Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons from Farmer Responses to Environmental Changes in Ghana

2017 ◽  
pp. 291-312
Author(s):  
Edwin A. Gyasi ◽  
Kwabena Gyekye Awere
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change

Sustainable Development

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Environmental Constraints ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Grave Problem ◽  
Intensive Growth

Sustainable development was famously defined in the 1987 Brundtland Report as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” In the decades that followed, anthropologists have made clear that the term requires a more specific redefinition within its context of late capitalism. For anthropologists, sustainable development evokes the effort of extending capitalist discipline while remaining conscious of economic or environmental constraints. Yet they have also found that sustainable development discourses frequently pitch certain forms of steady, careful capitalist extension as potentially limitless. Anthropologists have broadly found “sustainable” to be used by development workers and policy experts most widely in reference to economic rather than environmental constraints. Sustainable development thus presents as an environmentalist concept but is regularly used to lubricate extraction and energy-intensive growth in the name of a sustained capitalism. The intensifying impacts of climate change demonstrate the stakes of this choice. Anthropological interruptions and interrogations of the sustainable development concept within the unfolding logic of late capitalism range from the intimate and local realm of economic lives, to the political ecology of resource extraction, to the emerging ethnography of climate change. Anthropologists investigate sustainable development at these three scales. Indeed, scale is an effective analytic for understanding its spatial and temporal effects in and on the world. Anthropologists approach sustainable development up close as it has been utilized as a short-term disciplinary instrument of transforming people identified as poor into entrepreneurs. They can zoom out to see large extractive industries as, themselves, subjects and drivers of a larger-scale, longer-term framework of sustainable development. They also zoom out even further, intervening in emergent responses to climate change, a problem of utmost urgency that affects the globe broadly and far into the future, but unevenly. The massive environmental changes wrought by energy-intensive growth have already exceeded the carrying capacity of many of the world’s ecosystems. Climate change is at once a grave problem and a potential opportunity to rethink our economic lives. It has been an impetus to redefine mainstream approaches to sustainable development within a fossil-fueled capitalism. However, a deliberate program of “neoliberal adaptation” to climate change is emerging in sites of sustainable development intervention in a way that promises a consolidation of capitalist discipline. Anthropologists should thus engage a more robust ethnographic agenda rooted in environmental justice.

Open Innovation at Different Levels for Higher Climate Risk Resilience

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anamika Dey ◽  
Anil Gupta ◽  
Gurdeep Singh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Open Innovation ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
United Nations Environment Programme ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Local Networks

With the increase in climate variability, creating knowledge networks becomes important for leveraging the embedded resilience in the communities through cross-pollination of ideas, resources and institutional linkages. Communities have developed knowledge systems around climate-mediated environmental changes since time immemorial. Some social groups have capacity to cope with stress better. They have homeostatic advantage due to either accumulated surplus (Burton, 2001, Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in the drylands, United Nations Environment Programme) or access to institutions, technology and social networks (Adger, 2003, Social capital, collective action, and adaptation to climate change. Economic Geography, 79(4), 387–404). However, these knowledge systems often remain limited as isolated islands of expertise or small local networks resulting into asymmetries of knowledge at inter- or intra-community level. Intermediary organisations/platforms become important to bridge the gap that exists among communities within the informal sector and also between the formal and informal sectors. The platforms like the Honey Bee Network (henceforth, the Network) have been able to facilitate both horizontal exchanges, people-to-people learning and sharing, and vertical exchanges, connecting the informal actors with the formal system. The variation in different components of an Open Innovation System is studied in this article through their degree of openness in sharing, self-governance and self-regulation. We explore different activities and institutions of the Network to study the degree of openness and how they contribute to make the 26-year-old ecosystem more sustainable. We draw lessons for other institutions, organisations, communities who strive towards an autopoietic system, that is, a self-designed, self-organised and self-governed system with a feedback system from within and outside. This may make the whole innovation and knowledge ecosystem resilient in dealing with changing climatic conditions and fluctuating environment.

