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Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute 4-1 Total pages: 139 1 Chapter 4: Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities 2 3 Coordinating Lead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 paper sets out a proposal for bridging and linking three approaches to the analysis of transitions to sustainable and low-carbon societies: quantitative systems modelling; socio-technical transition analysis; and initiative-based learning. We argue that each of these approaches presents a partial and incomplete picture, which has implications for the quality and usefulness of the insights they can deliver for policy and practice. A framework for bridging these different approaches promises to enrich each of the approaches, while providing the basis for a more robust and complete analysis of sustainable transitions pathways that serves better to address questions and dilemmas faced by decision-makers and practitioners. We elaborate five key challenges for the analysis and governance of transitions pathways, and compare the three approaches in relation to each of these. We suggest an integration strategy based on alignment, bridging, and iteration, arguing that a structured dialogue between practitioners of different approaches is needed. In practical terms, such a dialogue would be organised around three areas of joint knowledge production: defining common analytical or governance problems to be tackled through integration; establishing shared concepts (boundary objects); and establishing operational bridging devices (data and metrics, pathways evaluation and their delivery). Such processes could include experts and societal partners. We draw conclusions about future research perspectives and the role of analysis in transitions governance.

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Evaluating sustainability transitions pathways: Bridging analytical approaches to address governance challenges

A highly uncertain future due to changes in climate, technology and socio-economics has led to the realisation that identification of "best-guess" future conditions might no longer be appropriate. Instead, multiple plausible futures need to be considered, which requires (i) uncertainties to be described with the aid of scenarios that represent coherent future pathways based on different sets of assumptions, (ii) system performance to be represented by metrics that measure insensitivity (i.e. robustness) to changes in future conditions, and (iii) adaptive strategies to be considered alongside their more commonly used static counterparts. However, while these factors have been considered in isolation previously, there has been a lack of discussion of the way they are connected. In order to address this shortcoming, this paper presents a multidisciplinary perspective on how the above factors fit together to facilitate the development of strategies that are best suited to dealing with a deeply uncertain future. Integrated view of concepts for dealing with a highly uncertain future in modelling.Role of multiple plausible futures amongst other paradigms for modelling the future.Relation of multiple plausible futures to deep, local/global uncertainty and VUCA.Overview of how different scenario approaches help to identify plausible futures.Factors affecting static and adaptive approaches to robustness to multiple futures.

An uncertain future, deep uncertainty, scenarios, robustness and adaptation

An analysis of observed trends in African annual-average near-surface temperatures over the last five decades reveals drastic increases, particularly over parts of the subtropics and central tropical Africa. Over these regions, temperatures have been rising at more than twice the global rate of temperature increase. An ensemble of high-resolution downscalings, obtained using a single regional climate model forced with the sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice fields of an ensemble of global circulation model (GCM) simulations, is shown to realistically represent the relatively strong temperature increases observed in subtropical southern and northern Africa. The amplitudes of warming are generally underestimated, however. Further warming is projected to occur during the 21st century, with plausible increases of 4-6 C over the subtropics and 3-5 C over the tropics by the end of the century relative to present-day climate under the A2 (a low mitigation) scenario of the Special Report on Emission Scenarios. High impact climate events such as heat-wave days and high fire-danger days are consistently projected to increase drastically in their frequency of occurrence. General decreases in soil-moisture availability are projected, even for regions where increases in rainfall are plausible, due to enhanced levels of evaporation. The regional downscalings presented here, and recent GCM projections obtained for Africa, indicate that African annual-averaged temperatures may plausibly rise at about 1.5 times the global rate of temperature increase in the subtropics, and at a somewhat lower rate in the tropics. These projected increases although drastic, may be conservative given the model underestimations of observed temperature trends. The relatively strong rate of warming over Africa, in combination with the associated increases in extreme temperature events, may be key factors to consider when interpreting the suitability of global mitigation targets in terms of African climate change and climate change adaptation in Africa.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/8/085004/pdf

Projections of rapidly rising surface temperatures over Africa under low mitigation.

