Existing regimes can block progressive adaptation at the level of transition, especially when change threatens established power relations. Marginalised actors can also be reluctant to undertake change when there is uncertainty over the outcomes of reform or where short-term transactions costs are high, compared to adapting through resilience. Where local adaptations are successful and open transitions, diffusion into the wider society is also challenging without government support. Fragmented transitions run the risk of exacerbating inequalities as successful adaptations not evenly applied across communities or sectors. External shocks that show the existing inst.i.tutional architecture wanting can potentially provide the impetus needed to generate political will for transition, and potentially also transformation. This is the opportunity that climate change brings.
5.
Adaptation as transformation.
Risk society, human security and the social contract.
Instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact subst.i.tutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right.
(Rousseau, 1973, original 1762:181).
For Rousseau, a just society is one where those with power are held to account over their ability to protect core and agreed-upon rights for citizens. As a normative theoretician, Rousseau argued that the ideal social contract, one that confers upon rulers the legitimacy to retain and exercise power, would ultimately be granted by the citizenry, not a.s.sumed or G.o.d-given: an agreement ratified at the level of culture as well as law, and one that can be transformed if either side fails in its part of the contract. But Rousseau also recognised that the social contract could be undemocratic, imposed with force or through the manipulated complicity of citizens themselves. When prevailing social relations are a root cause of vulnerability and a target for adaptation, this observation means that change will not be easy (Williams, 2007). The cla.s.sical formulation of the social contract, such as that offered by Rousseau, is also revealing for what it does not include. Rights are extended only to citizens. The globalised and teleconnected impacts of climate change and adaptation decisions require that future generations and those living beyond national boundaries also be considered, as well as the non-human.
This chapter builds on the preceding discussions around adaptation as resilience and transition. These introduced the notions of social learning, self-organisation, actors in regimes and pathways for socio-technological transition. The notions of risk society, the social contract and human security are offered as theoretical devises to help reveal the fault-lines of dominant society. These are by no means the only theoretical lenses that could be brought to help examine transformational adaptation. They have been selected because together they provide a continuum for transformational adaptation that stretches from conceptualisations of development under modernity to the application of policy for national and human security. In this way they provide a landscape of ideas to help position and understand adaptations that seek to address root causes and leverage transformation. Like resilience and transition, transformation can be seen as an intention or as an outcome of adaptation. It also operates at all scales, from the local to international, often simultaneously and in ways that are difficult to perceive. In identifying the a.s.sumptions that underlie modernity as a potential focus for adaptation transformation is also directed towards internal cognitive change; for example, through the production and reproduction of dominant cultural perspectives that emphasise and justify individualism and undermine social solidarity and collective action: a frequently identified key component of local adaptive capacity (Smith et al., 2003).
A vision of adaptation as transformation.
The notion of a social contract is not only abstract, it can help in the a.n.a.lysis of crises of legitimacy that precede political regime change, and potentially be used to avoid such crises. Disasters a.s.sociated with climate change triggers are but one driver of crisis, and do not guarantee transformational change (see Table 5.2). In such cases loss of legitimacy is to be expected when observed risk or losses exceed those that are socially acceptable. Beneath this the consequences of climate change are accepted as a play-off against other gains. Of course not everyone in society will hold the same tolerance to risk or loss and both will change over time as cultural contexts evolve. In this way the social contract is kept in a tension by risk and loss (as well as opportunity) a.s.sociated with climate change, and also by whose values are included in the social contract. In addition to the established social divisions along lines of cla.s.s, gender, cultural ident.i.ty, productive sector, geographical a.s.sociation and so on, climate change also requires the recognition of future generations and distant interests in local decision-framing (O"Brien et al., 2009). The inclusion or exclusion of these voices will determine the extent to which climate change is perceived to contribute to individual disasters or crises, and the points at which different actors are held responsible for the management of climate change and its consequences. This in turn shapes priorities for social responses to climate change risk and loss. That the interests of future generations or citizens of second countries should be allowed in this conversation fundamentally challenges established social organisation based upon the nation-state.
Can adapting to climate change incorporate this dynamic and be a mechanism for progressive and transformational change that shifts the balance of political or cultural power in society? Evidence for the potential of transformational change within national boundaries can be found in the slow and limited acceptance of international aid by the government of Myanmar following Hurricane Nargis. In large part this behaviour was a result of fear of the destabilising influences of international humanitarian and development actors on the regime, a policy that a.n.a.lysts have also attributed to the need for the ruling military elite to demonstrate its control over society especially at a time when the impacts of the hurricane meant its popular and international legitimacy was at crisis point; and the potential for usurping rich agricultural land from Karen ethnic minority farmers in the Irrawaddy delta where the hurricane made landfall (Klein, 2008). Distrust by the Myanmar regime of international and especially Western and civil society actors has had a byproduct of catalysing organisational reform at the regional level. The leadership of the a.s.sociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional economic grouping, in responding to Hurricane Nargis has resulted in tighter regional cooperation for disaster response. This is an important regional adaptation, one based on a princ.i.p.al of political non-intervention and so a form of adaptation that adds resilience to the status quo. The durability of this position amidst calls for a more engaged approach of "non-indifference" (Amador III, 2009) and its consequences for bottom-up transitional or transformational capacity are yet to be seen.
