scholarly journals Transcending the Adaptation/Mitigation Climate Change Science Policy Debate: Unmasking Assumptions about Adaptation and Resilience

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tori L. Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Environmental Strategy ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
Adaptive Comanagement ◽  
The Individual

Abstract The two principal policy approaches to global climate change include mitigation and adaption. In recent years, the interest in adaptation and “resilience” has increased significantly in part because anthropogenic climate change appears unavoidable and mitigation agreements are difficult to achieve. This article takes a critical look at the emerging discourse over climate change adaptation and resilience. By drawing upon critiques of environmental resource management and adaptive comanagement, this paper argues that taking the concept of adaptation for granted as an appropriate bottom-up strategy for coping with anthropogenic climate change not only ignores the political and economic contexts in which this environmental strategy developed, but might also unintentionally subvert the vulnerable communities it intends to benefit. Using an ethnographic case study of the 2004 Boscastle Harbour flood in North Cornwall, England, this paper explores the paradoxical way in which adaptation and resilience work within the apparatus of the neoliberal state, which aims to shift responsibility for social and environmental problems to the individual. By better understanding the political and economic processes embedded in the concepts of adaptation and resilience, researchers will be more effective at finding equitable solutions to human ecological problems. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is vital in order to reduce the impacts of climate change that are happening now and increase resilience to future impacts (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).

Orchestrating the nation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barley Norton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Ancestor Worship ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
The City ◽  
Historical Periods ◽  
Party State

This chapter addresses the cultural politics, history and revival of Vietnamese court orchestras, which were first established at the beginning of the Nguyễn dynasty (1802–1945). Based on fieldwork in the city of Hue, it considers the decolonizing processes that have enabled Vietnamese court orchestras to take their place alongside other East Asian court orchestras as a display of national identity in the global community of nations. The metaphor of ‘orchestrating the nation’ is used to refer to the ways in which Vietnamese orchestras have been harnessed for sociopolitical ends in several historical periods. Court orchestras as heritage have recourse to a generic, precolonial past, yet they are not entirely uncoupled from local roots. Through a case-study of the revival of the Nam Giao Sacrifice, a ritual for ‘venerating heaven’, the chapter addresses the dynamics of interaction and exchange between staged performances of national heritage and local Buddhist and ancestor worship rituals. It argues that with growing concern about global climate change, the spiritual and ecological resonances of the Nam Giao Sacrifice have provided opportunities for the Party-state to reassert its position as the supreme guardian of the nation and its people.

On the Ethics of International Religious/Spiritual Gatherings and Academic Conferencing in the Era of Global Warming: A Case Study of the Parliament of The World’s Religions Melbourne 2009 - Part 1

2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-195
Author(s):  
Almut Beringer ◽  
Steven Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Peak Oil ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Academic Events ◽  
Special Responsibility

Global climate change and its impacts have ethical dimensions, for instance carbon footprint equity concerns. World issues, including the state of the ecosphere and biodiver­sity, regularly see political leaders, NGOs, business representatives, religious/spiritual orga­nizations, academics, and others engage in international aviation-dependent meetings to address critical challenges facing humanity and the planet. Yet, climate scientists and advocates call for an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 to cap the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC. Aviation emissions resulting from international meetings raise questions that are not silenced by GHG emissions offsetting. The era of climate change and ‘peak oil’ poses ethical challenges for holding international in-person religious and academic events, especially when the events propound an environmentalist concern and when aviation use is assumed. This paper raises ques­tions regarding the ecological impacts of large international events and focuses the ‘inconvenient truths’ associated with international aviation in the era of global warming. The Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest multifaith gathering in the world, serves as a case study. The paper emphasizes the view that faith-based/faith-inspired organizations have a special responsibility for leadership in policy and praxis on the moral imperatives of sustainability, sustainable development and climate justice.

scholarly journals Understanding Adaptation Finance Allocation: Which Factors Enable or Constrain Vulnerable Countries to Access Funding?

