Resettlement as climate change adaptation: what can be learned from state-led relocation in rural Africa and Asia?

There is growing interest in helping people in developing countries cope with climate change by reframing population relocation as an adaptation strategy. However, there is also ongoing uncertainly surrounding what the advantages and disadvantages of resettling poor and vulnerable communities might be. This article helps address this knowledge gap by considering what might be learned from recent and ongoing state-led relocation programmes in rural Africa and Asia. It draws on a review of planned displacement and resettlement in eight countries, and six months’ experience researching a relocation programme in central Mozambique, to make three arguments: first, there is need to uncover long-standing governmental perceptions of rural populations and the ways in which these affect state-led responses to climate shocks and stresses; second, it is necessary to develop more sophisticated understanding of human choice, volition and self-determination during resettlement as adaptation; and third, greater attention should be paid to how development narratives are generated, transmitted and internalised during climate-induced relocations. Taking into account socioeconomic, political and historical realities in these ways will help to avoid situations in which present-day interventions to assist populations experiencing or threatened by climate displacement simply repeat or reinforce past injustices

Resilience as transformative capacity: exploring the quadripartite cycle of structuration in a Mozambican resettlement programme

The concept of resilience has emerged out of a complex literature that has sought to make sense of an increasingly interconnected world that appears ever more beset by crises. Resilience’s appeal is reflected by the burgeoning mass of literature that has appeared on the subject in the past five years. However, there is ongoing debate surrounding its usage, with some commentators claiming that the term is inherently too conservative a one to be usefully applied to situations of vulnerability in which more radical social change is required. This article extends existing efforts to formulate more transformative notions of resilience by reframing it as a double-edged outcome of the pre-reflective and critical ways in which actors draw upon their internal structures following the occurrence of a negative event, thus reproducing or changing the external structural context that gave rise to the event in the first place. By employing a structuration-inspired analysis to the study of small-scale farmer responses to a flood-induced resettlement programme in central Mozambique, the article presents a systematic approach to the examination of resilience in light of this reframing. The case study findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the facilitative, as well as constraining, nature of structures if vulnerable populations are to be assisted in their efforts to exert transformative capacity over the wider conditions that give rise to their difficulties

Challenging climate change and migration discourse: different understandings of time-scale and temporality in the Maldives

This article draws on ongoing research in the Maldives to explore differences between elite and non-elite perceptions of climate change and migration. It argues that, in addition to variations in perceptions based on diverse knowledge, priorities and agendas, there exists a more fundamental divergence based upon different understandings of the time-scale of climate change and related ideas of urgency and crisis. Specifically, elites tend to focus on a distant future which is generally abstracted from people’s everyday lived realities, as well as utilise the language of a climate change-induced migration ‘crisis’ in their discussions about impacts in a manner not envisaged by non-elites. The article concludes that, rather than unproblematically mapping global, external facing narratives wholesale onto ordinary people’s lives and experiences, there needs to be more dialogue between elites and non-elites on climate change and migration issues. These perspectives should be integrated more effectively in the development of policy interventions designed to help people adapt to the impacts of global environmental change

Shifting sands: the rhythms and temporalities of island sandscapes

This article explores the different timescales and temporalities of the movement of sand. In recent years, growing scholarly attention has focused on the qualities of sand and the increasing demands for its use worldwide. However, the dynamics of this complex substance and the ways in which it flows through entangled human and non-human environments remains largely under-explored. In drawing on recently collected empirical data, this article explores the speed, pace and cadence of the passage of sand in, around and beyond a small island in the Maldives. It argues for the need to adopt a more substantive comprehension of the choreography of sand as a place-making process that occurs across different, interconnected temporalities, and seeks to explore the emotional and sensory reactions that shifting sand provokes. These temporal dynamics have profound implications for how we understand islands in the context of global environmental change. The article takes the reader on a walk across the island sandscape to reveal the mutually interlocking roles that human and non-human agents play in transforming its form, thereby creating an ever-changing sense of place

