ADAptAtionAnD beyonD

AdAptAtion definitionsNovember 2012

06

Definitions

defininG AdAptAtion

Concepts and Definitions in the Adaptation Landscape

Katinka Waagsaether and bettina Koelle

With the exponential increase in the realm of climate change related work and the parallel academic discourse, related concepts and definitions are not always clear, and are at times understood differently by different practitioners or different groups working in the climate change landscape. The definitions below are aimed at clarifying some of these terms while supporting a broader understanding of climate change related concepts for practitioners. It should be noted that while these definitions provide some insight and clarity, there are other definitions that are not mentioned here. The climate change adaptation field is dynamic: new terms and concepts emerge, while others are redefined. While this summary of definitions is not comprehensive, we trust that this document will provide some guidance.

Mitigation

The term mitigation is derived from the word ‘mitigate,’ which essentially means “make milder or less intense or severe” (Allen, 1991: 760). Depending on whether the term is used in the context of climate change or in the context of disaster risk management, mitigation has two different definitions. As these two fields of work are increasingly connected, it is important for practitioners to be aware of, and to understand, the different useages of the term.

Mitigation in the context of climate change: Reducing Greenhouse Gasses

As defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , mitigation is “an anthropogenic [originating in human activity] intervention to reduce the sources of greenhouse gases or enhance their sinks” (2001: 3). Mitigation to climate change thus refers to decreasing greenhouse gas emission (e.g. the burning of fossil fuels) and to increasing or enhancing the processes, activities or mechanisms that remove greenhouse gases

from the atmosphere (e.g. carbon sequestration or trapping carbon from the atmosphere by planting trees).

Mitigation in the context of disaster risk management: Preventing damage by hazards

In the context of disaster risk management (DRM), mitigation relates to taking action in order to eliminate or minimize disaster impacts on people, environment and property. It is thus about action undertaken to reduce injuries, damage to property or loss of life. Mitigating losses from hazards involves identification of hazards, assessment of hazards that are likely to affect a given location and identifying the subsequent risk-reduction measures (Cutter et al, 2000). An example for a DRR intervention is to build sea walls to mitigate the effect tidal surges might have on population living in adjacent low lying areas. Mitigation is also used in the catchment management approaches, e.g. mitigating soil erosion.

Photo 1: Forecasting the seasonal weather and long-term climate are important for planning farming strategies and policy.

Photo 2: Trees capture carbon from the atmosphere - and can thus support mitigation by carbon sequestration.

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Risk

In its broader sense, risk is defined as “a chance or possibility of danger, loss, injury, or other adverse consequences” (Allen, 1991: 1040). Risk is a combination of two factors, namely the probability that an adverse event will occur and the consequences of the adverse event (Jones, 2001), and can thus be be seen as the overlay of hazard and vulnerability. To illustrate, a family living on a flood plain is vulnerable to damage caused by flooding due to the location of their house, exposing them to the hazard of flood damage to their property and loss of life. The degree of risk here will, in turn, depend on the exposure of the hazard, such as the frequency of flooding events, and the structure of the house. The degree of risk thus depends on the degree of exposure to the hazard and the sensitivity of the unit at risk.

Vulnerability

Adaptation is underpinned by vulnerability, as vulnerability determines the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to deal with, stress. Vulnerability can in the most simple terms be defined as “the degree to which human and environmental systems are likely to experience harm due to perturbations or stress” (Luers et al, 2003, p.255).

Vulnerability can be understood by assessing the interaction of hazard, stress, impact and response, and tends to be understood in relation to three dimensions: exposure to stresses, perturbations, and shocks; sensitivity, of people, places, and ecosystems, to the stress or perturbation, including their capacity to anticipate and cope with the stress; and resilience of the exposed people, places, and ecosystems, that is their ability to recover from the stress and to buffer themselves against and adapt to future stresses and perturbations (Kasperson et al, 2005).

Resilience

The Resilience Alliance describes resilience as a property of interlinked social-ecological systems, and sees resilience as defined by three characteristics:” the amount of change the system can undergo and still retain the same controls on function and structure; the degree to which a system is capable of self-organization; and the ability to build and increase capacity for learning and adaptation.”

Photo 4: While planning adaptation measures it is important to have a good understanding of local inequalities - and to explore gender dynamics within the community. Planning and implementing adaptation strategies jointly is also called Community Based Adaptation (See Adaptation and beyond No 1).

Photo 3: Farmers can explore risk and vulnerability under different climate scenarios - and can develop new adaptation strategies. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach can support farmers and scientists working together to address joint questions.

Photo 5: Protecting and sustainably using natural resources and biodiverstiy can support ecosystem services and adaptation opportunities for the future. An approach specifically focusing on the linkages between people and environment is Ecosystem Based Adaptation (EBA).