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepal Doshi ◽  
Matthias Garschagen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Prime Factor ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
The Political ◽  
Double Burden ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Global Comparison ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Global Goal

The most vulnerable countries often face a double burden in relation to climate change—they are at high risk to the impacts and are least equipped to cope and adapt. Global climate policy since the Convention in 1992, until most recently with the global goal on adaptation in the Paris Agreement, has manifested the importance of prioritizing adaptation support to the most vulnerable countries. The main objective of this study is to understand the enabling and constraining factors that play a role in the process of allocating and accessing global adaptation assistance. We adopted a mixed-methods approach combining two major streams of analysis. First, this paper aims to track bilateral adaptation finance to all so-called developing countries, as bilateral support has been the largest share of international adaptation finance. Second, the paper draws on semi-structured expert interviews and looks at the country level to identify the factors beyond vulnerability that play a role in the distribution of adaptation finance from a recipient’s and a donor’s perspective, using India and Germany as examples. The analysis yields three main findings. First, countries’ vulnerability as measured by standard metrics does not seem to be the prime factor explaining the distribution of available bilateral adaptation assistance. This is in contrast to the political narrative in the emerging climate finance architecture. Second, interview data identified other factors beyond vulnerability that play a role from a donor perspective, such as the perceived capacity to manage and implement projects, the commitment given to climate change and other political priorities. Third, from a recipient perspective, rather than its vulnerability level in a global comparison, strong institutional capacity played a prominent role in attracting adaptation finance. Looking out into the future, the findings underscore the practical and political challenges in relation to a vulnerability-oriented prioritization of funding and they point towards the need to increase countries’ capacities to attract and manage international adaptation support. The findings also raise questions on how to overcome the vexing conflict in the emerging adaptation finance architecture between accommodating for donors’ requirements of high fiduciary standards and enabling access by the most vulnerable countries, which are often short of resources and institutional capacities.

Women in Rebellion

2018 ◽  
pp. 488-500
Author(s):  
Zoe Marks
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Political Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Intimate Partnerships ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Insight Into

A key objective for the women, peace, and security agenda going forward is to disaggregate the experiences of women as a group, and to understand how gender functions in conflict contexts. This chapter focuses on the diverse roles of female combatants in rebel groups to gain insight into how power is distributed, not only between men and women, or combatants and civilians, but within groups. Rebel groups are characterized by military and political apparatuses that are built side by side and often entangled. Organizational power structures are often dominated by men, but not exclusively so. Using interviews and archival data from the Sierra Leone Civil War case study, this chapter delivers an analysis of women’s experiences in rebel movements. It explores the individual trajectories of mobilization and victimization in Sierra Leone. Next, it examines the unique experiences of female combatants, before situating them in the broader political context. Finally, the chapter considers cases of sexual violence, intimate partnerships, conflict among women, and the political entrepreneurship of elite women to understand female participation in rebellion in its entirety.

scholarly journals Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (11) ◽  
pp. 4905-4910 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances C. Moore ◽  
Nick Obradovich ◽  
Flavio Lehner ◽  
Patrick Baylis
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Absolute Temperature ◽  
Anthropogenic Climate Change ◽  
Temperature Anomalies ◽  
Shifting Baseline ◽  
Negative Sentiment

The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions. In an absolute sense, these changing conditions constitute direct evidence of anthropogenic climate change. However, human evaluation of weather as either normal or abnormal will also be influenced by a range of factors including expectations, memory limitations, and cognitive biases. Here we show that experience of weather in recent years—rather than longer historical periods—determines the climatic baseline against which current weather is evaluated, potentially obscuring public recognition of anthropogenic climate change. We employ variation in decadal trends in temperature at weekly and county resolution over the continental United States, combined with discussion of the weather drawn from over 2 billion social media posts. These data indicate that the remarkability of particular temperatures changes rapidly with repeated exposure. Using sentiment analysis tools, we provide evidence for a “boiling frog” effect: The declining noteworthiness of historically extreme temperatures is not accompanied by a decline in the negative sentiment that they induce, indicating that social normalization of extreme conditions rather than adaptation is driving these results. Using climate model projections we show that, despite large increases in absolute temperature, anomalies relative to our empirically estimated shifting baseline are small and not clearly distinguishable from zero throughout the 21st century.

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