Where transitional adaptation is concerned with those actions that seek to exercise or claim rights existing within a regime, but that may not be routinely honoured (for example, the active partic.i.p.ation of local actors in decision-making), transformational adaptation describes those actions that can result in the over-turning of established rights systems and the imposition of new regimes. As with adaptation as resilience or transition, any evaluation of the outcome of transformational adaptation will be dependent on the viewpoint of the observer (Poovey, 1998). Efforts undertaken to contain or prevent scope for transformational adaptation are as important as the adaptive pathways themselves in understanding the relationships between climate change a.s.sociated impacts and social change. For example, it is very common for the social instability that follows disaster events to be contained by state actors. This is achieved through the suppression of emergent social organisation and a.s.sociated values halting the growth of alternative narratives or practices that might challenge the status quo, and lead to transformation as part of post-event adaptation (Pelling and Dill, 2006).
The socio-ecological systems literature has less to say about transformation than resilience and transitional change. Nelson et al. (2007:397) describe transformation as "a fundamental alteration of the nature of a system once the current ecological, social, or economic conditions become untenable or are undesirable". But for many people, especially the poor majority population of many countries at the frontline of climate change impacts, everyday life is already undesirable and frequently often chronically untenable. Here we come to a central challenge for systems a.n.a.lysis which places the system itself as the object of a.n.a.lysis. Resistance in a social system can allow it to persist (be resilient) in the face of manifestly untenable or undesirable ecological, social or economic features for sub-system components. Theoretical work on nested systems allows some purchase on this (Adger et al., 2009a), but is very difficult to develop empirically. The points at which these failures lead to challenges for the overarching regime serve as tipping points for transformation. Tipping points that Nelson et al. (2007) point out can be driven by failures that are absolute (untenable) or relative (undesirable), so that cultural values play as much a role as thermodynamic, ecological or economic constraints on pushing a system towards transformation.
There is scope for transformation to arise from the incremental change brought about by transitions (see Chapter 4). Subsequent claims on the existing system results in modifications at the subsystem level. Over time and in aggregate this forces an evolutionary transformation in the overarching system under a.n.a.lysis. It is this pathway to transformation which existing climate change literature has focused upon. With an interest in practical ways in which productive systems might transform under climate change, Nelson et al. (2007) describe this process as systems adjustment and include the implementation of new management decisions or the redesigning of the built environment as examples. This aspect is considered in Chapter 4.
Cla.s.sifying transformational adaptation is sharpened by identifying: (1) the unit of a.s.sessment sub-systems and overarching systems may be undergoing different kinds of adaptation, or none at all as well as their interactions; (2) the viewpoint of the observer, which can place a logic for a normative a.s.sessment of transformation; and (3) distinguishing between intention, action and outcome. A single type of action, for example greater local actor partic.i.p.ation in risk management decision-making, can promote resilience, transition or transformation it is the outcome that counts, and outcomes cannot always be planned for. It is the fear of surprises and incremental change in social relations that encourages tight control of emergent social organisation for risk and impact management and forces many actions into the shadow system of informal relations and organisation.
Where should one look to reveal the challenges and potential directions for transformative elements of adaptation? Most practical work on adaptation focuses on addressing proximate causes (infrastructure planning, livelihood management and so on). Transformation, however, is concerned with the wider and less easily visible root causes of vulnerability. These lie in social, cultural, economic and political spheres, often overlapping and interacting. They are difficult to grasp, yet felt nonetheless. They may be so omnipresent that they become naturalised, a.s.sumed to be part of the way the world is. They include aspects of life that are globalised as well as those that are more locally configured. The former do not have identifiable sites of production and require individual and local as well as higher order scales of action to resolve (Castells, 1997). The latter are more amenable to action within national and local political s.p.a.ce. Table 5.1 identifies three a.n.a.lytical frames that each reveal different aspects of domination and the a.s.sociated production of vulnerability. Each points to specific indicators for transformation as part of adaptation.
The indicators of transformation identified in Table 5.1 require deep shifts in the ways people and organisations behave and organise values and perceive their place in the world. Together they help describe the features a sustainable and progressive social system might be expected to exhibit. They operate at the level of epistemology: the ways people understand the world. Surface transitional changes are already observable; for example, in the uptake of socio-ecological systems framing in adaptation and more widely in natural resource management. But transformation speaks to much broader processes of change that encompa.s.s individuals across societies, not only specific areas of professional practice, though such enclaves may yet prove to be the niches that lead to Table 5.1 Adaptation transforming worldviews a.n.a.lytical frame/thesis Root causes of vulnerability Indicators of transformation Risk society Modernity"s fragmented worldview; dominant values and inst.i.tutions are coproduced at all scales from the global to the individual Holistic, integrated worldviews including strong sustainable development and socio-ecological systems framing of adaptation and development; adaptation that draws together the value systems of individuals with social inst.i.tutions Social contract Loss of accountability or unilateral imposition of authority in economic and political relationships Local accountability of global capital and national governments, to include the marginalised and future generations and not be bound by nationalistic demarcations of citizenship Human security National interests dominate over human needs and rights Human-centred approach to safety, built on basic needs and human rights fulfilment, not on militarisation or the prioritising of security for interests in command of national level policy profound societal change (see Chapter 4). More tangibly, transformation that moves beyond intention also unfolds at the level of political regime. Here the root causes of vulnerability are made most visible when latent vulnerability is realised by disaster. The post-disaster period is an important one for understanding the interplay of dominant and alternative discourses and organisation for development and risk management and is examined below.
