Climate Change Adaptation and Development

Transforming Paradigms and Practices

Tor Håkon Inderberg, Siri Eriksen, Karen O'Brien, Linda Sygna, Tor Håkon Inderberg, Siri Eriksen, Karen O'Brien, Linda Sygna

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317685067
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Sviluppo sostenibile

Climate change poses multiple challenges to development. It affects lives and livelihoods, infrastructure and institutions, as well as beliefs, cultures and identities. There is a growing recognition that the social dimensions of vulnerability and adaptation now need to move to the forefront of development policies and practices.

This book presents case studies showing that climate change is as much a problem of development as for development, with many of the risks closely linked to past, present and future development pathways. Development policies and practices can play a key role in addressing climate change, but it is critical to question to what extent such actions and interventions reproduce, rather than address, the social and political structures and development pathways driving vulnerability. The chapters emphasise that adaptation is about much more than a set of projects or interventions to reduce specific impacts of climate change; it is about living with change while also transforming the processes that contribute to vulnerability in the first place.

This book will help students in the field of climate change and development to make sense of adaptation as a social process, and it will provide practitioners, policymakers and researchers working at the interface between climate change and development with useful insights for approaching adaptation as part of a larger transformation to sustainability.

1

INTRODUCTION

Development as usual is not enough

Siri Eriksen, Tor Håkon Inderberg, Karen O’Brien and Linda Sygna

In many parts of the world, climate change has become more than an abstract problem to be discussed at international conferences or debated in the media: it is an everyday reality with implications for people’s livelihoods and lives. It is a process that is experienced both through slow long-term changes in ecological conditions and through extreme climate events. While long-term changes can influence agriculture, water, health and other sectors, it is often the shifting frequencies and magnitudes of storms, floods, droughts and other extremes that bring home the significance of climate change for vulnerable populations (SREX 2012; IPCC 2014a). Both types of changes underscore the importance of adaptation and mitigation responses, particularly in the context of sustainable development.

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC 2014a, 2014b) clearly indicates that the future is a choice. According to the IPCC, continuation along current trajectories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is very likely to lead to global temperature increases of 4°C or more in this century, contributing to changes in social, economic, political, technological and ecological systems and functioning at a rate and on a scale unparalleled in human history (IPCC 2014a). These fundamental, systemic changes introduce potential thresholds and tipping points, such as disruption of the Indian and West African monsoons (Lenton et al. 2008). However, we can still achieve low-emission pathways that minimize temperature increases, sea-level rise, loss of sea ice, ocean acidification, and other impacts. But these will require transformations of a different sort – not only in energy, food, water and urban systems, but also in social systems and structures, and in development pathways. Even such low-emission pathways will lead to dramatic impacts and potential tipping points for some groups, so there is a need to adapt to imminent climate changes, in addition to transforming developmental pathways.

The rate and magnitude of climate change and its social impacts are linked to the dominant developmental pathways currently driving accelerated warming and heightened vulnerability (Olsson et al. 2014). These pathways, based on fossil-fuel-driven economic growth, are the product of systems, policies, practices and actions at many levels. Development and aid interventions form part of such practices and actions. Here a key question is: to what extent are they contributing to, or countering, current development pathways that are based on fossil-fuel-driven economic growth?

In response to increased adaptation finance through, for example, developed country commitments to the climate change convention (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)), governments, development agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are funding and implementing an increasing number of adaptation projects in developing countries. For example, the Adaptation Fund has spent more than USD 225 million over three years to finance adaptation projects and programmes in 34 developing countries (Adaptation Fund 2014). The Green Climate Fund (GCF), an output of COP15 in Copenhagen, is intended to become the main multilateral climate financing mechanism to support climate action in developing countries. It is expected to channel over USD 100 billion a year in climate financing to developing countries from 2020, to support them in limiting or reducing their GHG emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Here the larger objective is to promote a ‘paradigm shift towards low-emission and climate-resilient development pathways’ (Green Climate Fund 2014).

However, we know less about how such interventions actually fare in terms of addressing the underlying reasons why people and areas are vulnerable to climate change. There is a large literature showing that vulnerability is closely linked to development processes and pathways, including issues of power, access, livelihoods, rights and voice, and – not least – poverty (Liverman 1990; Watts and Bohle 1993; Adger and Kelly 1999; Luers 2005; Eakin 2006). Nonetheless, the IPCC recently concluded that poverty dynamics are insufficiently accounted for in climate change research; further, an evaluation of the limited experience to date with mitigation and adaptation policies indicates that they have had at best a negligible effect on poverty – in some cases they may have even undermined the livelihoods of marginalized groups (Olsson et al. 2014). A critical question is whether adaptation measures are merely incremental adjustments to ‘development as usual’, or whether they can indeed influence current development pathways in ways that bring about fundamental transformations and paradigm shifts. This question emerges from a growing body of research showing that many local and global responses to climate change, such as forestry programmes and sea walls, contribute to business-as-usual development and land grabbing that may in fact exacerbate vulnerability to climate change, rather than reduce it (Beymer-Farris and Bassett 2011; Marino and Ribot 2012).

