Climate adaptation justice in theory and practice

Presenting author: Petra Tschakert (University of Western Australia)

Recent advances in the social sciences and humanities point toward the advantage of enriching the existing climate justice frame, to overcome the entrenched silencing of 'others' in adaptive planning and to scrutinise human exceptionalism and the violence it enacts in so-called just and transformative adaptation. The more inclusive concept of multispecies justice aims to address these shortcomings by examining the everyday interactions that bind individuals and societies to networks of close and distant others and reimagining responsibilities as part of an ethics of care. Here, I explore how a broader conceptualisation of intersectionality makes it possible to envision identities beyond race, class, gender, indigeneity, age, and ability and explicitly include species and other non-human beings.

Understanding these entangled categories of inequality makes it easier to trace axes of privilege, power, and disenfranchisement within and between hierarchies of 'mattering'. Tangible actions then take on a more relational scope in which more-than-human solidarity functions as a prerequisite for building just coalitions across difference. The ultimate goal is to operationalise adaptation justice with an emphasis on deliberating what equitable outcomes ought to entail, and which losses and grievances may be acceptable and to whom, today and in the future.

Presenting author: Meg Parsons (University of Auckand)

Other authors: Johanna Nalau (Griffith University)

In this article, we explore the interfaces between environmental justice (EJ) and climate change adaptation (CCA) to consider the plurality of climate adaptation justice claims. Our academic backgrounds and positionalities mean that we approach theorising about climate adaptation justice through the lens of intersectionality and decolonising methodolologies.

We demonstrate how an intesectional lens coupled with the capabilities theoretical framework can assist us to better understand the socio-cultural and material realities of Indingeous peoples engaged in CCA work; specifically, how their intersectional identities inform their experiences of vulnerability and risk, agency and resilience, injustice and equity, marginalisation and empowerment.

To do this, we draw on three research projects that explored how Indigenous knowledge systems, worldviews, and values informed Indigenous people's efforts to participate in and lead the development of community- or tribal-based CCA efforts in three different island nations in Oceania (Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and Aotearoa New Zealand).

Throughout, we make reference to how intersectional approaches to EJ research can meaningful add to the diverse groups we engage with (academic, policy-makers, practitioners, business owners, Indigenous communities), and seek to avoid rearticulating power inequities in our writings by being explicit in our positionalities.

Presenting author: Wendy Conway-Lamb (University of Canberra)

Adaptation and vulnerability tend to go hand in hand in the literature. Normative discussions about adaptation often ask who or where is vulnerable to climate change and should thus get prioritised for support. This is a distributive justice approach. A procedural justice approach recognises that vulnerabilities cannot be measured objectively; adaptation is inherently political, and those most affected by climate change should be actively included in decision-making about adaptation. This paper focuses on Vietnam, a developing country heavily impacted by climate change and a recipient of climate finance for adaptation.

Using discourse analysis based on interviews with actors involved in adaptation in Vietnam, from international organisations and government officials to NGOs and farmers, I identify several distinct problem-solution storylines of adaptation that they invoke. I then evaluate the extent to which this discursive landscape is inclusive of those most affected by climate change. My finding that the term vulnerability commonly arises in the context of 'vulnerability mapping' and 'targeting vulnerable groups' prompts exploration of whether this concept promotes inclusiveness, or may risk disempowering those it is used to label, focusing attention on problem diagnosis and distributive justice, and limiting aspirations to deliberative adaptation governance.

Presenting author: Tim Smith (University of the Sunshine Coast)

Other authors: Carmen Elrick-Barr (University of the Sunshine Coast)

The framing of problems within various institutional instruments (e.g. policies, plans, legislation) privileges select sustainability issues and solutions; and in turn influences management outcomes. In this presentation we discuss the findings of a review of 48 local, regional and State institutional instruments with a role in coastal management in Australia.

By critically exploring the coastal sustainability paradigms adopted, we highlight the dominance of an anthropocentric worldview. Furthermore, we found that preference is given to some instruments, through for example, legislative backing or financial support, which prioritises those views over others. The findings highlight the importance of practitioner reflection on problem framing and the implications for achieving higher order coastal management goals.

Presenting author: Zeenat Mahjabeen (UNSW)

Other authors: Associate Professor Krishna K Shrestha (UNSW)

Many South Asian cities have started to develop and implement adaptation plans to address climate change impacts. One of the measures of success for these plans is to understand and address the needs and concerns of the urban poor and disadvantaged. Concerns are raised on the planning practice of city governments to have excluded the poor and disadvantaged from the process of plan making and implementation. Scholars highlight many city governments having limited leadership capacity to assess and understand differential vulnerabilities and adaptive capacities of people living in a city. In this paper, we investigate differential vulnerabilities and capacities of urban poor living in Dharavi Slum of central Mumbai, thereby highlighting opportunities to improve adaptation planning at the city government level.

As we demonstrate, poor people at the slum perceive climate change as a real threat to their life and livelihoods and they are doing a range of innovative adaptation measures to secure them and their families. However, these local measures are largely ignored or discarded by the city government planning practitioners. Government initiatives during flooding are tokenistic and influenced by a few powerful slum leaders, often exacerbating the struggle of the poor households. This paper concludes by highlighting the need for adaptation planning practice to be locally grounded, by engaging with the urban poor and address their differential vulnerabilities and capacity.

