Putting 'vulnerable groups' at the centre of adaptation interventions by promoting transformative adaptation as a learning process

Report submitted to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)This report is a follow up and deepening of the working paper, “Climate change interventions and vulnerability reduction in developing countries: Challenges and leverage points for transformation”. In that backgrounder, we highlighted that many adaptation interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability (Eriksen et al. 2021a), which is also reflected in the concept of ‘maladaptation’ that was recently foregrounded in the recent IPCC AR6 WGII Report (IPCC 2022). Maladaptation frequently stems from overly technical adaptation programming that is top-down and driven by outside objectives and knowledge. Instead, there is increasing recognition of adaptation as a socio-political process that addresses the root causes of the vulnerability of communities or segments of the population and, in so doing, builds the capacities of impacted populations and communities to engage climate challenges. This approach is termed ‘transformative adaptation’ and requires engagement with governance and institutional questions about whose values and perspectives are embraced within adaptation planning, and considering justice in these processes. This background paper highlights the kinds of practice that can help avoid maladaptive outcomes and promote transformative adaptation. Through case study examples of projects that - at least partially - embody aspects of a reflexive approach, the paper identifies ‘checklists’ of positive features to encourage and ‘red flags’ to be questioned or avoided in project proposal evaluation.NORA

Mining indigenous territories: Consensus, tensions and ambivalences in the Salar de Atacama

Lithium mining in Chile’s Salar de Atacama (SdA) has a relatively long and controversial history, especially when it comes to the local Indigenous peoples. In this context, this paper looks at the ways mining activities, and different visions of territory and indigeneity co-produce each other in the particular context of the SdA. For this, we use historical and ethnographic methods and draw on studies in anthropology and geography. We aim to escape simplistic images of Indigenous peoples’ reactions to mining as reflecting victimhood, resistance, or strategic pragmatism, and show instead how individuals and groups organize and express themselves in ambivalent ways, maintaining complex relationships with both mining and the territory. According to our local interlocutors, struggles around territory in the SdA mainly concern water scarcity, the survival of this unique ecosystem’s biological diversity, as well as continuity and change in local lifeways. While recent agreements between mining companies and local communities may benefit some individuals, they are also generating inter- and intra- community tensions over these issues. We find that mining shapes what ’indigenous’ means and who can claim this identity, while Indigenous mobilization in turn shapes how mining is perceived and carried out. Together, mining and Indigenous mobilization produce a particular kind of territory, pervaded by diverse lines of both consensus and tension. Rather than contradictions, the ambivalent positions Indigenous peoples maintain become comprehensible when considering, ethnographically and historically, the particular places and life- worlds they inhabit, and the asymmetrical patterns of constraint and opportunity they face. More broadly, the paper raises questions about the implications of a global transition to renewable energy based on lithium battery technologies, and ethical responses to the climate crisis.publishedVersio

Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance?

This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of ‘local’ vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with ‘vulnerable’ populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation

Climate, the Earth, and God - Entangled narratives of cultural and climatic change in the Peruvian Andes

How different groups perceive climate-related problems and changes is of growing interest in research and practice, especially in relation to the adaptation of vulnerable communities to climate change. However, research on local climate perceptions to date has tended to focus on what changes are perceived, not on how those changes are interpreted in particular socio-cultural contexts and given meaning within local worldviews and systems of values and beliefs. Based on fieldwork in agro-pastoral communities in highland Cusco, Peru, this study examines climate perceptions in terms of how local community members understand and explain changing climatic conditions. Specifically, two local climate narratives are identified and found to relate to Andean re-interpretations of Catholic and Evangelical religious traditions. The Andean practice of ritual offering to the earth (pago a la tierra) is found to play a key role both in the shifting religious identifications encountered at the local level, and in giving meaning to changing climatic conditions. The article further explores how these perspectives are rooted in diverging ontological and epistemological foundations. While in the local Catholic view the earth is conceived of as a non-human sacred/social person (pachamama or Santa Tierra) with whom a relationship of reciprocity must be maintained, the local Evangelical perspective instead conceives of the earth as an object, not a subject, more closely mirroring modernist Nature/Culture dualism. More broadly, the study suggests that how people interpret changing climatic conditions cannot simply be extracted and purified from the contexts of meaning production, and proposes the concept of ‘entangled narratives’ as a way of accounting for the social and cultural embeddedness of climate perceptions. Fulfilling our obligation to address climate change in socially just ways will require deepening our understanding of its human dimensions, including taking seriously what these changes may mean to the impacted groups

The Governance of Climate Change Adaptation Finance—An Overview and Critique

At COP21 in Paris parties to the UNFCCC reiterated the goal of USD 100 billion annually in climate finance by 2020 and agreed to set a more ambitious target by 2025. A significant portion of these funds is intended to flow through the newly operational Green Climate Fund and will be dedicated to climate change adaptation in developing countries. Meanwhile, growing support for adaptation is already flowing through diverse channels. International debates continue, not only over the amount of adaptation finance, but also with regard to fund governance. In particular, developing countries are seeking greater country control through increased participation in high-level decision-making and ‘direct access’ to adaptation funds. This paper proposes an overview of the primary channels currently employed in the emerging adaptation finance field, with particular attention to governance characteristics relevant to international debates. This analysis suggests that while both developing-country participation in decision-making and ‘direct access’ to funds have increased in some cases, the vast majority of adaptation finance continues to flow through traditional development aid channels and does not respond to developing countries’ concerns regarding fund governance. If adaptation finance structures are not perceived as legitimate by developing countries, a global, coordinated response to climate change may be put at risk. Further, the implications, in terms of social justice and the effectiveness of adaptation, of conducting adaptation along the lines of development are currently under-represented in the literature. Given the goal of mobilising, for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, USD 100 billion per year by 2020, there is an urgent need for empirical research in this domain