Following this initial discussion of the nature of transformational adaptation this chapter examines risk society, human security and the social contract as lenses to direct a.n.a.lysis of transformation within adaptation. The influence of disasters as moments in national political life that can catalyse regime change are then reviewed.
Modernity and risk society.
For Western science and policy discourse, fear of surprises from climate change has been predominantly interpreted through adaptation as requiring actions that can help to manage risk by greater control of the environment. This confounds proximate with root causes of climate change risk (Pelling, 2010). Environmental hazard under climate change is an outcome of the coevolution of human and bio-physical systems, not simply of external environmental systems acting upon human interests. In this context, perhaps the most profound act of transformation facing humanity as it comes to live with climate change requires a cultural shift from seeing adaptation as managing the environment "out there" to learning how to reorganise social and socio-ecological relationships, procedures and underlying values "in here". This in turn demands a strong component of conceptual and social reorganisation. How far this might precipitate political and economic regime change is unclear.
Ulrich Beck has written extensively on the nexus of modernity, technology, the environment and human security in what he calls risk society (Beck, 1992). His theory of reflexive modernity posits that transformations in the nature of rationality are the basis for contemporary environmental and social challenges, and it is at this deep level that change must arise for risks to be avoided at root cause. Beck argues that modernity has produced a simplified model to understand the world, one that fragments and isolates different components. This approach has led to the application of sector specific technologies for development and risk management. There are undeniable successes with this approach but climate change impacts reveal the limits. The complexity of socio-ecological systems dynamism exemplified by climate change and adaptation cannot be captured by individual sectors or sciences. The influence of socio-ecological thinking and systems theory in the sciences is one response to this. Policy actors have been slower to respond with administrative structures and political regimes, sticking with increasingly inappropriate structures. These are structures in administrations including Ministries of the Environment, Civil Defence, Central Banks and Foreign Affairs that need to work together to adapt progressively to the risks of climate change. Beck"s a.n.a.lysis is striking, suggesting that the isolated and fragmented nature of management and practical technologies created within this model of reality allow uncontrolled interactions inbetween. This results in unforeseen and catastrophic consequences including climate change. Moreover, due to the closed nature of the system, alternative trajectories are blocked: Risk society arises in the continuity of autonomous modernization processes, which are blind and deaf to their own effects and threats. c.u.mulatively and latently, the latter produce threats, which call into question and eventually destroy the foundations of industrial society. (Beck, 1992:56) While developed with rich, industrialised economies in mind, Beck"s basic thesis is transferable to those poorer countries that have used industrialisation to drive agricultural and urban development (Leonard, 2009). Foreign direct investment and the conditionalities of aid that promote market led industrialisation from the outside broaden responsibility and perhaps undermine the reflexivity of local and even natioanl actors. But the root causes of the climate change challenge and the consequent need to situate adaptation (and mitigation) within development, not as technical adjucts to it, remains the same. Beck channels his hope for recovery in the formulation of a radically alternative model of modernity, but finds the tools and insights needed to challenge the socioeconomic policies that lead us towards disastrous outcomes within society. He believes that risk society is inherently reflexive and perceives the contradictions between its original premises (human advancement), and the outcomes (environmental disaster), but argues that radical change must come from socio-political interventions designed to transform development driven by industrialisation, going well beyond the risk management agenda, including that being a.s.sociated with climate change. Progress has been slow; five years after publishing his thesis of the relationship between risk society and modernity, Beck observed that consumption had become a key driver alongside industrialisation in the production of hazards and vulnerabilities. This suggested that neoliberal economic policies are an increasing threat to human security reflexivity has not yet led to transformation but rather an acceleration of the root causes of crisis (Beck, 1999). In the succeeding decade little has changed beyond the increasing pace and intensity of consumption and a.s.sociated risk production, and the depth of inequality in risk at scales from the global to local. A slow but growing concensus for the reorganisation of technology and finance was given a brief and short lived stimulace by the 200810 global economic crisis.
In the existing policy landscape, the challenges of attaining a more holistic and reflexive approach to living with climate change and its impacts can be seen playing out in the disaster risk reduction community a critical component of adaptation. This community has long argued for the advantages of conceiving of environmental risk as embedded within development and of confronting development, not the environment, in seeking to reduce risk, but has a long way to go in embedding this within dominant policy frameworks. Some progress is being made and is reflected, for example, in sections of the guiding Hyogo Framework for Action 200515. This international agreement is non-legally binding but compels signatory states to work towards five areas of action. The first of these promotes inst.i.tution building and calls for the integration of disaster risk management within development frameworks such as poverty reduction strategies (see Reflexivity, though, is ultimately about changing values and requires a political and cultural process in addition to the sectoral-technical one described above.
