Durham University, Department of GeographyInstitute for Hazards, Risk and Resilience Seminar

20 February, 2012

Adapting to Climate Change: From Resilience to TransformationMark Pelling

Department of Geography, King's College London

1. Positioning resilience and transformation2. IPCC SREX3. Transformation: a discourse gathering momentum?4. Future scope for transformation and conclusions

Resilience?

Source: Galderisi, 2011

The emerging resilience framing for climate change adaptation/disaster risk reduction

Resilience as:• Bouncing back (disasters studies) • A learning system (climate change adaptation)

Social-ecological systems framing of resilience: • Objective: functional persistence• Through: systems learning and self-organization

Three concerns for a (SES) resilience framing of adaptation:Functional persistence

Bias towards the status quo in power relations and subsequent policy regimes

Conceals inner worlds of affect and emotionLiable to downplay the significance of inner worlds in quality of life and for policy buy-in

Technical optimismCan generate an exaggerated sense of order, understanding and control in policy and decision-making

Resilience Transition TransformationGoal Functional persistence

in a changing environment.

Realise full systems potential through the exercise of rights within the established regime

Reconfigure the structures of development

Scope Change in technology, management practice and organisation.

Change in practices of governance to secure procedural justice,

Reform in overarching political-economy, cultural norms or scientific paradigm.

Policy focus Resilient building practice. Use of new seed varieties.

Implementation of legal responsibilities by private and public sector actors and exercise of legal rights by citizens

New political discourses

Dominant Analysis

Socio-ecological systems

Governance and regime analysis Discourse, ethics and political-economy

A response: positioning resilience alongside transition and transformation

What might transformation look like?

IPCC Special Report for Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)

“Transformation involves fundamental changes to the attributes of a system, including value systems, regulatory, legislative or bureaucratic regimes, financial institutions and technological or biophysical systems”.

Systems of interest: transformation of DRM/CCA and development

Rationale: opens new scope for risk management when fundamental attributes of existing systems are found to be generative of unacceptable levels of risk or its distribution, or to constrain resilience.

Key message: transformation is inevitable, it can be chosen or forced.- Deliberative transformation is likely to be more inclusive,

holisticand sustainable.

Positioning transformation II

Evidence of transformation

what, why, when, how, who?In DRM/CCA regimesHeat wave DRM in France: new risk management regime, from denial to integrated planning, but limited by knowledge on vulnerability production, and lack of facilitation for learning between cities internationally (Laaidi et al., 2004). Flood DRM in Bangladesh: evolving risk management regime has transformed local life through multifaceted, integrated DRM into development planning, but hazard remains high and vulnerability is growing with demographic changes (Paul 2009).DRM legislation in South Africa, new regime, but barriers in local implementation (Pelling and Holloway, 2006).

Evidence of transformation

In DRM/CCA–development regimesLow quality of governance, and especially Voice and Accountability, has been highlighted as a major vulnerability component for human mortality due to tropical cyclones (Peduzzi et al., 2009).

In DRM/CCA-development-mitigation regimesJoined-up production-consumption systems for food, energy etc, e.g. REDD+ (Locatelli et al 2010)?

A Discourse Gathering Momentum? Empirical testing in DRM and SES

Pelling and Manuel-Navarrete (2011) Ecology and Society 16 (2)Two Hurricane prone Mexican towns. Resilient social-political systems can prevent transformation to a more equitable and sustainable future through constraining critical consciousness and co-opting development narratives, agrevated where place identity and social capital are limited.

O’Brien (2012) Progress in Human Geography, online 2011Deliberate transformation – transformation will be chosen or forced.Moving from resilience as accommodating to transformation as contesting GEC.

A Discourse Gathering Momentum? Empirical testing in DRM and SES

O’Neill and Handmer (2012) Environ. Res. Lett. (7)2009 ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires, 172 civilian deaths. Transformative adaptation requires ‘deep shifts in the way people perceive themselves and the world’: diminish hazard, reduce exposure, reduce vulnerability of people, increase adaptive capacity of institutions.

Walker (in press) Ecology and SocietySocio-economic, cultural and environmental management shifts in two contemporary Australian ‘fragile towns’. Sees adaptive resilience and transformation as having some overlapping indicators (social capital and social networks), but also considers necessary conditions to include vision, identification with place and dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Future scope for transformation and conclusions

A Straw Poll:Royal Geographical Society ‘the Perfect Storm’ , 09/02/2012:Resilience 2: Transformation 13

1.Transformation as a policy projectA meta-narrative for disaster management, adaptation, mitigation, poverty alleviation, political and economic renewal?

2. Building the evidence baseTransformation is a rare systems event, evidence of transformative pathways, blockages etc. from multiple viewpoints.

3. Maturing the theoryLinking across intellectual traditions – to answer and pose empirical questions.