Climate change vulnerability and social development for remote indigenous communities of South Australia

There is a strong contemporary research and policy focus on climate change risk to communities, places and systems. While the need to understand how climate change will impact on society is valid, the challenge for many vulnerable communities, especially some of the most marginalised, such as remote indigenous communities of north-west South Australia, need to be couched in the context of both immediate risks to livelihoods and long-term challenges of sustainable development. An integrated review of climate change vulnerability for the Alinytjara Wilurara Natural Resources Management region, with a focus on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands, suggests that targeted analysis of climate change impacts and adaptation options can overlook broader needs both for people and the environment. Climate change will add to a range of complex challenges for indigenous communities, especially in relation to hazards, such as fire and floods, and local environmental management issues, especially in association with invasive species. To respond to future socio-ecological risk, some targeted responses will need to focus on climate change impacts, but there also needs to be a better understanding of what risk is already apparent within socio-ecosystems and how climate interacts with such systems. Other environmental, social and economic risks may need to be prioritised, or at least strongly integrated into climate change vulnerability assessments. As the capacity to learn how to adapt to risk is developed, the value attributed to traditional ecological knowledge and local indigenous natural resource management must increase, both to provide opportunities for strong local engagement with the adaptation response and to provide broader social development opportunities.     

Portfolio screening to support the mainstreaming of adaptation to climate change into development assistance

The need to mainstream adaptation to climate change into development planning and ongoing sectoral decision-making is increasingly recognised, and several bilateral and multilateral development agencies are starting to take an interest. Over the past years at least six development agencies have screened their project portfolios, generally with two goals in mind: (1) to ascertain the extent to which existing development projects already consider climate risks or address vulnerability to climate variability and change, and (2) to identify opportunities for incorporating climate change explicitly into future projects. As each portfolio screening was conducted independently, the broader lessons emerging from the screenings have not been systematically analysed. In this paper we assess the screening activities to date, focusing on both the results and the methods applied. Based on this assessment we identify opportunities for development agencies to expand their current focus on the links between climate and development. Most agencies already consider climate change as a real but uncertain threat to future development, but they have given less thought to how different development patterns might affect vulnerability to climate change. The screenings undertaken have shown the need to take a comprehensive approach to adaptation and its integration into development planning and sectoral decision-making, and a number of policy initiatives have been taken to promote such integration. We provide some initial guidance as to how portfolio screening can be carried out in a way that would allow agencies to assess systematically the relevance of climate change to their ongoing and planned development projects.     

The right stuff? informing adaptation to climate change in British Local Government

Local government has a crucial role to play in climate change adaptation, both delivering adaptation strategies devised from above and coordinating bottom-up action. This paper draws on a unique longitudinal dataset to measure progress in adaptation by local authorities in Britain, comparing results from a national-scale survey and follow-up interviews conducted in 2003 with a second wave of research completed a decade later. Whereas a decade ago local authority staff were unable to find scientific information that they could understand and use, we find that these technical-cognitive barriers to adaptation are no longer a major problem for local authority respondents. Thanks to considerable Government investment in research and science brokerage to improve the quality and accessibility of climate information, local authorities have developed their adaptive capacity, and their staff are now engaging with the ‘right’ kind of information in assessing climate change risks and opportunities. However, better knowledge has not translated into tangible adaptation actions. Local authorities face substantial difficulties in implementing adaptation plans. Budget cuts and a lack of political support from central government have sapped institutional capacity and political appetite to address long-term climate vulnerabilities, as local authorities in Britain now struggle even to deliver their immediate statutory responsibilities. Local authority adaptation has progressed farthest where it has been rebranded as resiliency to extreme weather so as to fit with the focus on immediate risks to delivering statutory duties. In the current political environment, adaptation officers need information about the economic costs of weather impacts to local authority services if they are to build the business case for adaptation and gain the leverage to secure resources and institutional license to implement tangible action. Unless these institutional barriers are addressed, local government is likely to struggle to adapt to a changing climate.     

Risk perception and decision-making: do farmers consider risks from climate change?

This paper provides one of the first empirical studies that examine the impact of climate change adaptation practices on technical efficiency (TE) among smallholder farmers in Nepal. An adaptation index is used to explore the impact of farmers’ adaptation on TE using the stochastic frontier analysis framework. Data for six districts of Nepal representing all three agro-ecological regions (terai, hill, and mountain) were collected from a focus group discussion, a stakeholder workshop and a household survey. The survey shows that about 91% of the farming households have adopted at least one practice to minimize the adverse impacts of climate change. Empirical results reveal that adaptation is an important factor explaining efficiency differentials among farming households. Those adopting a greater number of adaptation practices on a larger scale are, on average, found to be 13% more technically efficient than those adopting fewer practices on smaller scale. The empirical results also show that average TE is only 0.72, indicating that there are opportunities for farming households in Nepal to further improve productive efficiency, on average by 28%. Other important factors that explain variations in the productive efficiency across farming households include farmer’s education level, irrigation facilities, market access, and social capital such as farmer’s participations in relevant agricultural organizations and clubs. This study provides empirical evidence to policy makers that small scale adjustments made by farmers in response to climate change impacts are effective in improving farmers’ efficiency in agriculture production. This indicates a need for farmers’ involvement in climate change adaptation planning.     

