In much of sub-Saharan Africa, considerable research exists on the impacts of climate change on social-ecological systems. Recent adaptation studies emphasize sectoral vulnerability and largely ...physical adaptation strategies that mirror anti-desertification plans. The adaptive role of subsistence farmers, the vulnerable ‘target’ population, is largely overlooked. This article aims to fill this gap by putting the views from the vulnerable in the center of the analysis. Drawing from participatory risk ranking and scoring among smallholders in central Senegal, data on multiple hazards indicate that farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate change is undermined by poor health, rural unemployment, and inadequate village infrastructure. Results from conceptual mapping reveal incomplete understanding of causes and consequences of climate change. Yet, shared knowledge and lessons learned from previous climatic stresses provide vital entry points for social learning and enhanced adaptive capacity to both wetter and drier periods now and in the future.
Much of the discourse and literature on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in sub-Saharan Africa has inherently prescriptive recommendations on how the sector should develop. Devaluation, ...misrecognition, and criminalization of artisanal, largely illegal miners hamper their participation not only in environmental and political decision-making but also in negotiating potential alternative livelihoods. This article addresses the following three questions: (a) what are the pull and push factors in Ghana's artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector?; (b) what concrete livelihood options exist for unregistered miners when regularization is impeded and undermined?; and (c) in the absence of promising alternative livelihoods, how can the ASM sector be re-imagined to allow poor men and women miners to flourish as recognized and valued members of their society? The findings suggest that as long as currently illegal miners have some expectation that they will legitimately acquire even small parcels of land for gold extraction, they are very unlikely to commit to any of the fashionable, yet short-lived alternative livelihood options that are introduced by external agencies. What Ghana's ASM sector needs is more success stories that demonstrate that small operators can and want to be good environmental stewards, and that they can flourish as recognized and valued citizens.
This paper is a methodological contribution to emerging debates on the role of learning, particularly forward-looking (anticipatory) learning, as a key element for adaptation and resilience in the ...context of climate change. First, we describe two major challenges: understanding adaptation as a process and recognizing the inadequacy of existing learning tools, with a specific focus on high poverty contexts and complex livelihood-vulnerability risks. Then, the article examines learning processes from a dynamic systems perspective, comparing theoretical aspects and conceptual advances in resilience thinking and action research/learning (AR/AL). Particular attention is paid to learning loops (cycles), critical reflection, spaces for learning, and power. Finally, we outline a methodological framework to facilitate iterative learning processes and adaptive decision making in practice. We stress memory, monitoring of key drivers of change, scenario planning, and measuring anticipatory capacity as crucial ingredients. Our aim is to identify opportunities and obstacles for forward-looking learning processes at the intersection of climatic uncertainty and development challenges in Africa, with the overarching objective to enhance adaptation and resilient livelihood pathways, rather than learning by shock.
The climate emergency demands that principles and practices of justice and injustice, harm, loss, suffering, and hope are revisited, to encompass both the human and the natural world and the many ...interconnections between them. Following work on the Unknown Other in climate justice discourse, I examine a relational space of proximity, empathy, and responsibility across human and non-human Others to advance current understandings of multispecies justice. Via four types of encounters - the visual, the embodied, the ethical, and the political - it is possible to engage in empathetic experiences with and enact responsibility toward infinite other beings and confront layers of shared vulnerabilities and histories of silencing and erasures. These encounters across space and time make tangible what a nature of human and more-than-human togetherness and solidarity may look like and what ethics and politics would be required to overcome untenable human exceptionalism in today's crises.
The United Nations' Paris Agreement includes the aim of pursuing efforts to limit global warming to only 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, it is not clear what the resulting climate would ...look like across the globe and over time. Here we show that trajectories towards a '1.5 °C warmer world' may result in vastly different outcomes at regional scales, owing to variations in the pace and location of climate change and their interactions with society's mitigation, adaptation and vulnerabilities to climate change. Pursuing policies that are considered to be consistent with the 1.5 °C aim will not completely remove the risk of global temperatures being much higher or of some regional extremes reaching dangerous levels for ecosystems and societies over the coming decades.
