42 Transformative Adaptation to Climate Change
Transformative adaptation that refers to strategies aimed at addressing the root causes of vulnerability in the long term by fundamentally changing the structures and functions of ecological or social systems, as well as their feedbacks, to move away from unsustainable trajectories (Fedele et al. 2019; Feola 2015).
This text is from “Limited use of transformative adaptation in response to social-ecological shifts driven by climate change” © 2020 by Giacomo Fedele, Camila I. Donatti, Celia A. Harvey, Lee Hannah and David G. Hole is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
Activity: Transformative adaptation
Read the paper “Transformative adaptation to climate change for sustainable social-ecological systems” by Giacomo Fedele, Camila I. Donatti, Celia A. Harvey, Lee Hannah, and David G. Hole. Reflect on your learnings and how this fits into what you have learnt already.
Adaptation Strategies
Transformative adaptation requires a system-wide change. The table and figure below shows some examples of transformative adaptation.
| System variable | Examples of coping or incremental adaptation measures | Examples of transformative adaptation measures |
|---|---|---|
| People and needs | Reduce water use | Control births and population growth
Migrate to new areas |
| Human and livelihood security | Increase natural resource extraction (e.g. tress, fish, birds)*
Introduce new animas (pigs, chickens)* |
Abandon settlements and unproductive lands
Stop some productive activities entirely (e.g. raising livestock, hunting) |
| Land use (settlements, agriculture, abandoned) | Intensify farming in still-fertile soils
Expand shifting cultivations Reduce cultivating marginal lands |
Reforest degraded lands at a large scale*
Introduce agroforestry practices* |
Image Text Version
Figure 1. Causal loop diagram for human migration in coastal areas of the Pacific Ocean driven by the impacts of climate change, among other factors.
Figure 1 is entitled ‘Causal loop diagram for human migration in coastal areas of the Pacific Ocean driven by the impacts of climate change, among other factors’. The figure presents a looped diagram showing human migration and the impacts of climate change and other factors in coastal areas. In the diagram, climate change presents an increase in droughts and cyclones. This leads to stress on human and livelihood security, impacting the social system, and leading into two reinforcing feedback loops, descripted below.
Reinforcing feedback loop 1
In reinforcing feedback loop 1, the stress on human and livelihood security creates positive feedback for the amount of land inhabited and managed, impacting the social and ecological system. Which, in turn, creates positive feedback on the number of people and needs in the social system, looping back to create positive feedback on stress on human and livelihood security.
Reinforcing feedback loop 2
In reinforcing feedback loop 2, the stress on human and livelihood security creates positive feedback for the amount of land abandoned and degraded, impacting the ecological system. Which, in turn, creates positive feedback for the number of people and needs in the social system, joining the reinforcing feedback loop 1 cycle.
End Image Text Version
This text and image are from “Limited use of transformative adaptation in response to social-ecological shifts driven by climate change” © 2020 by Giacomo Fedele, Camila I. Donatti, Celia A. Harvey, Lee Hannah and David G. Hole, which is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0, except for the introductory sentence and some minor edits which has been written and actioned by Trish Corbett.
Watch the video below to see an example of how social justice can be incorporated into climate change adaptation.
References
Adger, W. N., Brown, K., Nelson, D. R., Berkes, F., Eakin, H., Folke, C., … & Tompkins, E. L. (2011). Resilience implications of policy responses to climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2(5), 757-766. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.133
Adger, W. N., & Jordan, A. (2009). Sustainability: exploring the processes and outcomes of governance. In Governing sustainability (pp. 3-31). Cambridge University Press.
Fedele, G., Donatti, C. I., Harvey, C. A., Hannah, L., & Hole, D. G. (2020). Limited use of transformative adaptation in response to social-ecological shifts driven by climate change. Ecology and Society, 25(1), CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.5751/es-11381-250125
Feola, G. (2015). Societal transformation in response to global environmental change: A review of emerging concepts. Ambio, 44(5), 376-390. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0582-z
Kates, R. W., Travis, W. R., & Wilbanks, T. J. (2012). Transformational adaptation when incremental adaptations to climate change are insufficient. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(19), 7156-7161. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1115521109
O’Brien, K. (2012). Global environmental change II: From adaptation to deliberate transformation. Progress in human geography, 36(5), 667-676. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511425767
Olsson, P., Galaz, V., & Boonstra, W. J. (2014). Sustainability transformations: a resilience perspective. Ecology and society, 19(4). http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06799-190401
H. Wahid, S. Ahmad, M.A.M. Nor, M.A. Rashid. (2017). Summary for policymakers. Clim. Chang. 2013 – Phys. Sci. Basis 51, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781107415324.004
