Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation

by Pelling, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780415477512
• ISBN10: 0415477514
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-01
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

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 where 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.

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. xi
List of acronyms and abbreviations	p. xiii
Acknowledgements	p. xv
Framework and theory	p. 1
The adaptation age	p. 3
Adapting to climate change	p. 6
The idea of adaptation	p. 8
The IPCC-UNFCCC frame	p. 8
The costs of adapting	p. 10
Conceptual development	p. 13
Structure of the book	p. 18
Understanding adaptation	p. 20
An adaptation lexicon	p. 20
The antecedents of adaptation	p. 25
Cybernetics	p. 26
Coevolution	p. 28
Adaptive management	p. 30
Coping mechanisms	p. 33
Adaptation as a contemporary development concern	p. 39
A typology of adaptation	p. 41
Resilience and adaptation	p. 42
Adaptation thresholds	p. 45
Evaluating adaptive choices: economics and ethics	p. 47
Three visions of adaptation: resilience, transition and transformation	p. 50
The resilience-transition-transformation framework	p. 53
Adaptation as resilience: social learning and self-organisation	p. 55
A vision of adaptation as resilience	p. 56
Framing of resilience	p. 57
Social learning	p. 59
Self-organisation	p. 61
Organisations as sites for adaptation	p. 62
Pathways for organisational adaptation	p. 64
Conclusion	p. 67
Adaptation as transition: risk and governance	p. 68
A vision of adaptation as transition	p. 69
Governance and transition	p. 70
Socio-technical transitions	p. 73
Urban regimes and transitional adaptation	p. 79
Conclusion	p. 82
Adaptation as transformation: risk society, human security and the social contract	p. 83
A vision of adaptation as transformation	p. 84
Modernity and risk society	p. 87
The social contract	p. 89
Human security	p. 93
Disasters as tipping points for transformation	p. 95
Conclusion	p. 97
Living with climate change	p. 105
Adaptation within organisations	p. 107
Context: policy and methods	p. 108
Case study analysis	p. 111
The Environment Agency	p. 112
Grasshoppers farmers' group	p. 120
Conclusion	p. 123
Adaptation as urban risk discourse and governance	p. 126
Context: policy and methods	p. 128
Case study analysis	p. 129
Cancun	p. 130
Playa del Carmen	p. 132
Tulum	p. 133
Mahahual	p. 136
Conclusion	p. 137
Adaptation as national political response to disaster	p. 142
Context: policy and methods	p. 142
Case study analysis	p. 143
1970, East Pakistan (Bangladesh): the Bhola Cyclone and the politics of succession	p. 143
1998, Nicaragua: Hurricane Mitch, a missed opportunity for transformation	p. 147
2005, New Orleans, USA: transformation denied by political dilution	p. 152
Conclusion	p. 158
Adapting with climate change	p. 161
Conclusion: adapting with climate change	p. 163
How to adapt with climate change?	p. 164
Diversify the subject and object of adaptation research and policy	p. 165
Focus on social thresholds for progressive adaptation	p. 165
Recognise multiple adaptations: the vision effect	p. 166
Link internal and external drivers of adaptation	p. 166
A synthesis of the argument	p. 167
The age of adaptation	p. 167
The adaptation tapestry	p. 168
The resilience-transition-transformation framework	p. 169
Sites of adaptive action	p. 172
From theory to action	p. 174
References	p. 177
Index	p. 195
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