Addressing human vulnerability to climate change: Toward a ‘no-regrets’ approach

This paper presents and applies a conceptual framework to address human vulnerability to climate change. Drawing upon social risk management and asset-based approaches, the conceptual framework provides a unifying lens to examine links between risks, adaptation, and vulnerability. The result is an integrated approach to increase the capacity of society to manage climate risks with a view to reduce the vulnerability of households and maintain or increase the opportunities for sustainable development. We identify ‘no-regrets’ adaptation interventions, meaning actions that generate net social benefits under all future scenarios of climate change and impacts. We also make the case for greater support for community-based adaptation and social protection and propose a research agenda.     

IPCC AR6报告解读：气候变化与人类健康

IPCC近期发布了第六次评估报告（AR6）第二工作组（WGII）报告《气候变化：影响、适应和脆弱性》,其中第7章“健康、福祉和不断变化的社区结构”评估了气候变化对人类健康和福祉的当前影响以及未来风险,提出了应对气候变化的解决方案和适应策略。报告明确指出,气候变化对气候敏感传染病和慢性非传染性疾病,以及精神心理健康等的威胁正在增加,并表现出复合暴露和连锁事件的风险,且预计未来风险还会随着全球变暖而进一步加剧。实施积极和有效的气候变化适应措施并快速采取行动,将会在很大程度上减少和避免气候变化导致的健康风险,但不会完全消除所有风险。报告凸显了气候变化健康影响的严重性和紧迫性,未来需要加大对健康领域适应气候变化的科技创新、规划、行动和资金支持。     

Canary in a coal mine: perceptions of climate change risks and response options among Canadian mine operations

A survey documenting how climate change is perceived and responded to by Canadian mine operations was administered to a random sample of practitioners working at mine sites across Canada. Key findings include: (1) Mines are sensitive to climatic hazards; (2) There is concern about climate change among mine practitioners, but the majority have not yet noticed climate change to be affecting operations; (3) Future climate change is expected to have negative impacts for mine operations; (4) Mines are responding to climate change mainly through efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also through adaptation, although to a lesser degree; and (5) Knowledge of future climate change projections and impacts is limited, potentially constraining understanding of the nature of climate change risks. The survey compliments previous work documenting perceptions among upper level management on climate change in the Canadian mining industry. The results from both surveys are largely consistent, establishing that the mining sector perceives climate change as an emerging risk and is developing response options, but needs to invest more time and resources for adaptation to what are inevitable changes in climate. The results support the need for targeted in-depth research to assess the vulnerability of mining to climate change and to evaluate response options.     

适应与绿色复苏：应对新冠疫情和气候复合风险的协同

作为全球性危机,新冠疫情和气候危机在影响范围、效果、原因等方面的相似之处可能使两种危机的效果叠加,而二者的不同之处又可能导致应对政策的相互干扰,带来更加严峻的复合风险。文中全面分析了全球面临的新冠疫情和气候危机的复合风险,识别了新冠疫情对全球气候变化适应进程的影响,以及适应在各国疫后绿色复苏计划中的地位。研究表明,目前全球的绿色复苏中较少考虑适应,而绿色复苏为同时恢复经济和增强气候恢复力提供了机会,如果能在绿色复苏中考虑变革性适应,将显著提升社会经济系统对气候变化等冲击的抵御能力与恢复力,实现疫情后更持续和更有韧性的经济发展。     

The Congo Basin forests in a changing climate: Policy discourses on adaptation and mitigation (REDD+)

This paper discusses the discourses on climate change adaptation and mitigation that are currently at the forefront in the Congo Basin. On mitigation, the forests have enormous opportunities to contribute to the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) mechanism. But the forest itself and its multiple dependent societies and sectors need to adapt to potential climate risks. Hence, actors are debating the design of climate change policy in the forest sector. Theoretically, we combine the agency-focus of frame analysis and discourse theory to analyze how different agents hold frames on climate change adaptation and mitigation policies in the region. This paper draws upon interviews with 103 different actors from government, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, research institutions and private sector in three countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR) and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Three discourses were found on policy response to climate change in the forest sector: mitigation policy only, separated policy on adaptation and mitigation, and an integrated policy on adaptation and mitigation. The various frames articulated around each discourse by the coalitions include elements of: costs and benefits, scale of operation, effectiveness, financial resources and implementation mechanisms. Overall, the mitigation discourse, through its mix of actors, resources and interests seems to be stronger than the adaptation discourse. The paper finally outlines a number of implications of the discourses for policy design.     

