Climate Change Adaptation and Development Transforming Paradigms and Practices

Climate change poses multiple challenges to development. It affects lives and livelihoods, infrastructure and institutions, as well as beliefs, cultures and identities. There is a growing recognition that the social dimensions of vulnerability and adaptation now need to move to the forefront of development policies and practices.

This book presents case studies showing that climate change is as much a problem of development as for development, with many of the risks closely linked to past, present and future development pathways. Development policies and practices can play a key role in addressing climate change, but it is critical to question to what extent such actions and interventions reproduce, rather than address, the social and political structures and development pathways driving vulnerability. The chapters emphasise that adaptation is about much more than a set of projects or interventions to reduce specific impacts of climate change; it is about living with change while also transforming the processes that contribute to vulnerability in the first place.

This book will help students in the field of climate change and development to make sense of adaptation as a social process, and it will provide practitioners, policymakers and researchers working at the interface between climate change and development with useful insights for approaching adaptation as part of a larger transformation to sustainability.

1. Development as Usual is not Enough2. Building Adaptive Capacity in the Informal Settlements of Maputo: Lessons for Development from a Resilience Perspective3. The Societal Role of Charcoal Production in Climate Change Adaptation of the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) of Kenya4. Adaptive Capacity: From coping to sustainable transformation5. Gender Matters: Adaptive capacities to climate variability and change in the Lake Victoria Basin6. Adaptation Technologies as Drivers of Social Development 7. Multilevel Governance and Coproduction in Urban Flood-risk Management: The case of Dar es Salaam8. Can Linking Small- and Large-scale Farmers Enhance Adaptive Capacity? Evidence from Tanzania’s Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor9. Adaptation Spinoffs from Technological and Socio-economic Changes10. Sustainable Adaptation under Adverse Development? Lessons from Ethiopia11. The Role of Local Power Relations in the Vulnerability of Households to Climate Change in Humla, Nepal12. A Socionature Approach to Adaptation: Political transition, intersectionality, and climate change programmes in Nepal13. Influencing Policy and Action on Climate Change Adaptation: Strategic stakeholder engagement in the agricultural sector in Tanzania14. Limited Room for Manoeuvre: Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies15. Adaptation to Climate Change through Transformation

Tor Håkon Inderberg is Senior Research Fellow and Director of the European Programme at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway.

Siri Eriksen is Associate Professor at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway.

Karen O'Brien is a Professor of Human Geography at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Norway.

Linda Sygna is Co-Founder of cCHANGE – Transformation in a Changing climate, cchange.no.