The need to adapt to climate change is now widely recognised as evidence of its impacts on social and natural systems grows and greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Yet efforts to adapt to climate change, as reported in the literature over the last decade and in selected case studies, have not led to substantial rates of implementation of adaptation actions despite substantial investments in adaptation science. Moreover, implemented actions have been mostly incremental and focused on proximate causes; there are far fewer reports of more systemic or transformative actions. We found that the nature and effectiveness of responses was strongly influenced by framing. Recent decision-oriented approaches that aim to overcome this situation are framed within a “pathways” metaphor to emphasise the need for robust decision making within adaptive processes in the face of uncertainty and inter-temporal complexity. However, to date, such “adaptation pathways” approaches have mostly focused on contexts with clearly identified decision-makers and unambiguous goals; as a result, they generally assume prevailing governance regimes are conducive for adaptation and hence constrain responses to proximate causes of vulnerability. In this paper, we explore a broader conceptualisation of “adaptation pathways” that draws on ‘pathways thinking’ in the sustainable development domain to consider the implications of path dependency, interactions between adaptation plans, vested interests and global change, and situations where values, interests, or institutions constrain societal responses to change. This re-conceptualisation of adaptation pathways aims to inform decision makers about integrating incremental actions on proximate causes with the transformative aspects of societal change. Case studies illustrate what this might entail. The paper ends with a call for further exploration of theory, methods and procedures to operationalise this broader conceptualisation of adaptation.

https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/ws/files/7817413/1_s2.0_S095937801300232X_main.pdf

Reconceptualising adaptation to climate change as part of pathways of change and response

. Subsistence farming in southern Africa is vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. The yield of rain-fed agriculture depends largely on rainfall-related factors such as total seasonal rainfall, anomalous onsets and lengths of the rainy season and the frequency of occurrence of dry spells. Livestock, in turn, may be seriously impacted by climatic stress with, for example, exceptionally hot days, affecting condition, reproduction, vulnerability to pests and pathogens and, ultimately, morbidity and mortality. Climate change may affect the frequency and severity of extreme weather conditions, impacting on the success of subsistence farming. A potentially interesting adaptation measure comprises the timely forecasting and warning of such extreme events, combined with mitigation measures that allow farmers to prepare for the event occurring. This paper investigates how the frequency of extreme events may change in the future due to climate change over southern Africa and, in more detail, the Limpopo Basin using a set of climate change projections from several regional climate model downscalings based on an extreme climate scenario. Furthermore, the paper assesses the predictability of these indicators by seasonal meteorological forecasts of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) seasonal forecasting system. The focus is on the frequency of dry spells as well as the frequency of heat stress conditions expressed in the temperature heat index. In areas where their frequency of occurrence increases in the future and predictability is found, seasonal forecasts will gain importance in the future, as they can more often lead to informed decision-making to implement mitigation measures. The multi-model climate projections suggest that the frequency of dry spells is not likely to increase substantially, whereas there is a clear and coherent signal among the models of an increase in the frequency of heat stress conditions by the end of the century. The skill analysis of the seasonal forecast system demonstrates that there is a potential to adapt to this change by utilizing the weather forecasts, given that both indicators can be skilfully predicted for the December–February season, at least 2 months ahead of the wet season. This is particularly the case for predicting above-normal and below-normal conditions. The frequency of heat stress conditions shows better predictability than the frequency of dry spells. Although results are promising for end users on the ground, forecasts alone are insufficient to ensure appropriate response. Sufficient support for appropriate measures must be in place, and forecasts must be communicated in a context-specific, accessible and understandable format.

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The potential value of seasonal forecasts in a changing climate in southern Africa

Copyright: 2013 Hydrology and 
Earth System
Sciences. This is an Open Access journal. The journal authorizes the publication of the information herewith contained.

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E. Archer Van Garderen

Papers

Reconceptualising adaptation to climate change as part of pathways of change and response

The potential value of seasonal forecasts in a changing climate in southern Africa

The potential value of seasonal forecasts in a changing climate