A linked vulnerability and resilience framework for adaptation pathways in remote disadvantaged communities

We develop a systems framework for exploring adaptation pathways to climate change among people in remote and marginalized regions. The framework builds on two common and seemingly paradoxical narratives about people in remote regions. The first is recognition that people in remote regions demonstrate significant resilience to climate and resource variability, and may therefore be among the best equipped to adapt to climate change. The second narrative is that many people in remote regions are chronically disadvantaged and therefore are among the most vulnerable to climate change impacts. These narratives, taken in isolation and in extremis, can have significant maladaptive policy and practice implications. From a systems perspective, both narratives may be valid, because they form elements of latent and dominant feedback loops that require articulation for a nuanced understanding of vulnerability-reducing and resilience-building responses in a joint framework. Through literature review and community engagement across three remote regions on different continents, we test the potential of the framework to assist dialogue about adaptation pathways in remote marginalized communities. In an adaptation pathway view, short-term responses to vulnerability can risk locking in a pathway that increases specific resilience but creates greater vulnerability in the long-term. Equally, longer-term actions towards increasing desirable forms of resilience need to take account of short-term realities to respond to acute and multiple needs of marginalized remote communities. The framework was useful in uniting vulnerability and resilience narratives, and broadening the scope for adaptation policy and action on adaptation pathways for remote regions.     

Special Issue Introduction: Adding insult to injury: Climate change and the inequities of climate intervention

Climate change will injure vulnerable communities. In response, coordinated global action has emerged to mitigate climate change, to gauge and map climate-related risks, and to plan for adaptation, which in turn has opened new avenues of funding, power, knowledge and opportunity. The identification of climate risks, analysis and diffusion of ‘impact’ scenarios, incorporation of carbon into economic regimes, and interventions to enhance adaptive capacity will necessarily be experienced differently by different groups. As climate-related crises produce winners and losers, so may discourses and plans made to avert such crises. In the process both the bio-physical events and the social responses shape and reshape social stratification and the distribution of risk. They produce new inequalities and needs for new kinds of responses to guard against injustice. From the emergence of desalination water projects and contested water access, to relocation planning in the Arctic and the South Pacific due to sea-level rise, to increasingly centralized forest management; mitigation and adaptation responses and interventions create their own critical outcomes. This essay and the articles in this special issue examine some new opportunities and risks associated with climate-change discourses and interventions. This special issue shows that vulnerable communities may be at risk of material injury following climate change or climate change intervention; and, be further insulted and injured by lack of representation and recognition, and by misrecognition as simplified, stereotyped victims in local, national and international climate conversations. Using a mixture of theoretical insight and case study research, this collection of articles explores the injuries of climate change as it applies to both direct physical stress scenarios and exposure to adaptation and mitigation policies and planning, as well as the discursive insults of being discounted, stereotyped, or ignored.     

Adaptation,adaptive capacity and vulnerability

This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs.     

Adaptation to the infectious disease impacts of climate change

Climate change has the potential to increase the challenge of preventing and controlling outbreaks of infectious diseases. An adaptation assessment is an important aspect of designing and implementing policies and measures to avoid, prepare for, and effectively respond to infectious diseases outbreaks. The main steps in conducting an adaptation assessment include: 1) evaluating the effectiveness of policies and measures that address the burden of climate-sensitive infectious diseases; 2) identifying options to manage the health risks of current and projected climate change; 3) evaluating and prioritizing the options; 4) identifying human and financial resources needs, and possible barriers, constraints, and limits to implementation; and 5) developing monitoring and evaluation programs to ensure continued effectiveness of policies and measures in a changing climate. Optimally, relevant stakeholders are optimally included throughout the adaptation assessment. Although the process of conducting an assessment is similar across nations and regions, the context and content will vary depending on local circumstances, socioeconomic conditions, legal and regulatory frameworks, and other factors. The European Centers for Disease Prevention and Control developed guidelines for conducting assessments, with sufficient consistency to facilitate learning lessons across assessments.     

