W5 Flashcards
What was the significance of Burton et al 1976
Environment as a hazard - came back into the context of global environmental change
Why did adaptation not emerge in the UNFCC negoations in 1960s or the Kyoto rule book
idea that adapatation was somehting that happened naturally and did not require planning
more about concentrated sources and how to control them ie. ozone layer
When was an adapation fund includes?
Marrakesh Accords to the Kyoto protocol - 2001
What are the three spheres of thinking around adaptation
Adaptation science = techno-focused adaptation like infrastructure services
adaptation practice = nature based solutions like ecosystem based adaptation
adaptation policy = adaptation as development
What are some examples of adaptation coming up in policy?
2013 Bali Action Plan under UNFCC - includes an adaptation pillar
loss and damage negotiations
Paris agreement 2016 - adaptation goal
global adaptation commission and global centre on adaptation
What has been established in the liteature andin the IPCC 4th assessment>
sustainable development can reduce vulnerability - link to adaptation
What is the reality of adaptation?
- identifying adaptation at a given moment is nearly impossible
- all responses are not adaptation
- adaptation processes are location-specific
- adpation for one group can mean increased vulnerability for another - trade-offs and maladptation
- adaptation that only addresses climate change impacts will not be sustainable - it must fit into the larger context and be about more than just climate change
What is meant by the larger context?
Climate systems are changing around us and impacting humans and systems
but there is also the rest of life - impacts are not caused solely by climate change but also a number of other factors happening or made worse by cc
How do you generate climate resilient development?
- stop emitting ghg
- work hard to achieve sustainable development
- development needs to be low carbon and also integrate climate risk like adaptation
- this results in climate resilient development
need to ensure that these are not competing bt complementary
What is Adaptation not?
- a list of engineering adjustments to buildings or roads
- a reaction to cc impacts, but must go deeper to address why people are affected in the first place - eg. poverty, ethniticty, political beliefs
- limited to activities under the UNFCC - which mostly deal with finances - it is about an overall sustainable development approach
What are the two kinds of vulnerability identified by O’Brine et al 2007?
Outcome and contextual vulnerability
What is outcome vulnerability?
CC –> exposure unit –> responses –> outcome vulnerability
What is contextual vulnerability
The wider context of political and institutional structures and putting pressure and influencing the responses to cc
eg. infrastructure
idea of institutional and biophysical pressures on responses
insufficient to just look at the impacts of CC
What is the pressure and release model
Idea that there is the global hazard like drought or heat that contribute to a disaster but there is also the vulnerability side
eg. political marginalisation, ethnical marginalisation
what is maladaptation?
refers to the an intiative (policy, plan or project) initially designed for adaptation but that in fact has adverse effects either on the socio-ecological systems in which it is developed or on another one or both
- it is a process that directly results in increased vulnerability to climate variability and change and/or undermines capacities or opportunities for present and future adaptation
can be from not responding at all
How does the IPCC WG II, 2001 define maladaptation?
“Any changes in natural or human systems that inadvertently increase vulnerability to climatic stimuli; an adaptation that does not succeed in reducing vulnerability but increases it instead”
Why is maladpation trendy now?
- more emprical evidence through the many projects
global goal of measuring adaption - pressure to identify successful adaption –> requires an understanding of how to avoid maladaptation
What are the three uses and definitions of maladaptation?
- Rebounding vulnerability - vulnerability returns in the same or different form
- Shifting/redistributing vulnerability - others become more vulnerable
- Creating negative externalities - new problems, not necessarily linked with increasing vulnerability to cc
Can you speak to infrastructural maladaptation?
- encourages people to live close to a barrier because they feel safer - when it fails it means that those people are the most exposed - moral hazard
Can you speak to behavioural maladaptation?
Much more based on individual decisions
Ghana - farming communities struggling with CC - temporarily migrate to cash jobs - diversified incomes and reduce pressure on food in the village but labour shortage - insufficient to collect good harvests
Why does maladaptation happen?
- shallow understanding of what drives vulnerability in specific locations in project design
- not involving local people in design and implementation
- retrofitting adaptation into existing development projects that are not new and different
What are some key lessons from maladaptation?
- multiple actors are involved in doing adaptation
- power imbalances
- perceptions of inequity that causes vulnerability to cc through badly designed adaptation strategies
- difference in understanding of what adaptation and adaptation success matter
What is the challenge around technocratic perspectives?
obscure the social dimensions of vulnerability - suggest that quick fixes are possible
What is the issue with incremental change
Incremental adaptation is generally insufficient to trigger the change we need but most of adaptation is incremental