This book is a collection of case studies that contribute to critical understandings of the relationship between climate change adaptation and development. In exploring the implications of ‘development-as-usual’ approaches, these case studies recognize adaptation as a social process that unfolds differently in different contexts. While many studies and analyses of adaptation in developing countries focus on important practical and technical challenges of planning, funding and implementing projects (Gagnon-Lebrun and Agrawala 2006; Gigli and Agrawala 2007; Mapfumo, Mtambanengwe and Chikowo 2010; Biagini et al. 2014), the chapters in this book draw attention to the systemic and structural factors that define adaptation as a social processes. They describe the types of interventions and actions that impede or support adaptation in different local contexts. More broadly, they investigate the extent to which adaptation interventions by governments, NGOs and aid agencies either reproduce or challenge dominant development paradigms. Such knowledge is essential if adaptation actions are to engage with and support more equitable and sustainable pathways.

In this introductory chapter, we describe why climate change adaptation and development need to be taken more seriously, what is meant by ‘development as usual’, and how adaptation is framed, financed and practised within this paradigm. We then describe the contributions to this book, and show that there is significant empirical research to support arguments for new approaches to adaptation and development which can serve as an entry point for creating sustainable and resilient development pathways.

Taking adaptation and development seriously

Communities, sectors, states and institutions have to adapt not only to the changes that are currently observed, but also to the impacts that are likely to occur over the next decades. Adaptation has been defined by the IPCC (2014a: 5) as ‘[t]he process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities.’ Looking towards the second half of the 21st century and beyond, the types of adaptation required will be closely linked to the success or failure of near-term and sustained climate change mitigation: the challenges of adapting to a world that is more than 4°C warmer are exponentially higher than adapting to a world of less than 2°C warming, and there are recognized limits to adaptation (Dow et al. 2013). Adaptation and mitigation cannot be seen as discrete, independent policies. Although mitigation and adaptation are often discussed as two separate policy arenas, they are closely related in practice, as mitigation of GHG emissions will influence both how much and what kind of adaptation will be necessary in the future (Pelling 2011). Indeed, some practices, such as the provision of renewable energy to poor households, can create synergies and co-benefits between mitigation and adaptation (IPCC 2014a).

The process of adaptation presents significant challenges to development – not only because of the financial costs of adaptation, but also because failure to adapt will incur significant losses and damages (Warner and van der Geest 2013). Yet vulnerability to climate change and other social stressors is not created by the impact of climate change alone: social factors such as inequity, marginalization, lack of access and rights to resources, and poverty are also involved (O’Brien et al. 2007). Development interventions themselves may add to vulnerability or reduce adaptive capacity (Barnett and O’Neill 2010). For example, in the Pacific island of Niue, development aid undermined existing government structures and legitimacy, providing the financing for adaptation while eroding the capacity to adapt (Barnett 2008). Lessons from community-based adaptation also show that adaptation is first and foremost a process whereby communities become increasingly enabled and empowered to make choices about their own lives and livelihoods (Ensor and Berger 2010; Schipper et al. 2014). Since social adaptation to climate change is not a politically neutral process, addressing the underlying drivers of vulnerability will also necessitate challenging some of the key dependencies, inequities and power structures.

Climate change is thus as much a problem of development as for development, because the risks are closely linked to past, present and future development pathways. As Pelling (2011: 25) argues, ‘the vastness of climate change and the multitude of pathways through which it can affect life and wellbeing for any individual or organization make it almost impossible for “climate change” in a holistic sense to be the target of adaptation’. Seeing climate change not as an external threat to development, but instead both a driver and product of development, he contends that we should not be talking about adapting to climate change, but about adapting with climate change.

What do these insights mean for the growing field of ‘adaptation and development’? First, more than a simple integration of adaptation into ‘development-as-usual’ paradigms is required in order to avoid perpetuating many of the factors that contributed to vulnerability in the first place. Merely adapting to the impacts without transforming development paradigms and practices is likely to contribute to increasingly negative outcomes, especially for those who are currently most vulnerable to shocks and stressors of all sorts. Second, fossil-fuel-based global development pathways driven by goals of rapid economic growth are likely to fuel the dynamics of vulnerability over time: as the rate and magnitude of climate change increases, the costs of adaptation rise dramatically, while the possibilities become more and more limited (IPCC 2014a). For these reasons, climate change is not just another issue to absorb or mainstream into current development paradigms and practices. It calls for a different type of development – one that can take adaptation seriously.

