While it is widely recognized that climate change will have
significant impacts on the developing world, the social dimensions
of vulnerability are often ignored in development projects and
practices aimed at promoting adaptation to climate change. This
book presents case studies that shed light on the tendency to
promote policies and practices that fit conveniently into
traditional development paradigms, and explores how development may
need to shift focus in relation to climate change adaptation. The
chapters offer critical perspectives that challenge many mainstream
views on vulnerability, adaptive capacity, resilience, and the role
of development projects in the context of climate change. The
international case studies illustrate how responses to climate
change that are embedded in traditional approaches to development
may actually exacerbate vulnerability instead of reducing it.
Adaptation projects often focus on dealing with the physical
impacts of climate change (increased water scarcity, flooding, heat
stress, etc.) through technical interventions, investments in
infrastructure, and disaster preparedness, while they rarely call
into question the underlying systems and structures that have
contributed to the social and economic inequalities (inadequate
access to resources, forced displacement, etc). This book presents
adaptation as more than isolated decisions, actions, policies or
practices aimed at addressing specific changes in the climate, but
rather as a collection of on-going processes shaped by social,
economic, political, institutional, and cultural dynamics. The book
illustrates how approaching adaptation through 'development as
usual' is unlikely to promote, maintain or enhance the well-being
of populations faced with the complex challenges posed by climate
change. Individual, household, community, sectoral and national
decisions are seldom solely about climate change, and adaptation
strategies may bring conflicts of interest that call for new ways
of negotiating and collaborating, and recognition of the existing
and emerging power relations that influence whose values and
interests prevail in shaping development pathways. While many of
the chapters are critical to current approaches to adaptation
within the field of development, they also show how development can
serve as a pathway towards sustainability. Alternatives are already
emerging, and the process of adapting to climate change may itself
be transforming development paradigms. This book will help
researchers, practitioners and policymakers working at the
interface between climate change and development to make sense of
the changing dynamics and emerging opportunities, to enable efforts
that work to create a better life for everyone.
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