The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate

This paper is motivated by a concern that adaptation and vulnerability research suffer from an under-theorization of the political mechanisms of social change and the processes that serve to reproduce vulnerability over time and space. We argue that adaptation is a socio-political process that mediates how individuals and collectives deal with multiple and concurrent environmental and social changes. We propose that applying concepts of subjectivity, knowledges and authority to the analysis of adaptation focuses attention on this socio-political process. Drawing from vulnerability, adaptation, political ecology and social theory literatures, we explain how power is reproduced or contested in adaptation practice through these three concepts. We assert that climate change adaptation processes have the potential to constitute as well as contest authority, subjectivity and knowledge, thereby opening up or closing down space for transformational adaptation. We expand on this assertion through four key propositions about how adaptation processes can be understood and outline an emergent empirical research agenda, which aims to explicitly examine these propositions in specific social and environmental contexts. We describe how the articles in this special issue are contributing to this nascent research agenda, providing an empirical basis from which to theorize the politics of adaptation. The final section concludes by describing the need for a reframing of adaptation policy, practice and analysis to engage with multiple adaptation knowledges, to question subjectivities inherent in discourses and problem understandings, and to identify how emancipatory subjectivities – and thus the potential for transformational adaptation – can be supported.

Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation

Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute 4-1 Total pages: 139 1 Chapter 4: Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities 2 3 Coordinating Lead Authors: Michael Oppenheimer (USA), Bruce Glavovic (New Zealand), Tuhin Ghosh 4 (India) 5 6 Lead Authors: Amro Abd-Elgawad (Egypt), Rongshuo Cai (China), Miguel Cifuentes-Jara (Costa Rica), 7 Rob Deconto (USA), John Hay (Cook Islands), Jochen Hinkel (Germany), Federico Isla (Argentina), 8 Alexandre K. Magnan (France), Ben Marzeion (Germany), Benoit Meyssignac (France), Zita Sebesvari 9 (Hungary), AJ Smit (South Africa), Roderik van de Wal (Netherlands) 10 11 Contributing Authors: Maya Buchanan (USA), Gonéri Le Cozannet (France), Catia Domingues 12 (Australia), Virginie Duvat (France), Tamsin Edwards (UK), Miguel D. Fortes (Philippines), Thomas 13 Frederikse (Netherlands), Jean-Pierre Gattuso (France), Robert Kopp (USA), Erwin Lambert (Netherlands), 14 Elizabeth McLeod (USA), Mark Merrifield (USA), Siddharth Narayan (US), Robert J. Nicholls (UK), 15 Fabrice Renaud (UK), Jonathan Simm (UK), Jon Woodruff (USA), Poh Poh Wong (Singapore), Siyuan Xian 16 (USA) 17 18 Review Editors: Ayako Abe-Ouchi (Japan), Kapil Gupta (India), Joy Pereira (Malaysia) 19 20 Chapter Scientist Maya Buchanan (USA) 21 22 Date of Draft: 20 April 2018 23 24 Notes: TSU Compiled Version 25 26

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Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities

The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change : ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate

The 2019 Report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change

Climate change will increase the recurrence of extreme weather events such as drought and heavy rainfall. Evidence suggests that modifications in extreme weather events pose stronger threats to ecosystem functioning than global trends and shifts in average conditions. As ecosystem functioning is connected with ecological services, this has far-reaching effects on societies in the 21st century. Here, we: (i) present the rationale for the increasing frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events in the near future; (ii) discuss recent findings on meteorological extremes and summarize their effects on ecosystems and (iii) identify gaps in current ecological climate change research.

Balgis Osman-Elasha

Papers

Adaptation needs and options