Development as usual

Climate change has strong links to development, whether in relation to the causes and consequences of climate change or to responses related to adaptation and mitigation (Leary et al. 2008). As noted in the IPCC ‘Summary for Policymakers’ in Mitigation of Climate Change (2014b: 4), ‘a comprehensive assessment of climate policies involves going beyond a focus on mitigation and adaptation policies alone to examine development pathways more broadly, along with their determinants’. This is consistent with Pelling’s (2011: 167) view that ‘[c]limate change presents the early twenty-first century with a grand opportunity to reconfigure the meaning and trajectory of development’.

However, as discussed by Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai (2014), development may have several different meanings. It can refer to a process, such as industrial development or modernization, or a project, such as deliberate efforts to improve human wellbeing through policies, plans and development initiatives. Development can also refer to a discourse, such as that of social progress (Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai 2014). Dominant processes, projects and discourses of development have together resulted in a development paradigm that has influenced how ‘adaptation’ is translated into policies and practices.

Development as a discourse emerged in the post-World War II period and was closely associated with ideas of growth, progress, modernization and globalization; in short, modern technologies, management systems and values were expected to lead to growing consumption and prosperity in developing countries (Brooks, Grist and Brown 2009). Although the political context changed with the end of the Cold War, the underlying paradigm was kept intact. Some of the consequences of this approach could be seen by the introduction of structural policy reforms, which included deregulation, privatization of markets, and imposition of fees for schools and health services (Kingsbury 2007).

The direct links between the environment and development were emphasized through the Brundtland Commission Report Our Common Future (WCED 1987), and global environmental issues and politics increasingly came on the agenda after the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. Nonetheless, both poverty and environmental issues have generally been framed as externalities of development, and have often been seen as implicit obstacles to further growth (Brooks, Grist and Brown 2009). Recent years have seen a growing focus on private–public partnerships and an expanding role for the business sector, including ‘green’ investments. The explicit or implicit goal of development within this paradigm is arguably still economic growth through a capitalist market system, with socially based indicators often seen solely as a means towards economic ends (Hamann 2012).

Development as a modernization process has been criticized for its overarching goals and also for its lack of reflexivity on political and ideological dimensions (Sachs 1992; Escobar 1995). Many alternative approaches have been pursued, including those emphasizing Women in Development, Gender and Development, and Participatory Learning and Action (Ireland and McKinnon 2013). Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai (2014) describe these as people-centred paradigms, new economic paradigms, and new environmental approaches. These approaches have influenced the way development interventions are carried out; nevertheless, development funding and projects are often criticized for being primarily oriented towards economic growth (Peet and Hartwick 2009). Modernization-led economic growth remains the dominant development discourse, constituting ‘development as usual’.

Climate change as a new development issue

The shortcomings of the dominant development paradigm have become even more evident and critical in the context of climate change because existing inequities are a key social cause of climate change vulnerability and because energy and resource-intensive growth drive GHG emissions and hence the climate change problem (Pelling 2011; Marino and Ribot 2012; Olsson et al. 2014). Newell (2009: 189) notes the contradictions between development as usual and climate change:

Perhaps most alarming of all is the fact that the governments and leading international institutions charged with serving the public interest on climate change continue to promote a model of economic development that is clearly unsustainable, one that is energy intensive, export-oriented, and produces widespread social and environmental externalities. Rather than being part of the solution, through their own activities many of these actors are exacerbating the problem.

Nonetheless, climate change has entered into the world of development planning and practice unaccompanied by much rethinking of ‘what is new to development thinking’ (Boyd and Juhola 2009). Traditional adaptation interventions within development have tended to focus directly on climate impacts, without addressing the underlying causes of vulnerability that are linked to social structures, economic relations, the distribution of power and access to resources (Vincent et al. 2013). In practice, the focus has often been narrow and sectoral, aimed largely at mainstreaming climate change considerations into current activities rather than questioning how current activities and structures contribute to the social and political drivers of vulnerability. As Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai (2014: 6) point out, ‘[c]limate change issues are often relegated to specialized environmental or disaster-response authorities that view them in narrow technical terms. These specialized authorities are ill-equipped to respond to the full spectrum of development challenges that climate change raises.’

The integration of adaptation activities into development activities has taken many forms and labels, such as Climate Friendly Development, Climate Compatible Development, Conservation Agriculture, Climate Smart Agriculture, or simply ‘mainstreaming’ adaptation into existing po...