Climate change adaptation and development : transforming paradigms and practices

While it is widely recognized that climate change will have significant impacts on the developing world, the social dimensions of vulnerability are often ignored in development projects and practices aimed at promoting adaptation to climate change. This book presents case studies that shed light on the tendency to promote policies and practices that fit conveniently into traditional development paradigms, and explores how development may need to shift focus in relation to climate change adaptation. The chapters offer critical perspectives that challenge many mainstream views on vulnerability, adaptive capacity, resilience, and the role of development projects in the context of climate change. The international case studies illustrate how responses to climate change that are embedded in traditional approaches to development may actually exacerbate vulnerability instead of reducing it. Adaptation projects often focus on dealing with the physical impacts of climate change (increased water scarcity, flooding, heat stress, etc.) through technical interventions, investments in infrastructure, and disaster preparedness, while they rarely call into question the underlying systems and structures that have contributed to the social and economic inequalities (inadequate access to resources, forced displacement, etc). This book presents adaptation as more than isolated decisions, actions, policies or practices aimed at addressing specific changes in the climate, but rather as a collection of on-going processes shaped by social, economic, political, institutional, and cultural dynamics. The book illustrates how approaching adaptation through 'development as usual' is unlikely to promote, maintain or enhance the well-being of populations faced with the complex challenges posed by climate change. Individual, household, community, sectoral and national decisions are seldom solely about climate change, and adaptation strategies may bring conflicts of interest that call for new ways of negotiating and collaborating, and recognition of the existing and emerging power relations that influence whose values and interests prevail in shaping development pathways. While many of the chapters are critical to current approaches to adaptation within the field of development, they also show how development can serve as a pathway towards sustainability. Alternatives are already emerging, and the process of adapting to climate change may itself be transforming development paradigms. This book will help researchers, practitioners and policymakers working at the interface between climate change and development to make sense of the changing dynamics and emerging opportunities, to enable efforts that work to create a better life for everyone.