynamic triggered by disaster creates, temporarily, a window of opportunity for both novel and traditional socio-political action at local, national, international and now supranational levels. This interpretation does not derive from an environmental determinism: it is not claimed that disasters cause socio-political change but rather that the instability generated by development failures made manifest at the point of disaster open scope for change. Indeed over the long-term there is ample evidence that human societies survive dramatic shifts in environmental conditions through a range of culturally specific adaptations (Rapparport, 1967; Waddell, 1975; Torry, 1978; Zaman, 1994). Hidden within this, though, are moments of short-term disruption, with the potential for long-term consequences.

Political change has been most comprehensively studied from drought events and related food insecurity crises (Glantz, 1976). These tend to unfold slowly and consequently are more clearly a product of development failures than rapid onset events which continue to be conceptualised as outside of human responsibility. A clear example of the interaction of environmental and political change comes
from Ethiopia. In 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was ousted by a Marxist insurgency led by General Mengistu, who in turn oversaw his own government collapse in 1991. Both regimes were destabilised because their leaders failed to adequately address the deepening and progressive spread of drought, which in both cases originated in the drought-vulnerable northeast but moved southwards to envelope vast regions of the country in famine and social unrest (Keller, 1992; Comenetz and Caviedes, 2002). Violent conflict, blockades and the purposeful rerouting of supplies for political reasons have been identified as triggers in drought associated famine. Even when food is not used as a weapon, delays and mismanagement in the early stages of drought make it increasingly difficult to mitigate the full social impact (Sen and Dreze, 1999). Moreover, researchers have shown that international aid has in some cases exacerbated rather than alleviated suffering (de Waal, 1997).

To add some breadth to this discussion,
Table 5.2
summarises a number of nationally significant rapid-onset disaster events and their political outcomes. It includes geophysical alongside hydrometeorological hazard contexts to demonstrate the range of interactions between political change and disaster. Cases are organised according to the political context of the polity in question: post-colonial security: modernising nation-states; Cold War security: political stability; international economic security: liberalization; and global security: advanced privatisation. Each period describes the overarching political contexts and source of pressure. Tensions in early contexts are dominated by ideological competition between state and counter-state ideologies from neo-colonial control, to nation building, proxy tensions sponsored during the Cold war; more contemporary contexts include greater influence from organised non-state actors in national and international civil society and the private sector but also a return to international political influence.

In
Table 5.2
, there are examples of regime change opening democratic space following disaster (East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Mexico), but also cases where neo-colonial or national autocratic powers tighten their hold on the national policy (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti). Elsewhere disasters serve as political capital in ongoing competitions within the political elite (China) and between competing ideologies (Guatemala) including those with armed struggles (Nicaragua). The most recent events show the complexity of civil society-state relations with civil society demonstrating both regressive and progressive impetus for change (Turkey, India), the influence of international civil society and intergovernmental actors (Sri Lanka). However, even where civil society is strong and organised the power of dominant political discourses to maintain the status quo and provide opportunities for exploitive capital accumulation in the face of development failure is impressive (USA).

Comparative analyses of disaster politics show political change is most likely where disaster losses are high, the impacted regime is repressive and income inequality and levels of national development are low (Drury and Olson, 1998). Albala-Bertrand (1993) also observes that the political, technological, social or economic effects of disasters are explained primarily by a society’s pre-disaster conditions, and a government that immediately marshals what material and discursive powers it has may be rewarded with improved levels of popular post-disaster legitimacy regardless of culpability. This final point emphasises the depth of the cultural underpinnings in the social contract, recognised by both Gramsci and Habermas, that can allow discourses to be manipulated by those in power. Work by Pelling and Dill (2006) confirms this analysis but also shows that competing discourses can establish a critique when building on pre-disaster political momentum.

The aim of this chapter has been to make a claim for transformation as a legitimate element of adaptation theory and practice. In doing so the challenges of escaping the fragmentation of modernity (Beck, 1992), the alienating loss of power to the global (Castells, 1997) and need to re-assert human rights and basic needs in an increasingly unequal world (Gasper, 2005) have been revealed as arguably the most fundamental challenges facing development and the social relations that underpin capacities to adapt to climate change risk.

The extent to which adaptation to climate change can embrace transformation will depend on the framing of the climate change problem. Where vulnerability is attributed to proximate causes of unsafe buildings, inappropriate land use and fragile demographics adaptation will be framed as a local concern. This is more amenable to resilience and transitional forms of adaptation. However, if vulnerability is framed as an outcome of wider social processes shaping how people see themselves and others, their relationship with the environment and role in political processes, then adaptation becomes a much broader problem. It is here that transformation becomes relevant.

How vulnerability and adaptation are framed have clear implications for apportioning blame and the locus of adaptation and its costs. Where vulnerability is an outcome of local context then it is local actors at risk who will likely carry the costs of adapting (for example, through transactions and opportunity costs incurred through changing livelihood practices). Where vulnerability is seen as an outcome of wider social causes then responsibility for change becomes broader, possibly more diffuse and less easy to manage and certainly more likely to touch those in power. These two approaches to the framing of vulnerability and subsequent adaptation are akin to the distinction between treating the symptoms and causes of illness.

Transformation does not come without its own risks, inherent in any project of change is uncertainty. History is replete with examples of transformation social change being captured by vested interested or new elites. As noted with regard to human security, both the poor and powerful are aware of the costs of change and prefer the known even if it is a generator of risk. As climate change proceeds and mitigation policy fails the potential for dangerous climate change increases. This forces us to reappraise the potential costs of transformation set against business as usual. Handmer and Dovers (1996) warned against the sudden collapse of

Table 5.2
Disasters as catalysts for political change