The social contract.
The idea of a social contract is the foundation of contemporary liberalism, underwriting both its Kantian and Utilitarian strains (Hudson, 2003), and has had an enormous influence on the construction of liberal political ideologies and inst.i.tutions (Pateman and Mills, 2007). The social contract is useful for an a.n.a.lysis of transformational adaptation and its limits because it draws attention to the compact in society that determines responsibility for risk management as part of development. More than this, it helps to reveal the basis of legitimacy of this understanding and so the potential fragility of the existing status quo. This can be examined, for example, through exposing the balance of market, public and social pathways through which security is framed and mediated. Issues of responsibility and pathway are open for contestation as failures in the social contract are revealed during disaster and its aftermath (Pelling and Dill, 2006). Recently, for example, concerns have been raised about the increasing role of the international private sector in disaster reconstruction and subsequent loss of accountability to local actors at risk, and also to those citizens, often of second countries, who provide funds through tax payments of charitable donations (Klein, 2007).
The social contract is a product of Western liberal philosophy. However, the generic idea of collective understanding in which parties agree to cooperate with one another, seeding power according to a set of rules, is not. This can be seen in traditional human understandings of rules concerning socio-cultural and biological reproduction, exchange, reciprocity and respect (Osteen, 2002), recognising the parallels to the social contract operating at different scales and in contrasting cultures where the state is not the dominant actor opens useful scope. This can help in extending the focus of that aspect of social contract theory that explores the often tense and sometimes dynamic distribution of rights and responsibilities in society to other interactions than those between the nation state and its citizens.
In the tradition of Western political philosophy the notion of a social contract has not been built on observed customary practice but rather an abstract set of ideas about the nature of political authority and popular consent (Gierke, 1934; Buckle, 1993) stretching back to the work of Thomas Aquinas (circa 1250). Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke each developed versions of social contract theory. They shared some similarities in approach, drawing from the idea that each human is born into a state of nature and endowed with absolute equality, but with no protections whatsoever against the unregulated violence of anarchy existing where each human competes with all others. They theorised the social conditions under which people might engage as stakeholders in a political society to mediate the violence of an anarchic society. The social contract was the basis for the creation of political societies in which all could secure their basic needs, exercise creativity and enjoy individual autonomy in peaceful sociality. But since the trade-off involved ordinary people forfeiting all or some amount of their freedom/power to the dominant social actor (the state) in order to ensure personal security, the derivation of state authority (previously understood as divine right) was suddenly understood as originating in a consensus of the people. These were deeply radical ideas conceived during a period when absolutist governance and feudalism were destabilising in Europe. Social contract theory const.i.tuted the philosophical counterpart to the political and economic changes occurring during the transition to modernity in Europe.
These early theories of state and society paved the way for the creation of the liberal political tradition spearheaded by Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham. Ironically, it was the theoretical descendents of Hobbes rather than Locke that argued most forcefully for a restricted state. Jordan (1985) explains that like Hobbes, the Utilitarian branch of liberal thought viewed essential human nature as seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, but the Hobbesian strong state (designed to ameliorate the conflicts that these motivations would inevitably provoke) was rejected. Instead, Bentham and James Mill subscribed to the view that since governments were made up of humans who would attempt to enrich themselves and seek to increase their power over their subjects, the power and reach of government had to be restrained.
Debate on the most appropriate balance of power between the state and civil society (including the market) continues to this day (van Rooy, 1998). In a precursor to post-modern thinking, Gramsci (1975) argued that the division between political society and civil society was artificial. Just as hegemony captures the state and civil society, and a.s.sociated fields of culture and education, so too the counter-narratives of belief systems can be found cross-cutting the divides of the market, state and civil society. Consequently, for Gramsci, while the benefits of the social contract extended only as far as the bourgeois periphery, its universalist language is produced and disseminated across all society so that those subservient to the social contract are also caught up in its reproduction. This accounts for some of the inertia in political regimes where inequality is made manifest through disaster and reconstruction yet where pressures for change in the social contract fail to attain popular support. Gramsci believed that by offering marginalised populations the tools of critical thinking, and the structure of organised groups to bring their distinctive cultures to bear in the production of counter-hegemonic discourse, transformational change could be achieved, at least at the level of discourse (Urbinati, 1998).