Raising awareness of environmental change in the Maldives

Island communities in the Maldives are experiencing environmental change on a daily basis due to coastal erosion, the accumulation of waste at sea and on beaches, and the rapid expansion of the built environment. Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Reading in the UK, and the Maldivian NGO ENDEVOR, are working with these communities to understand how such changes affect day-to-day life, and to raise awareness of associated issues amongst decision makers in the national capital, Malé. An exhibition of 40 photographs taken by island inhabitants depicting the challenges they face in their daily lives was held at the National Art Gallery in Malé. The exhibition launch, attended by the photographers and policymakers, proved particularly effective in enabling island residents to raise their concerns and put forward their solutions

Contestation over an island imaginary landscape: the management and maintenance of touristic nature

This article demonstrates how maintaining high-end tourism in luxury resorts requires recreating a tourist imaginary of pristine, isolated and unpeopled island landscapes, thus necessitating the ceaseless manipulation and management of space. This runs contrary to the belief that tourism industries are exerting an increasingly benign influence on local environments following the emergence of ‘sustainable tourism’ in recent decades. Rather than preventing further destruction of the ‘natural’ world, or fostering the reproduction of ‘natural’ processes, this article argues that the tourist sector actively seeks to alter and manage local environments so as to ensure their continuing attractiveness to the high-paying tourists that seek out idyllic destinations. Additionally, by drawing on an example of tourism development, environmental change and local conflict in the Maldives, it shows how interventions by tourism managers can result in conflict with local people who, possessing different imaginaries, interests and priorities, may have their own, often long-established, uses of the environment undermined in the process. The article concludes that the growing diversity and increasing environmental awareness of tourists is currently producing a range of complexities and ambiguities that preclude any easy and straightforward environmental response by the sector, and ultimately might destabilise the Western-based tourist imaginary itself

“Employment until the end of the world”: exploring the role of manipulation in a Mozambican land deal

In recent years, there has been considerable controversy over the poverty and livelihood impacts of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) on small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. However, while much of the concern over LSLAs has stemmed from the phenomenon of coercive expulsion of farmers from their lands, far less attention has been paid to the mechanism of manipulation, which is arguably a subtler and more pervasive form of influence over smallholders when they are incorporated into major land deals. This article addresses this theoretical and empirical gap through a case study of a LSLA implemented by an international paper and pulp company for the development of an extensive eucalyptus plantation in central Mozambique. The findings highlight the roles of three forms of manipulative influence – namely deception, pressure to acquiesce and playing upon people’s emotions – that were evident during company-smallholder negotiations and the impacts that these had on farmers’ livelihoods. The article concludes that, in the study of LSLAs, a much wider range of influences should be taken into consideration during the implementation of land deals than is currently the case. This is particularly important when external investors seek to develop new markets for land in which small-scale landholders can engage on a supposedly voluntary basis in search of jobs and income

Roundtable on Climate Change and Social Protection

PowerPoint presented at the November 2009 IDS Roundtable on Climate Change and Social Protection

Managed and unmanaged realignment as a nature-based solution to saltmarsh habitat loss: a sedimentary perspective

Managed realignment is the deliberate inundation of the coastal hinterland as a nature-based solution to saltmarsh habitat loss. Managed realignment sites are often designed and landscaped to encourage the development of a mosaic of targeted habitat types. However, despite these pre-breach engineering works, it has been demonstrated that managed realignment sites have a lower abundance and diversity of key plant species, and an increased percentage of bare ground. In contrast, unmanaged realignment is an emerging area of interest and describes sites where no landscaping or engineering works take place prior to site breaching. However, little is known of the evolution and development of unmanaged realignment sites. We argue that from a sedimentary perspective, with emphasis on the centrality of sediment in the evolution of realignment sites, the two approaches should not be classified into distinct categories. Through this sedimentary perspective, we synthesise the scientific evidence on the design and implementation of realignment in terms of the sediment structure, content, movement, and landform evolution. In doing so, we highlight that by adopting a sedimentary perspective a more integrated approach to realignment can be taken. The future research agenda is discussed, concluding that a more managed approach is needed in locations where unmanaged realignment could occur