This study explores the implications of recent extreme rainfall and flood events in the Sahel and the wider West African region for climate change adaptation. Are these events merely a temporal ...nuisance as suggested by the lingering desertification discourse or will more climatic extremes characterize the region over the next century? After reviewing incidences of severe rainfall and projected future climate variability, the paper examines local flood knowledge and decision-making, drawing upon a case study in Ghana. The data demonstrate that a variety of response strategies to flooding exist; yet, knowledge of and access to climate forecasts and other learning tools are essentially absent. So far, floods have not triggered mass displacement although cumulative environmental deterioration is likely to cause environmental refugees. The paper recommends to lay to rest the desertification narrative, consider the possibility of both floods and droughts, and mobilize local memory for anticipatory learning and practical adaptation.
Understanding the long-term dynamics of social-ecological systems is critical to better inform sustainable management. Since Holling's adaptive cycle heuristic, published in 2001, substantial ...progress has been made to explore historical changes in agricultural, pastoral, and forest systems. However, the application of this heuristic in coastal fishery systems has been relatively rare. Using the Tam Giang Lagoon in Vietnam as an example of a rapidly changing environment, we explore the historical behavior of this tropical coastal social-ecological system (SES), associated livelihood pathways, and possible challenges for future livelihood adaptations through the lens of the adaptive cycle metaphor. Our analysis demonstrates that the present lagoon SES condition is the result of a series of historical events and reorganization attempts through two complete adaptive cycles. The lagoon's future vulnerability is tied to the intensification of human uses, prolonged ecological degradation, and intensifying climatic hazards. We show how the evolution of the lagoon SES resulted in divergent livelihood pathways that bring benefits to some users but also cause persistent constraints and sometimes irreversible losses to other users in shared common pool resources. A one-size-fits-all fishery management approach is therefore ill-suited for improving diverse livelihoods. We recommend that fishery policies take seriously the heterogeneity in livelihood pathways for sustainable lagoon management. We end by reflecting on the usefulness of the adaptive cycle heuristic in systematically exploring historical dynamics and identifying underlying drivers and feedbacks between the social and ecological components of complex fishery systems.
•I examine the expulsion of Chinese miners from Ghana as a process of subject making.•The making of demonized subjects occurs in landscapes of power and rent-seeking.•The vilification of informal ...miners deflects from failed mining policies.•Social exclusion and violence sustain informality in the artisanal mining sector.
This paper explores the expulsion of >4,500 Chinese diggers and operators from Ghana’s central gold mining areas during a series of raids and swoops enacted through military, immigration, and police and intelligence forces in 2013, arguably to conceal the state’s own failure to sanitize and revitalize a stagnant and neglected artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASM) sector. I draw upon feminist social theory and political ecology to unravel processes of social exclusion that legitimated violent action against a social group rendered both invisible and wholly othered within a remarkably short period of time. The discursive production of less-than-human mining subjects—first the Ghanaian galamsey miners, then the Chinese operators—enables a highly politicized landscapes of power characterized by authoritative ordering of unruly mining spaces. The “making” of demonized, unworthy Chinese miners epitomized the forceful disciplining of these spaces in the absence of more inclusive and genuine development policies. Observed processes of subject-making seem to propagate the sector’s informality and perpetuate the distance from the state’s idealized depiction of a responsible modern miner. The case study demonstrates that exclusion and exploitation of those targeted as not belonging nourishes elite capture and pervasive rent-seeking. Understanding the processes of subjection at work further suggests that better regulation of ASM in itself will be insufficient to move beyond the current impasse and support true partnerships and genuine politics of recognition and belonging.
The association between climate change and conflict is a contentious topic which reflects a small but growing body of evidence. While scholars report climate change as a driver of armed conflict with ...marked inconsistencies, the ways conflict and terrorism exacerbate the impacts of climate change and stand as a barrier to reduce exposure to and risks associated with future stressors have received little attention. Here, we aim to understand how the Taliban-led conflict affected the capacities of people living in conflict zones to cope with one extreme climatic event, namely the devastating flood of 2010. Using key informant interviews, focus group discussions and household surveys, we develop an understanding of how the interlinkages between economics, culture, and politics, alongside deteriorating natural resources, accentuated land ownership disputes that led to the Taliban insurgency in Swat, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) Province, Pakistan. Our findings reveal how the insurgency magnified the impacts of the 2010 flood and eroded rural livelihoods (e.g. farming and tourism) in the region. We demonstrate how existing and reproduced vulnerabilities alongside key stressors (i.e. armed conflict, the flood of 2010 and deforestation) became barriers to risk reduction. The study illustrates how these vulnerabilities, especially ownership disputes, and barriers to risk reduction can magnify the current and future risk environment. This case study highlights armed conflict as a contributing factor in the intensification of climate change impacts and associated extreme events.
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