Habermas (1976) offers a second possibility for transformation through a crisis of legitimacy. This follows the failure of the dominant actor in the social contract to meet its own responsibilities. In this understanding new critical awareness is not required to make the failures of the social contract visible. But Habermas does argue (1985) that collective action is a necessary condition for realising social and political change once the failings of legitimacy are revealed. Both Gramsci and Habermas place great emphasis on the role of culture and ident.i.ty, and the influence of education on this, in demarcating the fault-lines along which the social contract is vulnerable to transformation, and also its resilience. Ident.i.ty that is ascribed to social markers such as race or ethnicity (Hite, 1996), but whose logic also extends to include ident.i.ty through a.s.sociation with place (Wagstaff, 2007) is significant for understanding the transformational possibility of environmental crisis which has the power of physical destruction. It is the potential for disaster to destroy social life (Hewitt, 1997) and the cultural meanings invested in the physical, as well as physical a.s.sets themselves, that in turn opens scope for new understandings of ident.i.ty and social organisation that offer an alternative to established structures in the social contract when legitimacy is lost (Pelling and Dill, 2010).
The application of social contract theory to questions of climate change resilience draws out the significance of shifting political and economic relations between nation states, citizens and private sector interests. O"Brien et al. (2009) show how the dominant global trend in liberalisation has generated new forms of vulnerability to climate change (and wider losses in human wellbeing) in Norway and New Zealand, where comprehensive public welfare provision has been retrenched. This same research also used social contract theory to help identify social groups that are currently marginalised from national political decision-making yet nonetheless impacted by it. This included Pacific Islanders in New Zealand displaced by climate change, food security for Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic and in Norway responsibility for future generations whose wellbeing is ever more closely linked to the legacy of Norway"s oil economy of today.
Given its range of application it is not surprising that criticisms have been levelled at the social contract theory. Communitarians challenge its atomistic notion of humans; feminists and post-colonial scholars argue against its propensity to exclude; postmodernists dislike its reliance on abstract universals rather than the situated here and now (Hudson, 2003); and from resiliency theory comes the warning that climate change cannot be a.n.a.lysed at any one scale alone (O"Brien et al., 2009). Using social contract theory to frame studies of adaptation to climate change requires rights and responsibilities that can be clearly defined, and this is not always the case particularly for future generations and distant populations connected to local events and decisions through the globalised economy.
For climate change adaptation, the most important critique of social contract theory is arguably the difficulty with which current work can move from a state to a multi-scaled/multi-actor a.n.a.lytical perspective; one where dominant norms and their reinforcing inst.i.tutions are coproduced at all scales from the global through national to the individual and where power cuts across and works inside national administrative boundaries. In this sense social contract theory benefits from working alongside risk society as part of an a.n.a.lytical frame. If progressive adaptation is to address root causes as part of transformational adaptations then this is an essential area for theoretical and empirical research.
There has been some movement to extend social contract theory to the global political-economy and acknowledge global capital as the dominant centre of power through global corporate social responsibility as a contract between private sector and the consumer/producer (Zadeck, 2006). But more problematic are those growing cases where lines of influence and a.s.sociated responsibility are made increasingly indirect under economic globalisation (White, 2007). Here the social contract can offer a starting point and help characterise the nature of interrupted or unclear responsibility. But global consumers, unlike national citizens, have little capacity for attributing responsibility, ascribing legitimacy and retrieving power. Here dominant power is footloose, beyond the direct control of individual nation-states. The globalisation of civil society and collaboration between governments to regulate business at the regional or global scale provide some scope for action, but so far with limited effect (White, 2007).
Human security.
The social contract and risk society allow us to see adaptation to climate change as embedded within ongoing development struggles for rights and power. Human security provides a closer lens on our specific domain of interest: the play-offs to be made in balancing rights and risks between actors, and over s.p.a.ce and time in the shaping of security. That human security is a product of the underlying cultural a.s.sumptions of risk society and inst.i.tutional rules symbolised by the social contract is neatly indicated by the definition of human security used by the Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) programme. This group has a special interest in the interactions of human security and global environmental change; they define human security as: a state that is achieved when and where individuals and communities have the options necessary to end, mitigate or adapt to threats to their human, environmental and social rights; have the capacity and freedom to exercise these options; and actively partic.i.p.ate in pursuing these options. (GECHS, 2009) Human security is then a counterpoint to national security as an objective for adaptation surrounding catastrophic events and climate change more generally. National and human security can be reinforcing, but as Ken Booth (1991) argues, states cannot be counted on to prioritise the security of their citizens. Some states maintain at least minimal levels of security for citizens to promote regime legitimacy, but are unmotivated to go further; others are financially or inst.i.tutionally incapable of providing even minimal standards; while still others are more than willing to subject entire sectors of society to high levels of insecurity for the economic and political benefit of others who then use their power to support the regime. Adaptation to climate change will be framed by such contexts and can offer both policy justification and practical vehicles for promoting the status quo, regressive or progressive change in human security and the rights and responsibilities in the social contract that it is built upon.
