The impacts of climate change are already being felt. Learning how to live with these impacts is a priority for human development. In this context, it is too easy to see adaptation as a narrowly ...defensive task – protecting core assets or functions from the risks of climate change. A more profound engagement, which sees climate change risks as a product and driver of social as well as natural systems, and their interaction, is called for.
Adaptation to Climate Change argues that, without care, adaptive actions can deny the deeper political and cultural roots that call for significant change in social and political relations if human vulnerability to climate change associated risk is to be reduced. This book presents a framework for making sense of the range of choices facing humanity, structured around resilience (stability), transition (incremental social change and the exercising of existing rights) and transformation (new rights claims and changes in political regimes). The resilience-transition-transformation framework is supported by three detailed case study chapters. These also illustrate the diversity of contexts where adaption is unfolding, from organizations to urban governance and the national polity.
This text is the first comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions to climate change adaptation. Clearly written in an engaging style, it provides detailed theoretical and empirical chapters and serves as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in climate change, geography and development studies.
Mark Pelling is Reader in Geography at King’s College London and before this at the University of Liverpool and University of Guyana. His research and teaching focus on human vulnerability and adaptation to natural hazards and climate change. He has served as a lead author with the IPCC and as a consultant for UNDP, DFID and UN-HABITAT.
Part 1: Framework and Theory 1. Intellectual and Policy Context 2. Understanding Adaptation Part 2: The Resilience-Transition-Transformation Framework 3. Adaptation as Resilience: Social Learning and Self-Organization 4. Adaptation as Transition: Risk and Governance 5. Adaptation as Transformation: Risk Society, Human Security and the Social Contract Part 3: Living with Climate Change 6. Adaptation Within Organizations 7. Adaptation as Urban Risk Discourse and Governance 8. Adaptation as National Political Response to Disaster Part 4: Adapting with Climate Change 9. Conclusion: Adapting with Climate Change
Climate change justice Posner, Eric A; Weisbach, David
2010, 2010., 20100222, 2010-02-22, 20100101
eBook, Book
Climate change and justice are so closely associated that many people take it for granted that a global climate treaty should--indeed, must--directly address both issues together. But, in fact, this ...would be a serious mistake, one that, by dooming effective international limits on greenhouse gases, would actually make the world's poor and developing nations far worse off. This is the provocative and original argument ofClimate Change Justice. Eric Posner and David Weisbach strongly favor both a climate change agreement and efforts to improve economic justice. But they make a powerful case that the best--and possibly only--way to get an effective climate treaty is to exclude measures designed to redistribute wealth or address historical wrongs against underdeveloped countries.
In clear language,Climate Change Justiceproposes four basic principles for designing the only kind of climate treaty that will work--a forward-looking agreement that requires every country to make greenhouse--gas reductions but still makes every country better off in its own view. This kind of treaty has the best chance of actually controlling climate change and improving the welfare of people around the world.
Despite a growing interest in critical social and political studies of climate change, the field remains fragmented and diffuse. This is the first volume to collect this body of scholarship, ...providing a key reference point in the growing debate about climate change across the social sciences. The book provides a new set of insights into the ways in which climate change is creating new forms of social order, and the ways in which they are structured through the workings of rationality, power and politics. Governing the Climate is invaluable for three main audiences: social science researchers and advanced students in the field of climate change; the wider research community interested in global environmental politics and global environmental governance; and policy makers and researchers concerned more broadly with environmental politics at international, national and local levels.
The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire explores the serious and far-reaching impacts of Little Ice Age climate fluctuations in Ottoman lands. This study demonstrates how imperial ...systems of provisioning and settlement that defined Ottoman power in the 1500s came unraveled in the face of ecological pressures and extreme cold and drought, leading to the outbreak of the destructive Celali Rebellion (1595–1610). This rebellion marked a turning point in Ottoman fortunes, as a combination of ongoing Little Ice Age climate events, nomad incursions and rural disorder postponed Ottoman recovery over the following century, with enduring impacts on the region's population, land use and economy.
Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes analyzes the looming threats posed by climate change from a criminological perspective. It advances the field of green criminology through a examination of the ...criminal nature of catastrophic environmental harms resulting from the release of greenhouse gases. The book describes and explains what corporations in the fossil fuel industry, the U.S. government, and the international political community did, or failed to do, in relation to global warming. Carbon Criminals, Climate Crimes integrates research and theory from a wide variety of disciplines, to analyze four specific state-corporate climate crimes: continued extraction of fossil fuels and rising carbon emissions; political omission (failure) related to the mitigation of these emissions; socially organized climate change denial; and climate crimes of empire, which include militaristic forms of adaptation to climate disruption. The final chapter reviews policies that could mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to a warming world, and achieve climate justice.
The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society presents an analysis of this issue that draws on the best thinking on questions of how climate change affects human systems, and how societies can, ...do, and should respond. Key topics covered include the history of the issues, the social and political reception of climate science, the denial of that science by individuals and organized interests, the nature of the social disruptions caused by climate change, the economics of those disruptions and possible responses to them, questions of human security and social justice, obligations to future generations, policy instruments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and governance at local, regional, national, international, and global levels.
Climate change policy has typically emphasized mitigation, calling for reducing emissions and shifting away from fossil fuels. Yet while these efforts have floundered, floods, wildfires, droughts, ...and other disasters are becoming more frequent and potent. As the risks escalate, we must ask how to adapt to a changing climate. How might farmers modify their practices to maximize food security? Can coastal cities protect their infrastructure from rising seas? Are there strategic ways for developing countries to combine climate resilience with economic growth and poverty reduction? For people and societies around the world, these questions are not theoretical: adaptation is already underway. This book offers a concise overview of climate adaptation governance. In clear, accessible language, Lisa Dale describes key strategies that governments, communities, and the private sector are now deploying. She presents the theory and practice that underlie climate adaptation efforts at local and global scales, providing illuminating case studies that foreground the problems facing developing countries. Dale analyzes the effectiveness of a range of policy interventions, drawing out principles of good governance and discussing how practitioners can navigate complex tradeoffs. She emphasizes equity and inclusion, considering how climate adaptation policy can account for the needs of historically disadvantaged groups. Written for a wide audience, this book is an invaluable introduction for all readers interested in how societies can meet the challenges of an altered climate.
Adapting to Climate Change Adger, W. Neil; Lorenzoni, Irene; O'Brien, Karen L
2009, 2009-08-31, 2009-06-25, 20090101
eBook
This book presents top research on the critical issue of whether the world can adapt to climate change. Examining how humans and ecosystems respond to new and unpredictable climates, and the role ...played by culture and governance in this, it is essential reading for researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and graduates.
This book takes both a global as well as a local perspective in assessing the impacts of climate change on the economy, agricultural sector, and households in three of the MENA countries; Syria, ...Tunisia and Yemen. The major channels of impact for global climate change are through changing world food (and energy) prices, especially since all the countries under analysis are or have become net importers of oil and petroleum products and many food commodities in recent years. The impacts of local climate change decrease crop yields in the longer run and through them, productivity in the agricultural sector and all the implications this may have on both, the livelihoods of those dependent on the sector as well as the rest of the economy. The analysis also covered what happens when both global and local climate changes work simultaneously for each country. Findings show that in all three countries the effects of climate change are negative for people and the economy-GDP falls and livelihoods suffer. Furthermore, the prevalence of extreme variations in climate-such as the droughts affecting Syria and the floods impacting Yemen-draws attention to the potentially significant drawbacks that are likely to not only affect any strides towards economic growth and development, but may also reverse such strides if appropriate policies are not in place to weather this storm. The analyses in this book apply CGE models.
The international framework for a climate change agreement is up for review as the initial Kyoto Protocol period to 2012 comes to an end. Though there has been much enthusiasm from political and ...environmental groups, the underlying economics and politics remain highly controversial. This book takes a cool-headed look at the critical roadblocks to agreement, examining the economics of climate change, the incentives of the main players (the United States, EU, China), and the policies which governments can put in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately shift our economies onto a low-carbon path. It questions the basis of much of the climate change consensus and debates the Stern Review's main findings. Aside from a reassessment of the economics of climate change, the book looks at the geography of the costs and benefits of climate change — the very different perspectives of Africa, China, Europe, and the United States — as well as the prospects for a new global agreement. It also considers policy instruments at the global level (whereas much of the literature to date is nationally and regionally based). Trading and R&D, along with more radical unilateral options, including geoengineering, are discussed. Finally, the book describes the institutional architecture — drawing on evidence from previous attempts in other areas, as well as proposals for new bodies.