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Resilience Transition TransformationGoal Functional persistence in a

changing environmentRealise full potential through the exercise of rights within the established regime

Reconfigure the structures of development

Scope Change in technology, man-agement practice and organi-sation

Change in practices of gover-nance to secure procedural justice; this can in turn lead to incremental change in the gov-ernance system

Change overarching political-economy regime

Policy focus Resilient building practices, use of new seed varieties

Implementation of legal responsibilities by private and public sector actors and exer-cise of legal rights by citizens

New political discourses rede-fine the basis for distributing security and opportunity in society and socio-ecological relationships

Adaptation

To adapt can be defined as to “alter or modify” (Allen, 1991: 13), and adaptation can be seen as a process of deliberate change in anticipation of, or in reaction to, external stimuli and stress (Nelson et al, 2007).

Adaptation is therefore essentially about responding to stress, and it can be anticipatory (i.e. take place before the impacts caused by the stressor) or reactive (i.e. take place after the impact caused by the stressor). People live and work in multi-stressor environments, and climatic stress is only one of the many factors that shape livelihoods. Adaptation therefore has to factor in the need to respond to multiple stressors, including climatic, social, political and economic stress. This is why adaptation is so complex, and why it has to be considered within a broader context.

Adger describes adaptation as follows:

Adaptation is understood to be an adjustment in the ecological, social or economic systems in response to observed or expected changes and their effects and impacts in order to alleviate adverse impacts or take advantage of new opportunities. (Adger et al., 2005 )

Mark Pelling (2011) describes the adaptation to climate change debate to be driven by four main questions:

• What are we adapting to?

• Who or what adapts?

• How does adaptation occur?

• What are the limits to adaptation?

Pelling defines three different types of adaptation, stressing that adaptation is also an opportunity for social reform, the questioning of values that drive inequalities in development and our unsustainable relationship with the environment:

• Adaptation for resilience – returning to the status quo or maintaining it

• Adaptation for transition – some change

• Adaptation for transformation – transformative change

(Pelling, 2011)

TAble 1: Attributes of adaptation for resilience, transition and transformation (Pelling, 2011)

Photo 5: Participatory Action Research processes can offer important platforms for collective learning processes. The quarterly climate change preparedness workshops aim at developing new ways of learning together - towards transformation. (To learn more about Climate Change Preparedness workshops, see also Adaptation and beyond No 8)

Photo 6: Supporting creative learning processes is not just about information sharing and finding new technical solutions - a workshop can be a place that sparks enthusiasm and can satisfy multiple needs.

Indigo development & change

Nieuwoudtville, South Africa info@indigo-dc.org

www.indigo-dc.org

Adaptation and beyond is published by Indigo development & change as a contribution towards effective and participatory adaptation to climate change. The contributions are varied and demonstrate the multitude of adaptation options we can draw on.

References

Adger, N. W., Arnell, N. W. & Tompkins, E. L. 2005 Successful adaptation to climate change across scales. Global Environmental Change, 15, 77–86.

Allen, R. E., 1991. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Clarendon Press

Cutter, S. L., Mitchell, J. T. and Scott, M. S. 2000. Revealing the Vulnerability of People

And Places: A Case Study of Georgetown County, South Carolina. Annals of the Association of American Geographers,90(4): 713-737

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group III, 2001. Banuri, T., Barker, T., Bashmakov, I., Blok, K., Bouille, D., Christ, R., Davidson, O., Edmonds, J., Gregory, K., Grubb, M., Halsnaes, K., Heller, T., Hourcade, J., Jepma,C., Kauppi, P., Markandya, A., Metz, B., Moomaw, W., Moreira, J. R., Morita, T., Nakicenovic,N., Price, L., Richels, R., Robinson, J., Rogner, H. H., Sathaye, J., Sedjo, R., Shukla,P., Srivastava, L., Swart, R., Toth, F. and Weyant, J. (Eds.), Summary for Policymakers, Climate Change 2001: Mitigation. [online] Available at: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml (accessed 02 Nov 2012)

Jones, R. N. 2001. An Environmental Risk Assessment/Management Framework for climate Change Impact Assessment. Natural Hazards, 23: 197-230

Kasperson, R. E., Archer, E., Caceres, D., Dow, K., Downing, T., Elmqvist, T., Folke, C., Han, G., Lyengar, K., Vogel, C., Wilson, K. and Ziervogel, G. 2005.Vulnerable people and places, in Hassan, R., Scholes, R. and Ash, N. (Eds), Ecosystems and Human-Well-being: Millennium Assessment Report: Current State and Trends. Washington DC: Island Press

Luers, A. L., Lobell, D. B., Sklar, L. S., Addams, C. L. and Matson, P. A. 2003. A method for quantifying vulnerability, applied to the agricultural system of the Yaqui Valley, Mexico. Global Environmental Change, 13: 255-267.

Nelson, D.R., Adger, N.W. and Brown, K. 2007. Adaptation to Environmental Change: Contributions of a Resilience Framework. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 32.

Pelling, M. 2011. Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation, London and New York, Routledge.

Ziervogel, G 2012. Vulnerability to environmental change, Open Access lecturing material: http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/Science/Vulnerability-to-environmental-change

Photos: Bettina Koelle

Photo 7: Adaptation is not necessarily about finding new technical solutions, but combining knowledge across sectors for a sustainable future.