The UNDP"s 1993 and 1994 Human Development Reports advanced human security as a person-centred rather than state- or even region-based approach to security. It presented a holistic and global version of human security as security from physical violence; security of income, food, health, environment, community/ ident.i.ty; and political freedoms (Gasper, 2005). According to Pinar Bilgin (2003) the UNDP"s position was that the concept of security should be changed in two fundamental ways: (1) the stress put on territorial security should be shifted towards people"s security, and (2) security should be sought not through armaments but through sustainable development. In 2003, the Commission on Human Security (CHS) developed this agenda through a basic needs approach. According to the senior researcher on the project: "the goal of human security is not expansion of all capabilities in an open-ended fashion, but rather the provision of vital capabilities to all persons equally" (Alkire, 2003:36). Gasper (2005) a.s.serts that while the concept of human security elaborated by the CHS is essentially a widely conceived yet prioritised arrangement of basic needs fulfilment, the discourse that arises from the policy framework is embedded in the concept of human rights. He argues that the integration of the two previously disparate frameworks is the critical contribution of the human security perspective, with each framework supporting the other. The basic needs model is supported and enhanced by its a.s.sociation with a human rights framework as much of needs-based planning has in the past adopted money-metric approaches to aggregate across people (which can lead to perverse, unintended outcomes) whereas from a human rights perspective, no individual can be sacrificed (Gasper, 2005). Moreover, unlike basic needs approaches that focus on specific claims for and by the needy, human rights discourse and practice is geared towards generating duties and seeking accountability through legal structures. Conversely, the human rights framework is supported and enhanced by its a.s.sociation with a basic needs model. Drawing from the work of Johan Galtung (1994), Gasper reminds us that a human rights framework tends to direct our attention towards individuals rather than structures.
The drawing down of a.n.a.lytical and policy lenses from the state to individual through human security complements well the observed need for social contracts to work beyond the state as nation-states become arguably less powerful than the globalising international superstructure populated by private sector and civil society interests and unelected inter-governmental or super-national bodies. Many perceive the emerging global inst.i.tutional structure of governance to be as potentially threatening (or as potentially unresponsive) as the states it has so recently marginalised. As Duffield (2007) points out, the consolidation of supranational administrative bodies has not subsumed the power of metropolitan states, but rather aligned them alongside supranational powers in contraposition to the weak, underdeveloped and thus potentially dangerous states of the political periphery. From the perspective of global powers, the major threat to the security of the North is not from aggressive states, but from failed ones (Hoffmann, 2006). Thus the stage is set for unprecedented amounts of NorthSouth interventions.
Nevertheless, it is the depth of these interventions rather than the number that is worrying to some a.n.a.lysts. There is an a.s.sumption that new forms of governance are no longer primarily concerned with the disciplining of individual subjects as docile citizens of particular states (though that continues) but now are combined with unprecedented levels of coordination and penetration (from supranational organisations to village committees) to produce desperation-free zones, thereby diminishing the threat of the South to the North. Human security is one of those frameworks. This is a serious warning, but in bringing together needs and rights approaches human security has the potential to bridge the public private dichotomy that under the global liberal consensus has seen a marginalising of the state in favour of private actors. The importance of regulating private behaviour and the need to build capacity in local and national government is supported by human security but held in constructive tension with the rights of individuals. As with the social contract, context, history and the viewpoint of those at risk are arguably the most significant features in judging legitimacy and determining whose security is being prioritised and at what cost through adaptation.
Disasters as tipping points for transformation.
We have seen through risk society the dangers of a naturalised modern worldview operating across all scales. The social contract has described the distribution of rights and responsibilities in society and shown this to be held in place through a balance of legitimacy and power. Human security adds to this an understanding that the rights and basic needs of individuals do not always coincide with those of the state and that play-offs in rights and risk are part of everyday development. In this discussion it has also been a.s.serted that disaster events a.s.sociated with climate change related hazards provide a distinct moment of challenge to established values and organisational forms that embody power relations. This section reviews existing secondary evidence to support this a.s.sertion as a precursor to detailed case study a.n.a.lysis in Chapter 8. The aim is to establish the extent to which disaster events provide leverage for academic study and also for practical movement that might be described as transformational. This should not be seen as suggesting that developmental periods outside of disaster are any less important, but simply that their review is outside the scope of this book.
The literature reveals that scholars and pract.i.tioners have long observed that the socio-political and cultural dynamics put into motion at the time of catastrophic natural disasters create the conditions for potential social (Carr, 1932) and political (Pelling and Dill, 2010) change, sometimes at the hands of a discontented civil society (Cuny, 1983). Pelling and Dill (2006) review a number of studies showing a government"s incapacity or a lack of political will to respond quickly and adequately to a disaster representing a break in the social contract, while simultaneously revealing a provocative (albeit temporary) absence of instrumental state power. The destruction/production dynamic triggered by disaster creates, temporarily, a window of opportunity for both novel and traditional socio-political action at local, national, international and now supranational levels. This interpretation does not derive from an environmental determinism: it is not claimed that disasters cause socio-political change but rather that the instability generated by development failures made manifest at the point of disaster open scope for change. Indeed over the long-term there is ample evidence that human societies survive dramatic shifts in environmental conditions through a range of culturally specific adaptations (Rapparport, 1967; Waddell, 1975; Torry, 1978; Zaman, 1994). Hidden within this, though, are moments of short-term disruption, with the potential for long-term consequences.