Presenting author: Claudia Munera (Australian National University)

Other author: Fenner School of Environment and Society

To understand how future-oriented conservation strategies are, my research is exploring the narratives of adaptation framing protected areas strategies to deal with future climate change impacts to social-ecological systems. Using an analytical framework to explore future consciousness, I am studying how protected areas in Australia, Colombia, and South Africa deals with future climate change. These countries are home of a rich and unique biodiversity, with multicultural and plural systems shaping knowledge creation and perceptions of reality. Adaptation narratives are framed by specific cultural, political, geographical, and historical contexts, can have different ontological perspectives (e.g., system perception, temporal perspectives), epistemological approaches, and diverse ways to enable (or restrict) stakeholders voices in future planning of conservation. This manifest in the way individuals and institutions think and act in relation to necessary policy shifts that acknowledge future climate change impacts for social-ecological systems.

My findings show how diverse - and sometimes competing - are the narratives in these countries, demonstrating a rich spectrum of worldviews and expectations for the future. This reflects different modes of governance and approaches to address climate environmental justice issues. Exploring these narratives can help to identify opportunities to support climate adaptation considering issues of equity, pluralism, and justice.

Presenting author: Ashleigh Stokes (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology)

Transformative approaches to climate adaptation seeks to combine transformative change and climate adaptation to inspire the substantive social change 'necessary to enable desirable futures to emerge' (see O'Brien 2012, p. 670). At the core of this transformative agenda is the narrative that achieving a just future relies on addressing structural drivers of vulnerability, risk, unsustainability and inequality. As such, notions of justice and power are central to the critiques and approaches furthered by the concept of Transformative Adaptation (TA).

This paper focuses on the potential and challenges of TA as a conceptual framework for reimagining just climate adaptation. Central to this critical agenda is a focus on what is being transformed, by whom and with what effect if the intention for change is to be both transformational and just.

Presenting author: Montannia Chabau-Gibson (Griffen University)

Significant global climate change is now unavoidable with multiple effects of warming being experienced in different parts of the globe (Hill & Martinez-Diaz 2020; Dilling et al. 2019; World Meteorological Organisation 2020). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (2018) highlights how emissions must be reduced to pre-industrial levels to avoid catastrophic events. Unlike mitigation processes, measuring adaptation successfulness remains elusive (Dilling et al. 2019). When forming decisions global political participation is required, and this can be multifaceted as people with different backgrounds can have different stances towards climate change (Morgan et al. 2019; Terblache-Greeff et al. 2018). Successful adaptation strategies often involve public input and political agendas with evidence of impacts and potential benefits of different alternative adaptations (Akerlof et al. 2020; Baladeras Torres et al. 2020).

As a result, there is an increasing focus now on how much certainty and evidence is required to make global climate adaptation decisions and what decisions should be prioritised (Morgan et al. 2019; Schenk 2017). Recent events including the COVID-19 pandemic and disasters such as the Australian Bushfires, show how in some situations rapid decision making can occur where policy makers are faced with immediate pressures (Vardoulakis et al. 2020; Lehrer 2020; Schenk 2017; Kelman & Gaillard 2017). As most climate risk research focuses on management and adaptation to reduce the pressures of climate change (Kelman et al. 2017; Dilling et al. 2019), Preston & Nalau (2019) argue that climate change decision making processes should apply a triage approach given that in the future in particular resources will be highly constrained. When faced with the pressures of global climate justice, triage-based planning can assist with speeding up decision making with funds invested in assets that are the most significant priorities (Preston & Nalau 2019; Perry 2019).

However, to date, the research specifically on using triage approaches is globally lacking in climate adaptation. This research will assess: (1) How has triage been applied in climate change adaptation and decision-making processes? (2) What are the decision-making processes required to make global climate adaptation decisions? (3) How can applying a triage approach highlight climate change adaptation decisions that should be prioritised? (4) How could a triage approach be applied into planning and policy practice?

Presenting author: Christina Griffin (GHC consulting, Dunedin)

Other authors: Nicholas Cradock-Henry (Landcare Research Manaaki Whenua Anita Wreford, Lincoln University)

The concept of intersectionality has been used widely to describe conditions of vulnerability to climate change, particularly in developing nations. Fewer examples of its application are found in the context of more agriculturally developed nations, such as New Zealand Aotearoa. This presentation will describe how intersectionality provides a lens to examine and unravel some of the differences between dairy farmer's experiences of, and vulnerability to, the impacts of climate change. While dairy farmers in developed nations are not typically considered to be a 'vulnerable' social group, the impacts of climate change will nonetheless be experienced differentially, and groups such as new entrants farmers will potentially be left more exposed. This presentation will present preliminary findings from a period of in-depth qualitative research currently being undertaken in Southland and South Otago, focusing on vulnerability and local perceptions of climate change.

We examine how macro-level structural issues (such as historical policies that fuelled the expansion of dairying), alongside locally grounded realities, determine the resources and knowledge farmers have at their disposal to overcome disturbances. These factors influence how climate change is experienced, and what is considered by South Island dairy farmers to be a 'just' response to climate change adaptation.