People and nature in the Fuerteventura Biosphere Reserve (Canary Islands): socio-ecological relationships under climate change

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARÍA F. SCHMITZ ◽  
CECILIA ARNAIZ-SCHMITZ ◽  
CRISTINA HERRERO-JÁUREGUI ◽  
PABLO DÍAZ ◽  
DANIELA G.G. MATOS ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Canary Islands ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Quantitative Model ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Ecological Relationships ◽  
Potential Interactions

SUMMARYThis paper analyses the interdependence between environment and society in terms of socio-ecological webs, in which human and biophysical systems are linked. A quantitative model, based on canonical correlation analysis applied in Fuerteventura Island (Canary Archipelago), detected indicators of human–landscape relationships and predicted potential shifts based on simulated environmental changes. In the last few decades, the landscape of Fuerteventura Island has changed: natural components and cultural agrarian uses have decreased, while the population has increased due to immigration, mainly from mainland Spain and other European countries. The island shows a transition from a coupled local socio-ecosystem to one based on the interaction between environment and coastal tourism that decouples native inhabitants from the landscape and traditional land-use practices. As vulnerability and adaptation to climate change represent critical sets of potential interactions in Canary Islands, a model and a map of the socio-ecological system under four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios show rural decoupling through ‘deagrarianization’ and ‘deruralization’, as well as stronger links to the tourism system.

scholarly journals A Framework for Monitoring Ecosystems-Based Adaptation to Climate Change: Experience from The Gambia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10959
Author(s):  
Peter Gilruth ◽  
Lalisa A. Duguma ◽  
Peter A. Minang ◽  
Alagie Bah ◽  
Malanding S. Jaiteh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Effectiveness Monitoring ◽  
Management Actions

Implementing ecosystems-based adaptation (EbA) to climate change is challenged by the need to monitor biophysical, socio-cultural, and economic impacts which are usually context-specific. Therefore, robust frameworks are required that integrate impacts to better understand EbA effectiveness. Monitoring frameworks that are universally applicable to EbA are desirable, however their universal application is problematic as they should reflect a community-driven design that accommodates both donor reporting functions and the generation of local-level data and information to support management actions and community initiatives. Initial products from this research include a generic, five-step process for developing and testing adaptation indicators, a robust framework consisting of (i) the indicators, data and information used to design the framework, (ii) the operational EbA platform that houses and computes the adaptation indicators, and (iii) the participating institutions, and initial, community-level applications to guide water management, replenishment of the vegetation cover, and business development. Immediate benefits to rural communities include the re-orientation of performance indicators mapped to their needs as opposed to donor reporting alone. The framework contributes to the set of tools currently in use for EbA monitoring by offering an umbrella within which existing tools can be applied. Near-term future research will focus on improving the utility of the framework and its platform beyond reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs) by adapting the EbA platform to support changing management needs. Future research will be needed to understand the extent to which the environmental changes in The Gambia compared to changes across the Sahel and Sudano-Sahel regions of West Africa and whether the lessons learned from The Gambia could be extrapolated to the subregion.

Climate change and water resources in the Lower Mekong River Basin: putting adaptation into the context

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Keskinen ◽  
S. Chinvanno ◽  
M. Kummu ◽  
P. Nuorteva ◽  
A. Snidvongs ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Hydrological Cycle ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Mekong River ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Mekong River Basin ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales

Adaptation to climate change has become one of the focal points of current development discussion. This article summarises the findings from a multidisciplinary research project looking at climate change impacts and adaptation in the Mekong River Basin in Southeast Asia. The research highlights the central role that the hydrological cycle has in mediating climate change impacts on ecosystems and societies. The findings indicate that climate change should not be studied in isolation, as there are several other factors that are affecting the hydrological cycle. In the Mekong, the most important such factor is the on-going hydropower development that is likely to induce changes at least as radical as climate change, but with shorter timescales. The article concludes that climate change adaptation should broaden its view to consider environmental changes likely to occur due to different factors at various spatial and temporal scales. It is also important to recognise that climate change adaptation is a dynamic, development-orientated process that should consider also broader socio-political context. To enable this, we propose that an area-based adaptation approach should be used more actively to complement the dominant sector-based approaches.

Influence of climate and environmental change in Nigeria: a review on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-447
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Alepu Odey ◽  
Bodjui Olivier Abo ◽  
Zifu Li ◽  
Xiaoqin Zhou ◽  
Abdulmoseen Segun Giwa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Information Structures ◽  
Adaptation To Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Threats ◽  
Climate And Environmental Change

Abstract This paper reviews the current issues that involve environmental changes in Nigeria and environmental threats within the country. The fundamental aim of scientific knowledge in environmental studies is to reconcile climate change and environmental sustainability with developmental goals. Therefore, information on impact adaptation to climate change and vulnerability research is required to develop specific, action-oriented, interdisciplinary, successful, sociopolitical and democratic reform for the entire population of a country. This condition requires large inclusion of environmental researchers, institutions, re-inventing of research structures and ideas to dominate the global environmental change research and the critical analysis of present decision making, power, structure and related information structures. This review presents the effect of climate change in Nigeria and encourages adaptation research with challenging innovation, such as the use of energy-efficient renewable energy sources to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper also highlighted the need for researchers to become detailed, action oriented and multiscalar and to attend communications structure problems in enhancing the environmental activity.

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