Political change has been most comprehensively studied from drought events and related food insecurity crises (Glantz, 1976). These tend to unfold slowly and consequently are more clearly a product of development failures than rapid onset events which continue to be conceptualised as outside of human responsibility. A clear example of the interaction of environmental and political change comes from Ethiopia. In 1974, Emperor Haile Sela.s.sie of Ethiopia was ousted by a Marxist insurgency led by General Mengistu, who in turn oversaw his own government collapse in 1991. Both regimes were destabilised because their leaders failed to adequately address the deepening and progressive spread of drought, which in both cases originated in the drought-vulnerable northeast but moved southwards to envelope vast regions of the country in famine and social unrest (Keller, 1992; Comenetz and Caviedes, 2002). Violent conflict, blockades and the purposeful rerouting of supplies for political reasons have been identified as triggers in drought a.s.sociated famine. Even when food is not used as a weapon, delays and mismanagement in the early stages of drought make it increasingly difficult to mitigate the full social impact (Sen and Dreze, 1999). Moreover, researchers have shown that international aid has in some cases exacerbated rather than alleviated suffering (de Waal, 1997).
To add some breadth to this discussion, Table 5.2 summarises a number of nationally significant rapid-onset disaster events and their political outcomes. It includes geophysical alongside hydrometeorological hazard contexts to demonstrate the range of interactions between political change and disaster. Cases are organised according to the political context of the polity in question: post-colonial security: modernising nation-states; Cold War security: political stability; international economic security: liberalization; and global security: advanced privatisation. Each period describes the overarching political contexts and source of pressure. Tensions in early contexts are dominated by ideological compet.i.tion between state and counter-state ideologies from neo-colonial control, to nation building, proxy tensions sponsored during the Cold war; more contemporary contexts include greater influence from organised non-state actors in national and international civil society and the private sector but also a return to international political influence.
In Table 5.2, there are examples of regime change opening democratic s.p.a.ce following disaster (East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Mexico), but also cases where neo-colonial or national autocratic powers tighten their hold on the national policy (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti). Elsewhere disasters serve as political capital in ongoing compet.i.tions within the political elite (China) and between competing ideologies (Guatemala) including those with armed struggles (Nicaragua). The most recent events show the complexity of civil society-state relations with civil society demonstrating both regressive and progressive impetus for change (Turkey, India), the influence of international civil society and intergovernmental actors (Sri Lanka). However, even where civil society is strong and organised the power of dominant political discourses to maintain the status quo and provide opportunities for exploitive capital acc.u.mulation in the face of development failure is impressive (USA).
Comparative a.n.a.lyses of disaster politics show political change is most likely where disaster losses are high, the impacted regime is repressive and income inequality and levels of national development are low (Drury and Olson, 1998). Albala-Bertrand (1993) also observes that the political, technological, social or economic effects of disasters are explained primarily by a society"s pre-disaster conditions, and a government that immediately marshals what material and discursive powers it has may be rewarded with improved levels of popular post-disaster legitimacy regardless of culpability. This final point emphasises the depth of the cultural underpinnings in the social contract, recognised by both Gramsci and Habermas, that can allow discourses to be manipulated by those in power. Work by Pelling and Dill (2006) confirms this a.n.a.lysis but also shows that competing discourses can establish a critique when building on pre-disaster political momentum.
Conclusion.
The aim of this chapter has been to make a claim for transformation as a legitimate element of adaptation theory and practice. In doing so the challenges of escaping the fragmentation of modernity (Beck, 1992), the alienating loss of power to the global (Castells, 1997) and need to re-a.s.sert human rights and basic needs in an increasingly unequal world (Gasper, 2005) have been revealed as arguably the most fundamental challenges facing development and the social relations that underpin capacities to adapt to climate change risk.
The extent to which adaptation to climate change can embrace transformation will depend on the framing of the climate change problem. Where vulnerability is attributed to proximate causes of unsafe buildings, inappropriate land use and fragile demographics adaptation will be framed as a local concern. This is more amenable to resilience and transitional forms of adaptation. However, if vulnerability is framed as an outcome of wider social processes shaping how people see themselves and others, their relationship with the environment and role in political processes, then adaptation becomes a much broader problem. It is here that transformation becomes relevant.
How vulnerability and adaptation are framed have clear implications for apportioning blame and the locus of adaptation and its costs. Where vulnerability is an outcome of local context then it is local actors at risk who will likely carry the costs of adapting (for example, through transactions and opportunity costs incurred through changing livelihood practices). Where vulnerability is seen as an outcome of wider social causes then responsibility for change becomes broader, possibly more diffuse and less easy to manage and certainly more likely to touch those in power. These two approaches to the framing of vulnerability and subsequent adaptation are akin to the distinction between treating the symptoms and causes of illness.
Transformation does not come without its own risks, inherent in any project of change is uncertainty. History is replete with examples of transformation social change being captured by vested interested or new elites. As noted with regard to human security, both the poor and powerful are aware of the costs of change and prefer the known even if it is a generator of risk. As climate change proceeds and mitigation policy fails the potential for dangerous climate change increases. This forces us to reappraise the potential costs of transformation set against business as usual. Handmer and Dovers (1996) warned against the sudden collapse of Table 5.2 Disasters as catalysts for political change Post-colonial security: modernising nation-states Affected city/country Year Pre-disaster state civil society relations Hazard and loss Local/regional government/civil society response National government response International response Socio-political impact/change/legacy Puerto Rico 1899.
