Rural modernization and the remaking of the rural citizen in China:Village redevelopment, migration and precarity

The Chinese government's ambitious plans to modernize the countryside have significant impacts for rural populations. Upgrading or relocating villages is one component of this vision with profound implications for rural citizens. We use multiple social science research methods to investigate ongoing rural transformation in two villages designated for Village Redesign in Anhui Province, China. We show that the Village Redesign process is negatively impacting on the migration–development nexus and the resultant limbo deepens the precarity of high-mobility, translocal households who already experience secondary forms of citizenship and limited social protections. This study raises further questions about the ongoing transformation of rural China and questions the modernizing rural agenda of the Chinese state

Everyday mobility and changing livelihood trajectories: Implications for vulnerability and adaptation in dryland regions

Dryland regions are highly dynamic environments in which multiple pressures intersect, threatening livelihood security. Mobility is an integral feature in these environments and represents a key risk management strategy for people to respond to frequent livelihood shocks and stresses. Global environmental change scholarship has tended to articulate spatial and temporal change inadequately, portraying populations in a way that belies their socially differentiated and inherently mobile livelihoods. We explored the role of mobility as an ongoing, "everyday" adaptive response to changing environmental, economic, and social conditions. We draw on 21 Life History (LH) interviews to explore the drivers and outcomes of people's mobility behavior in drylands of Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, and India. We present the adaptation option space (AOS) as a novel theoretical development to explore livelihood trajectories. Within our cases, we found that mobility was ubiquitous and facilitated changes to and exchanges within people's risk profiles in three main ways: novelty (risks gained or lost), modification (risks attenuated or accentuated), and no change. Temporal analysis showed three broad trajectories in people's lives set within broader structural constraints: upward, downward, and stable, depending on people's abilities to manage their AOS. The analysis confirmed that the AOS was a useful heuristic to understand how people exert agency to respond to an array of converging risks while negotiating broader drivers of change. Moreover, the data demonstrated how compounding shocks had negative impacts on people, highlighting the value of temporally-sensitive approaches

Advancing climate resilient development pathways since the IPCC’s fifth assessment report

Development processes and action on climate change are closely interlinked. This is recognised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its fifth assessment report, which reports on climate-resilient pathways, understood as development trajectories towards sustainable development which include adaptation and mitigation. The upcoming sixth assessment report dedicates a chapter to climate resilient development pathways. In this context, this paper asks what conceptual and empirical advances on climate resilient development pathways were made since the fifth assessment report. Through a literature review, this paper analyses goals and approaches for climate resilient development pathways, and discusses what conceptual advances have and could still be made. We find little evidence of dedicated concept development. Rather, we observe conceptual ambiguity. Literature showed four non-exclusive clusters of approaches: (a) climate action oriented, (b) social-learning and co-creation oriented, (c) mainstreaming oriented and (d) transformation oriented. We recommend operationalising climate resilient development pathways as the process of consolidating climate action and development decisions towards long-term sustainable development. This process requires explicit engagement with aspirations of actors, and connecting past developments with future aspirations and understandings of risk. Working with multiple pathways allows us to embed flexibility, anticipation and learning in planning. A greater focus is needed on issues linked to justice and equity as climate resilient development pathways will inevitably involve trade-offs. Substantiating the concept of climate resilient development pathways has the potential to bridge climate and development perspectives, which may otherwise remain separated in development and climate policy, practice and science

Research priorities for climate mobility

The escalating impacts of climate change on the movement and immobility of people, coupled with false but influential narratives of mobility, highlight an urgent need for nuanced and synthetic research around climate mobility. Synthesis of evidence and gaps across the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report highlight a need to clarify the understanding of what conditions make human mobility an effective adaptation option and its nuanced outcomes, including simultaneous losses, damages, and benefits. Priorities include integration of adaptation and development planning; involuntary immobility and vulnerability; gender; data for cities; risk from responses and maladaptation; public understanding of climate risk; transboundary, compound, and cascading risks; nature-based approaches; and planned retreat, relocation, and heritage. Cutting across these priorities, research modalities need to better position climate mobility as type of mobility, as process, and as praxis. Policies and practices need to reflect the diverse needs, priorities, and experiences of climate mobility, emphasizing capability, choice, and freedom of movement