Mainstreaming climate adaptation into development assistance in Mozambique: Institutional barriers and opportunities

Based on a literature review and expert interviews, this paper analyzes the most important climate impacts on development goals and explores relevant institutions in the context of mainstreaming climate adaptation into development assistance in Mozambique. Climate variability and change can significantly hinder progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals and poverty aggravates the country's climate vulnerability. Because Mozambique is one of the major recipients of official development assistance in the world, there is a clear interest in ensuring that the risks of climate impacts are incorporated into the country's development investments. A screening of donor activities at the sub-national level shows that a high share of development assistance is invested in climate-sensitive sectors, partly in areas that are particularly exposed to droughts, floods, and cyclones. The authors find that Mozambique has a supportive legislative environment and donors have a high awareness of climate risks. However, limited individual, organizational, networking, and financial capacity constrain mainstreaming initiatives. Given strong limitations at the national level, bilateral and multilateral donors can play a key role in fostering institutional capacity in Mozambique.Climate Change,Environmental Economics&Policies,Population Policies,Common Property Resource Development,Global Environment Facility

Avenues of archetype analysis: roots, achievements, and next steps in sustainability research

Recent years have seen a proliferation of studies that use archetype analysis to better understand and to foster transitions toward sustainability. This growing literature reveals a common methodological ground, as well as a variety of perspectives and practices. In this paper, we provide an historical overview of the roots of archetype analysis from ancient philosophy to recent sustainability science. We thereby derive core features of the archetype approach, which we frame by eight propositions. We then introduce the Special Feature, “Archetype Analysis in Sustainability Research,” which offers a consolidated understanding of the approach, a portfolio of methods, and quality criteria, as well as cutting-edge applications. By reflecting on the Special Feature’s empirical and methodological contributions, we hope that the showcased advances, exemplary applications, and conceptual clarifications will help to design future research that contributes to collaborative learning on archetypical patterns leading toward sustainability. The paper concludes with an outlook highlighting central directions for the next wave of archetype analyses

Typology of coastal urban vulnerability under rapid urbanization

Coastal areas are urbanizing at unprecedented rates, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Combinations of long-standing and emerging problems in these urban areas generate vulnerability for human well-being and ecosystems alike. This baseline study provides a spatially explicit global systematization of these problems into typical urban vulnerability profiles for the year 2000 using largely sub-national data. Using 11 indicator datasets for urban expansion, urban population growth, marginalization of poor populations, government effectiveness, exposures and damages to climate-related extreme events, low-lying settlement, and wetlands prevalence, a cluster analysis reveals a global typology of seven clearly distinguishable clusters, or urban profiles of vulnerability. Each profile is characterized by a specific data-value combination of indicators representing mechanisms that generate vulnerability. Using 21 studies for testing the plausibility, we identify seven key profile-based vulnerabilities for urban populations, which are relevant in the context of global urbanization, expansion, and climate change. We show which urban coasts are similar in this regard. Sensitivity and exposure to extreme climate-related events, and government effectiveness, are the most important factors for the huge asymmetries of vulnerability between profiles. Against the background of underlying global trends we propose entry points for profile-based vulnerability reduction. The study provides a baseline for further pattern analysis in the rapidly urbanizing coastal fringe as data availability increases. We propose to explore socio-ecologically similar coastal urban areas as a basis for sharing experience and vulnerability-reducing measures among them

Land fragmentation, climate change adaptation, and food security in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia

Household food security among smallholder farmers is sensitive to a variable and changing climate, requiring farmers in the Gamo Highlands of Ethiopia to adopt new land management practices to improve food security. Agricultural land in the Gamo Highlands is highly fragmented. The extent to which land fragmentation (LF) moderates the food security effects of sustainable land management (SLM) practices is unknown. This study used probit and Poisson models to explain this relationship. The study found that food insecurity was severe during the food shortfall season. LF provides more potential opportunities for improving food security than challenges. Furthermore, SLM practices had both positive and negative effects on food security and their effects were conditioned by the magnitude of LF. Reducing severe LF through the assembly of small parcels into larger heterogeneous plot clusters could enhance food security by exploiting synergies between adaptation practices and LF.</p

Design and quality criteria for archetype analysis

A key challenge in addressing the global degradation of natural resources and the environment is to effectively transfer successful strategies across heterogeneous contexts. Archetype analysis is a particularly salient approach in this regard that helps researchers to understand and compare patterns of (un)sustainability in heterogeneous cases. Archetype analysis avoids traps of overgeneralization and ideography by identifying reappearing but nonuniversal patterns that hold for well-defined subsets of cases. It can be applied by researchers working in inter- or transdisciplinary settings to study sustainability issues from a broad range of theoretical and methodological standpoints. However, there is still an urgent need for quality standards to guide the design of theoretically rigorous and practically useful archetype analyses. To this end, we propose four quality criteria and corresponding research strategies to address them: (1) specify the domain of validity for each archetype, (2) ensure that archetypes can be combined to characterize single cases, (3) explicitly navigate levels of abstraction, and (4) obtain a fit between attribute configurations, theories, and empirical domains of validity. These criteria are based on a stocktaking of current methodological challenges in archetypes research, including: to demonstrate the validity of the analysis, delineate boundaries of archetypes, and select appropriate attributes to define them. We thus contribute to a better common understanding of the approach and to the improvement of the research design of future archetype analyses

Validity and validation in archetype analysis: practical assessment framework and guidelines

Archetype analysis is a promising approach in sustainability science to identify patterns and explain mechanisms shaping the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Although considerable efforts have been devoted to developing quality standards and methodological advances for archetype analysis, archetype validation remains a major challenge. Drawing on the insights from two international workshops on archetype analysis and on broader literature on validity, we propose a framework that identifies and describes six dimensions of validity: conceptual; construct; internal; external; empirical; and application validity. We first discuss the six dimensions in relation to different methodological approaches and purposes of archetype analysis. We then present an operational use of the framework for researchers to assess the validity of archetype analysis and to support sound archetype identification and policy-relevant applications. Finally, we apply our assessment to 18 published archetype analyses, which we use to describe the challenges and insights in validating the different dimensions and suggest ways to holistically improve the validity of identified archetypes. With this, we contribute to more rigorous archetype analyses, helping to develop the potential of the approach for guiding sustainability solutions.Peer Reviewe

Archetype analysis in sustainability research : meanings, motivations, and evidence-based policy making

Archetypes are increasingly used as a methodological approach to understand recurrent patterns in variables and processes that shape the sustainability of social-ecological systems. The rapid growth and diversification of archetype analyses has generated variations, inconsistencies, and confusion about the meanings, potential, and limitations of archetypes. Based on a systematic review, a survey, and a workshop series, we provide a consolidated perspective on the core features and diverse meanings of archetype analysis in sustainability research, the motivations behind it, and its policy relevance. We identify three core features of archetype analysis: recurrent patterns, multiple models, and intermediate abstraction. Two gradients help to apprehend the variety of meanings of archetype analysis that sustainability researchers have developed: (1) understanding archetypes as building blocks or as case typologies and (2) using archetypes for pattern recognition, diagnosis, or scenario development. We demonstrate how archetype analysis has been used to synthesize results from case studies, bridge the gap between global narratives and local realities, foster methodological interplay, and transfer knowledge about sustainability strategies across cases. We also critically examine the potential and limitations of archetype analysis in supporting evidence-based policy making through context-sensitive generalizations with case-level empirical validity. Finally, we identify future priorities, with a view to leveraging the full potential of archetype analysis for supporting sustainable development