Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation (23 page)

The following section provides policy and methodological context for the empirical data, which is then presented.

In the UK, statements by DFID (2004b), GNAW (2001) and MAFF (2000) have highlighted the dual role of public sector agencies needing both to adapt their own goals and practices to take account of climate change, whilst also shaping the enabling environment to support the adaptive capacity of private, public and civil sector actors and individuals operating within their spheres of influence. In this way it is doubly important to understand the ways in which the capacity and direction of adaptation within such organisations is shaped. Despite this only little thought has gone into planning how adaptive capacity to climate change and variability might be built as a policy imperative alongside efficiency, transparency, accountability, legitimacy and equity. Most work to date has been undertaken within the adaptive management school and there are parallels with the analysis presented here (see
Chapter 2
). This is important because existing bases for organising and implementing policy are challenged by the complex, dynamic, ‘trans-scientific’ (Weinberg, 1972) cross-epistemic problems associated with climate change. In responding there is a need to develop organisational capabilities that reflect the uncertain nature of knowledge. Central to this task is a better understanding of the ways in which organisations learn and adapt. This is especially so when adaptive innovations challenge dominant ways of thinking and defining goals and responsibilities.

As
Chapter 3
demonstrates, research on learning and adaptation to climate change has focused primarily on the influence of formal institutions and on reactive adaptation. Empirical work has shown that adaptation can be a source of contestation for political actors operating across hierarchies of scale (Iwanciw, 2004), and with contrasting ideologies; for example, with tensions emerging through the interplay of top-down command and control risk management and local self-organised adaptation (Tompkins, 2005). From the viewpoint of proactive adaptation, Grothmann and Patt (2005) acknowledge the importance of psychological factors in determining the adaptive capacity of individuals.

This chapter presents evidence for adaptive capacity as arising out of cognitive processes (ongoing social learning) embedded in the social relationships of organisations (which are given shape by both formal and informal institutions and their practices). Such generic socio-cognitive attributes of organisations can contribute to the building of robust adaptation, responding not only to surprises associated with climate change but also the uncertainties of future economic, social and political change (Schneider, 2004; Willows and Connell, 2003). However, research in crisis management has pointed to the difficulties that can be associated with these characteristics. Organisational culture, communication practices and decision-making processes generate the conditions in which crisis events occur (Reason, 1990a, 1990b, 1997; Smith, 1990, 1995; Turner, 1976, 1978). At the same time, this research has sought to push the boundaries of contingency planning by encouraging managers to start ‘thinking the unthinkable’ (Smith, 2004) as a means of considering the range of problems that can arise and how organisations might be structured to anticipate such risks. Preparing organisations for the
unimaginable as well as planning for the unexpected is enhanced where there are diverse social relationships with open informal space beyond corporate control. These spaces allow individuals or sub-groups within organisations to experiment, copy, communicate, learn and reflect on their actions.

Perhaps one reason for the limited literature on adaptation within organisations (compared with research on adaptation within local communities for example), and in particular on the ways in which social agency and institutions interact, is the difficulty of surfacing respondent viewpoints. Much of the experience of social learning and self-organisation happens as part of the routine practice of working within an organisation with the distinctions between canonical and shadow spaces often blurred. Elsewhere working in the shadow system is on the fringes of professional good practice and seldom disclosed publicly. The approach taken to generate the data presented below was to engage respondents in a three-stage conversation. First, respondents from each organisation were self-selecting, having responded to an open invitation to attend a workshop framed as an opportunity to reflect on the organisation’s adaptive capacity and potential future strategy. Second, workshop discussions were followed up with individual interviews, or in some cases researchers were invited to follow-on meetings. Finally, summary data and analysis that had been made anonymous were circulated amongst respondents for comment and as a verification tool. The initial selection of organisations was based on existing contacts and a desire to engage with respondents working in different organisational forms with responsibility for setting the policy or information environment for other actors and businesses.

In the framing workshops respondents were presented with a low probability, high-impact climate change scenario for which no contingency planning existed in the organisations under study. The UK scenario was for strong warming over 20 years to reach a climate similar to that of contemporary southern France, followed by a collapse of the north Atlantic thermohaline circulation systems and a rapid cooling over a subsequent 10 years to reach a new climatic equilibrium close to that of southern Norway. To generate concrete examples of the role of social relations in adaptation respondents were also asked to identify past analogues for the climate change scenario. The analogues chosen by respondents differed, but common examples of external surprises were the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2003, ongoing changes to European Common Agricultural Policy and the European Waters Directive: stressors which the organisations acted to mediate and were felt to be wide-ranging and, to varying degrees, unpredictable in their ramifications for respondents’ organisations.

The range of climate change impacts considered in one workshop are presented in
Table 6.1
. The recognition that not only were climate futures uncertain but the development impacts of any one climate future multifaceted and potentially reinforcing was key in justifying the focus of discussion on the relevance of generic, fundamental adaptive capacities built on social learning and self-organisation rather than a search for material adaptation policies.

Table 6.1
Warming and cooling scenarios for Wales

The aim of this section is to reveal the interplay between institutions and individual action that construct the relational space for adaptation within organisations. The dominant form of adaptation considered is resilience. The two organisations included in the discussion allow two different sides of adaptive capacity to be examined. First, in the Environment Agency, responsibilities for setting the operating environment for more local organisations to adapt are explored. Second we use efforts of a farmers’ support group to facilitate aspects of adaptation for individual farmers. In both cases the assessment of capacity to adapt to climate change is forward looking. That is, we do not seek to describe assets used in past rounds of adapting to climate change. Rather we explore the social relationships and actor behaviour that constitute these organisations as a way of mapping out capacity for adaptation based on the theoretical arguments made in the preceding chapters. This frees analysis of capacity to adapt to climate change from a historical determinism which would skew and limit results where future events associated with climate change may be very different from past experience. In both cases the aims of the organisations are to promote adaptation as resilience. There are though examples of individual actors attempting to change the direction of the organisation; this is especially so for the Environment Agency. These serve to exemplify the skills and strategies that can enable transitional adaptation within an organisation.

The discussion for each organisation is presented around a series of quotations. This gives voice to the respondents but also provides a contextual richness that would be lost if a summary alone was provided. Themes of social learning and self-organisation help to structure the accounts. Self-organisation is unpacked further by statements on the interplay of shadow and canonical systems and of social communities and networks acting within and across the organisations. Data emerged inductively and act to verify these attributes of adaptation that have so far been described largely in theory. Respondents and in some cases secondary organisations are not named to maintain confidentiality.

The Environment Agency is a key mediator for climate change adaptation in the rural sector in the UK. It is charged with protecting and improving the environment and promoting sustainable development including flood risk management in England and Wales. It acts both to regulate and advise on rural development.

Respondents discussed capacity to adapt to possible future impacts of climate change through focusing on their personal and professional experience of constraints in the canonical system, the role of the shadow system and how together they form an institutional architecture for adaptation. Many of the observations are not tied directly to experience of climate change associated events or policy but speak to the generic interaction between professionals and institutional structures within the organisation. The uncertainties that climate change brings and the knowledge that past events are increasingly inappropriate as guides to future crises makes such knowledge central to understanding and potentially supporting adaptation to climate. What follows is not an assessment of adaptive capacity across the Environment Agency but rather a reporting of viewpoints from key informants working as professional scientists from different points within the organisation.