scholarly journals Everyday limits to adaptation

Author(s):  
Karen Paiva Henrique ◽  
Petra Tschakert

Abstract Adaptation to climate change, in terms of both academic and policy debates, has been treated predominantly as a local issue. This scalar focus points towards local agency as well as the contested responsibilisation of local actors and potential disconnects with higher-level dynamics. While there are growing calls for individuals to take charge of their own lives against mounting climatic forces, little is known about the day-to-day actions people take, the many hurdles, barriers, and limits they encounter in their adaptation choices, and the trade-offs they consider envisaging the future. To address this gap, this article draws on 80+ interviews with urban and rural residents in Western Australia to offer a nuanced analysis of everyday climate adaptation and its limits. Our findings demonstrate that participants are facing significant adaptation barriers and that, for many, these barriers already constitute limits to what they can do to protect what they value most. They also make visible how gender, age, and socioeconomic status shape individual preferences, choices, and impediments, revealing compounding layers of disadvantage and differential vulnerability. We argue that slow and reflexive research is needed to understand what adaptation limits matter and to whom and identify opportunities to harness and support local action. Only then will we be able to surmount preconceived neoliberal ideals of the self-sufficient, resilient subject, engage meaningfully with ontological pluralism, and contribute to the re-politicisation of adaptation decision making.

Author(s):  
Anne B Hollowed ◽  
Manuel Barange ◽  
Véronique Garçon ◽  
Shin-ichi Ito ◽  
Jason S Link ◽  
...  

Abstract In June 2018, >600 scientists from over 50 countries attended the Fourth International Symposium on the Effects of Climate Change on the World’s Oceans (ECCWO-4). ECCWO-4 provided a forum for scientists to share information, build understanding, and advance responses to climate impacts on oceans and the many people, businesses and communities that depend on them. Seven Key Messages emerging from the symposium and relevant information from recently published literature are summarized. Recent scientific advances are improving our ability to understand, project, and assess the consequences of different levels of 21st century climate change for ocean ecosystems and ocean dependent communities. Outcomes of the symposium highlighted the need for on-going engagement with stakeholders, communities, and managers when considering the trade-offs associated with tactical and strategic opportunities for adaptation to climate change. Science informed adaptation frameworks that engage the public in their development are needed for effective management of marine resources in a changing climate. The summary provides a brief overview of the advances in climate-ocean science emerging from the symposium and provides context for the contributed papers within the broader socio-ecological advances of the discipline.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-205
Author(s):  
L. Corre ◽  
P. Dandin ◽  
D. L'Hôte ◽  
F. Besson

Abstract. From the French National Adaptation to Climate Change Plan, the "Drias, les futurs du climat" service has been developed to provide easy access to French regional climate projections. This is a major step for the implementation of French Climate Services. The usefulness of this service for the end-users and decision makers involved with adaptation planning at a local scale is investigated. As such, the VIADUC project is: to evaluate and enhance Drias, as well as to imagine future development in support of adaptation. Climate scientists work together with end-users and a service designer. The designer's role is to propose an innovative approach based on the interaction between scientists and citizens. The chosen end-users are three Natural Regional Parks located in the South West of France. The latter parks are administrative entities which gather municipalities having a common natural and cultural heritage. They are also rural areas in which specific economic activities take place, and therefore are concerned and involved in both protecting their environment and setting-up sustainable economic development. The first year of the project has been dedicated to investigation including the questioning of relevant representatives. Three key local economic sectors have been selected: i.e. forestry, pastoral farming and building activities. Working groups were composed of technicians, administrative and maintenance staff, policy makers and climate researchers. The sectors' needs for climate information have been assessed. The lessons learned led to actions which are presented hereinafter.


2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
Mark McLeod-Harrison

Traditional Christianity holds that God is a singular way, not dependent on the conceptual machinations of humans. I argue that God can be plural ways, different in different human conceptual schemes, all the while holding to traditional Christianity. In short, I provide a framework for an ontological pluralism that extends not just to the world being various ways but to God being various ways.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre-Antoine Versini ◽  
Daniel Schertzer ◽  
Mathilde Loury

<p>Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) appear as some relevant alternatives to mitigate the consequences of climate change. For this reason, they are promoted for the implementation of the national plan for adaptation to climate change (PNACC) in France, in line with the Paris Agreement, the strategy of the European Union for adaptation to climate change and the French national strategy for biodiversity.</p><p>Nevertheless, this ambitious goal of democratizing NBS poses some institutional and technical challenges because many obstacles remain to their implementation. Overcoming these shortcomings is the objective of the LIFE integrated project called ARTISAN (Achieving Resiliency by Triggering Implementation of nature-based Solutions for climate Adaptation at a National scale). Coordinated by the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), its consortium regroups several local authorities, technical, research and education institutes.</p><p>For this purpose, ARTISAN is creating a framework promoting the implementation of NBS by improving scientific and technical knowledge about them, then by developing and disseminating relevant tools for project leaders (for the design, sizing, implementation and evaluation of ecosystem performance).</p><p>To demonstrate that NBS can respond to a diversity of climatic, ecological and institutional contexts, 10 pilot sites will be monitored in metropolitan and overseas France. The concerned issues are for example the reduction of urban heat island by the de-waterproofing of the public space, the limitation of the impact of cyclonic episodes on the urbanized coastline overseas by promoting the restoration of the mangrove, and the decrease of agricultural water stress during the low flow period by the hydromorphological restoration of wetlands. These pilot sites will serve to develop, improve and validate operational tools, methods and trainings devoted to practitioners.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Chiew ◽  
Hongxing Zheng ◽  
Jai Vaze