Beyond “blah blah blah”: exploring the “how” of transformation

Calls for transformations are clear and multiple pathways and alternative visions for the future have been defined. Yet, there is very little shared understanding of how such transformations come about and how knowledge-action gaps will be filled. This Special Feature focuses on how we can go beyond talking about transformation—the “blah blah blah”—and moving toward action for results. It does so by distinguishing between the means of transformation and the manner of transformation, two key dimensions to answering the question of “how.” The means can be understood as the many solutions, technical and practical methods, or actions that are presented as significant to transformative change. The manner, in contrast, represents the ways in which something is done, i.e., ways of acting. It describes the core values, principles, qualities, and relationships that not only underpin and motivate transformative change, but shape the process. Integrating rather than conflating the means and the manner is important to better understand how transformations come about. We then present insights from the collection of papers that focus on the “how” of transformation. The papers describe different ways of integrating the means and the manner in transformation processes. We have organized them thematically as follows: papers that draw on the integration of meaning making, the integration of learning and listening, and the integration of different ways of being and becoming. Drawing on both science and alternative ways of knowing, they weave together new narratives and stories about nature, society, and the future, inviting us to embark on the journey of creating sustainability pathways.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Hazards of Mainstreaming: Climate change adaptation politics in three dimensions

Under the threat of climate change and with disproportional impacts expected for the world’s poorest, the adaptation imperative confers renewed justification to development aid transfers, while the urgency of the problem lends itself to the uncritical application of existing solutions. Yet, an emerging body of work has raised critical questions about how adaptation is being conceived and implemented in the global South. We systematize and contribute to this critical scholarship by distinguishing three fundamental political dimensions of the adaptation problem, related to differential responsibility, the global uneven production of vulnerability, and unequal relations of power in adaptation decision-making itself. Further, based on research from across the global South, the paper suggests that the current program of ‘mainstreaming’ adaptation into existing development logics and structures perpetuates an anti-politics machine, obscuring and depoliticizing rather than addressing the political dimensions of the adaptation problem. Mainstreaming risks not only reproducing development-as-usual, but in fact reinforcing technocratic patterns of control. The three-dimensional view of the politics of climate change adaptation is offered as an analytical perspective to sharpen and systematize future critical adaptation scholarship. In the conclusion, we highlight avenues toward enhanced attention to power and justice in climate change research and practice

Putting 'vulnerable groups' at the centre of adaptation interventions by promoting transformative adaptation as a learning process

This report is a follow up and deepening of the working paper, “Climate change interventions and vulnerability reduction in developing countries: Challenges and leverage points for transformation”. In that backgrounder, we highlighted that many adaptation interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability (Eriksen et al. 2021a), which is also reflected in the concept of ‘maladaptation’ that was recently foregrounded in the recent IPCC AR6 WGII Report (IPCC 2022). Maladaptation frequently stems from overly technical adaptation programming that is top-down and driven by outside objectives and knowledge. Instead, there is increasing recognition of adaptation as a socio-political process that addresses the root causes of the vulnerability of communities or segments of the population and, in so doing, builds the capacities of impacted populations and communities to engage climate challenges. This approach is termed ‘transformative adaptation’ and requires engagement with governance and institutional questions about whose values and perspectives are embraced within adaptation planning, and considering justice in these processes. This background paper highlights the kinds of practice that can help avoid maladaptive outcomes and promote transformative adaptation. Through case study examples of projects that - at least partially - embody aspects of a reflexive approach, the paper identifies ‘checklists’ of positive features to encourage and ‘red flags’ to be questioned or avoided in project proposal evaluation

Mining indigenous territories: Consensus, tensions and ambivalences in the Salar de Atacama

Lithium mining in Chile’s Salar de Atacama (SdA) has a relatively long and controversial history, especially when it comes to the local Indigenous peoples. In this context, this paper looks at the ways mining activities, and different visions of territory and indigeneity co-produce each other in the particular context of the SdA. For this, we use historical and ethnographic methods and draw on studies in anthropology and geography. We aim to escape simplistic images of Indigenous peoples’ reactions to mining as reflecting victimhood, resistance, or strategic pragmatism, and show instead how individuals and groups organize and express themselves in ambivalent ways, maintaining complex relationships with both mining and the territory. According to our local interlocutors, struggles around territory in the SdA mainly concern water scarcity, the survival of this unique ecosystem’s biological diversity, as well as continuity and change in local lifeways. While recent agreements between mining companies and local communities may benefit some individuals, they are also generating inter- and intra- community tensions over these issues. We find that mining shapes what ’indigenous’ means and who can claim this identity, while Indigenous mobilization in turn shapes how mining is perceived and carried out. Together, mining and Indigenous mobilization produce a particular kind of territory, pervaded by diverse lines of both consensus and tension. Rather than contradictions, the ambivalent positions Indigenous peoples maintain become comprehensible when considering, ethnographically and historically, the particular places and life- worlds they inhabit, and the asymmetrical patterns of constraint and opportunity they face. More broadly, the paper raises questions about the implications of a global transition to renewable energy based on lithium battery technologies, and ethical responses to the climate crisis