Climate change and Quebec's ski industry

This study presents the results of a second-generation climate change assessment for three key ski regions of Quebéc incorporating snowmaking as a climate adaptation strategy. Potential economic ramifications for ski operators are assessed separately for the main revenue-generating period and shoulder seasons. The paper concludes that climate change does not pose a threat to the Quebéc ski industry under 2020s scenarios and that, while adequate snow base can be maintained with additional snowmaking under even the warmest scenario for the 2050s, the combined economic impact of lost revenue opportunities from a shortened ski season and increased snowmaking costs will likely prove prohibitive for some ski operators.     

More than planning: Diversity and drivers of institutional adaptation under climate change in 96 major cities

A key challenge for effective, ongoing urban climate adaptation is to adapt institutions within urban governance. While an extensive foundation of empirical knowledge on urban climate adaptation has accumulated over the last decade, our image of institutional adaptation continues to be dominated by a focus on planning. Whilst understandable, this can obscure a fuller range of areas in which institutional adaptation to climate change is being pursued. Furthermore, methodological path dependency in large-N analysis via a common focus on analyzing formal planning documents risks a skewed perspective as such documents may only offer a partial view. Building on the rich range of work to date assessing climate adaptation in cities, and notwithstanding continued major gaps such as in small-medium cities, we now need to find ways to examine the diversity of institutional adaptation occurring in practice, and to comparatively draw on the situated interpretive knowledge of case experts within individual cities to do so. With this aim in mind, this paper explores institutional adaptation in a specific domain (urban water) in a sample of 96 major cities across six continents through a survey of 319 case experts, examining the diversity of institutional adaptation across contexts and exploratively probing its drivers. Findings show that multiple forms of institutional adaptation are being jointly pursued in cities across all continents, leaning towards ‘softer’ rather than ‘harder’ forms, but nonetheless revealing a wide range of activity. Patterns in drivers suggest a political explanation for institutional adaptation (e.g. involving change agents and political pressure) rather than a rational one (e.g. involving response to climate-related risks and/or extreme events). Overall, there is a need to combine parsimony with expanded interpretive sensibility in advancing large-N research on institutional adaptation diversity in comparative perspective.     

Effects of climate change and extreme events on forest communities in the European North

The European north is increasingly affected by changes in climate and climate variability. These changes and their causes are global in scope but specific impacts vary considerably between different regions. Recent incidents and events show that forest-resource based regions have difficulties in alleviating adverse effects of these changes. Also, the future socio-economic impact is to date unexplored. Norrbotten in Sweden, Lappi in Finland and Arkhangelsk oblast in Russia are regions that differ significantly in terms of their socio-economic characteristics and capacities. A modified employment multiplier model is used to predict future changes. Scenarios of changing forest resources provide quantitative estimations of the sensitivity of regional employment. These estimates are used to assess and discuss the adaptive capacities of the regions. Results show that Arkhangelsk oblast is more vulnerable to climate variability than Norrbotten and Lappi. This is due to the continued dependency on natural resources in combination with different capacities to counteract negative effects or to take advantage of the opportunities offered by climate change in this region.     

Enhancing the value of adaptation reporting as a driver for action: lessons from the UK

ABSTRACT

As increasing evidence shows that the risks of climate change are mounting, there is a call for further climate action (both reducing global emissions, and adaptation to better manage the risks of climate change). To promote and enable adaptation, governments have introduced, or are considering introducing, reporting on climate risks and efforts being taken to address those risks. This paper reports on an analysis of the first two rounds of such reports submitted under the UK Climate Change Act (2008) Adaptation Reporting Power. It highlights benefits and challenges for reporting authorities and policymakers receiving the reports that could also inform other countries considering such reporting. For reporting authorities, benefits arise from the reporting process and resulting reports. These benefits include elevating climate risks and adaptation to the corporate level and with stakeholders, alongside facilitating alignment and integration of actions within existing risk management and governance structures. For policymakers, reporting provides enhanced understanding of climate risks and actions from a bottom-up perspective that can be integrated into national-level assessments and adaptation planning processes. The identified challenges are those related to capacity and process. These include limited risk and adaptation assessment capacities; relevance of climate change risks and adaptation in the context of other urgent risks and actions; reporting process effectiveness and robustness; and the provision of effective and sufficiently comprehensive support, including feedback.

Key policy insights

• Effective adaptation reporting needs to be designed and delivered so as to enhance the value of the reporting process and resulting reports both for those reporting and those receiving the reports, as well as from the broader policy perspective.

• Providing a positive and supportive reporting environment is critical to encourage participation and facilitating contiuous learning and improvement, while also facilitating delivery of policy-relevant adaptation reports.

• Contributions of adaptation reporting can be enhanced by an inclusive reporting requirement involving a broader organizational mix that enables more effective risk management and reporting that reflects associated (inter)dependencies and consistency with the more comprehensive post-2015 resilience agenda (Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework for DRR and UN Agenda 2030 SDGs).