<p>This paper addresses the implications of UPH19 in extrapolating hydrological models to predict the future and assessing water resources adaptation to climate change. Many studies have now shown that traditional application of hydrological models calibrated against past observations will underestimate the range in the projected future hydrological impact, that is, it will underestimate the decline in runoff where a runoff decrease is projected, and underestimate the increase in runoff where a runoff increase is projected. This study opportunistically uses data from south-eastern Australia which recently experienced a long and severe drought lasting more than ten years and subsequent partial hydrological recovery from the drought. The paper shows that a more robust calibration of rainfall-runoff models to produce good calibration metrics in both the dry periods and wet periods, at the expense of the best calibration over the entire data period, can produce a more accurate estimate of the uncertainty in the projected future runoff, but cannot entirely eliminate the modelling limitation of underestimating the projected range in future runoff. This is because of the need to consider trade-offs between the calibration objectives, particularly in simulating the dry periods, versus enhanced bias that results from the consideration. Hydrological models must therefore also need to be adapted to reflect the non-stationary nature of catchment and vegetation responses in a changing climate under warmer conditions, higher CO<sub>2</sub> and changed precipitation patterns. This is an active area of research in UPH19, and some ideas relevant to this region will be presented.</p>


2021 ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Calla Hummel

Chapter 5 develops an ethnography of street vendors, their organizations, and the city officials who they interact with in the city of La Paz, Bolivia. The chapter is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the city over four research trips in 2012, 2014 to 2015, 2018, and 2019 as well as administrative data on 31,906 street vending licenses in the city. Fieldwork included interviews, participant observation at dozens of meetings between bureaucrats and organized vendors, ride-alongs with the Municipal Guard, a street vendor survey, working as a street vendor in a clothing market, and selling wedding services with a street vendor cooperative. The theory’s observable implications are illustrated with ethnographic evidence, survey results, and license data from La Paz. I discuss how street vending has changed in the city and how officials have intervened in collective action decisions as the informal sector grew. The chapter demonstrates that officials increased benefits to organized vendors as the costs of regulating markets increased. Additionally, the leaders that take advantage of these offers tend to have more resources than their colleagues, and as the offers increased, so did the level of organization among the city’s street vendors. The chapter also discusses the many trade-offs that officials make in implementing different policies, and how officials manage the often combative organizations that they encourage.


Author(s):  
Rod J. Snowdon ◽  
Benjamin Wittkop ◽  
Tsu-Wei Chen ◽  
Andreas Stahl

AbstractMajor global crops in high-yielding, temperate cropping regions are facing increasing threats from the impact of climate change, particularly from drought and heat at critical developmental timepoints during the crop lifecycle. Research to address this concern is frequently focused on attempts to identify exotic genetic diversity showing pronounced stress tolerance or avoidance, to elucidate and introgress the responsible genetic factors or to discover underlying genes as a basis for targeted genetic modification. Although such approaches are occasionally successful in imparting a positive effect on performance in specific stress environments, for example through modulation of root depth, major-gene modifications of plant architecture or function tend to be highly context-dependent. In contrast, long-term genetic gain through conventional breeding has incrementally increased yields of modern crops through accumulation of beneficial, small-effect variants which also confer yield stability via stress adaptation. Here we reflect on retrospective breeding progress in major crops and the impact of long-term, conventional breeding on climate adaptation and yield stability under abiotic stress constraints. Looking forward, we outline how new approaches might complement conventional breeding to maintain and accelerate breeding progress, despite the challenges of climate change, as a prerequisite to sustainable future crop productivity.


Author(s):  
Robert S. Friedman ◽  
Desiree M. Roberts ◽  
Jonathan D. Linton

The articles addressed in this chapter on new product development can be classified in two general categories—papers that address the internal processes that assist or hinder development, and those that focus on factors that contribute to a new product’s success or failure in terms of performance and diffusion. We begin with Cooper and Kleinschmidt (1986), who report on the second phase of the New Prod project. Its goal was to examine the nature of the steps that affect the development process and determine how the step-wise structure was modified by the developer companies in order to improve process performance. Clark (1989) looks at project scope, or the extent to which in-house part development affects new product development and overall project performance. The new product development process, as a comprehensive scope of work, is the subject of Millison, Raj, and Wilemon’s (1992) discussion, specifically what the tensions and trade-offs are that occur among different functional areas and how they affect innovative product development. Wheelwright and Clark (1992) provide insight into strategies to plan, focus, and control a firm’s project development, offering an aggregate project plan that promotes management clearly delineating the roles and steps of each participant’s activities. Griffin and Page (1993) offer a practitioner’s framework that identifies and coordinates the many measures of product development success and failure, and holds them up against existing measures used by academic researchers. We then move to Souder’s (1988) article examining the relationship between R&D groups and marketing groups, the nature of the problems between them, and the structure of potentially effective partnerships.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nithya Natarajan ◽  
Katherine Brickell ◽  
Laurie Parsons

An emerging body of work has critiqued the concept of climate adaptation, highlighting the structural constraints impeding marginalised communities across the Global South from being able to adapt. This article builds on such work through analysis of debt-bonded brick workers in Cambodia, formerly small farmers. It argues that the detrimental impacts of climate change experienced by farmers-turned-workers across the rural – urban divide is due to their precarity. In doing so, this article draws on a conceptualisation of precarity which recognises it as emerging from the specific political economy of Cambodia, and as something that is neither new, nor confined to conditions of labour alone. As such, in looking to precarity as a means of conceptualising the relations of power which shape impacts of climate change, we advance a ‘climate precarity’ lens as a means of understanding how adaptation to climate change is an issue of power, rooted in a specific geographical context, and mobile over the rural–urban divide.


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