Recent political independence from Spain; rising US economic interests; emergent labour unions; local munic.i.p.alities key political actors Hurricane San Ciriaco; 28 days of rain; huge crop damage; estimated 3,1003,400 killed Munic.i.p.alities: distributed relief; a.s.sessed damage proposed financial plan for recovery Cooperates with acting US military governor to receive aid; popular resentment and finally acquiescence US uses humanitarian aid to undermine nascent nationalism movement and to solidify national influence State "Anglicised"; social hierarchy adapted to economic modernisation; elites funded; "deserving" poor become workforce; union gains reversed; cross-cla.s.s bid for independence thwarted Dominican Republic 1930.
US-groomed dictator Trujillo in power; coopting of civil society and suppression of political opposition Hurricane Zenon destroys most of capital city; estimated 28,000 killed Unknown Immediate request for international aid; reconstruction funds used to build city as symbol of a modern nation-state and presidential power; renamed Ciudad Trujillo US supports regime and reconstruction Entrenchment of new dictatorial (right-wing populist) regime; nation-state modernisation continues with ethnic cleansing of Haitian labour migrants East Pakistan (Bangladesh) 1970.
Deep political tensions between East and West Pakistan with economic and ethnic underpinnings; an organised independence movement in East Pakistan Cyclone Bhola estimated to lead to 500,000 deaths Local government overwhelmed; with no help from central government in West Pakistan, citizen support of local leadership swells No disaster plan; state paralysis; post-election political repression Chaotic: US arms (West) Pakistan; humanitarian efforts directed to respond to ma.s.sive refugee crisis in India Complex political emergency; East Pakistan leadership declares independence; Bangladesh established as state in 1971 Cold war security: from modernisation to political stability Affected city/country Year State/civil society Hazard and loss Local/regional government/civil society response National government response International response Socio-political impact/change/legacy Haiti 1954.
Predatory state; landed peasantry; relative openness (labour unions); major infrastructure modernisations Hurricane Hazel destroys cash crops; estimated 1,000 killed Unknown No disaster plan; corruption soars with international aid International funds flow; Catholic Relief and CARE begin first work in country Regime corruption sparks cross-cla.s.s protests; US-trained military takes control; Papa Doc Duvalier cuts deal with military leading to a long lasting and entrenched violent dictatorship Managua, Nicaragua 1972.
Dynastic dictatorship; civil society repressed; elites disenfranchised; vocal opposition movement Earthquake destroys much of capital city; estimated 10,000 killed Extended families provide relief; the city is evacuated No disaster plan; focus on physical reconstruction of capital and repression of civil society International funds flow; gross corruption by elite; military appropriates development Corruption provokes anger; liberation theology and Sandinismo provide oppositional discourse; social capital developed during recovery period feeds into cross-cla.s.s revolutionary movement leading to regime change Guatemala 1976.
20 years post CIA-coup; a military state; technocratic president; slight opening for human development; active opposition Earthquake destroys parts of capital and villages of central and northern highlands; estimated 23,000 killed Munic.i.p.alities inadequately funded; peasant groups and Church respond No disaster plan; focus on physical reconstruction of capital and repression of any non-state organised activities International a.s.sessment teams remain only in capital; few foreigners have firsthand knowledge of high losses in rural indigenous villages Military threatened by post-disaster peasant organisation in context of active insurgency; state represses indigenous earthquake reconstruction projects; guerrillas use earthquake as oppositional discourse (time for change) for organising purposes; counterinsurgency escalates; insurgency escalates International economic security: liberalisation Affected city/country Year State/civil society Hazard and loss Local/regional government/civil society response National government response International response Socio-political impact/change/legacy Tangshan, China 1976.
No theoretical distinction between state/civil society; a period of political transition during the last days of Mao and the cultural revolution Tangshan earthquake destroys important industrial city; estimated up to 655,000 killed Ma.s.sive self-help campaign; city requests and receives funds and relief from regional administrations Nationally significant disaster plan (prediction) fails: reconstruction distorted by ma.s.sive political struggle between Maoists and reformer Hua Guofeng International aid refused; West denied access and information Earthquake appropriated as political symbol for loss of "Mandate from Heaven" (oppositional discourse); Cultural Revolution ended; return to previous plan for modernisation and liberalisation of economy Turkey 1999.
Authoritarian secular state, democracy, strong religious civil society seen as threatening secular state traditions Marmara earthquake; estimated 17,000 killed Limited, failure to regulate construction a major cause of loss State slow to respond, local and national civil society (religious and secular) filled vacuum Constrained by state failures to coordinate response Civil society demonstrated capacity to provide social support; state responded by closing bank accounts of religious groups in particular Gujarat, India 2001.
Democratic system with a strong civil society; hierarchical Earthquake in Kutch district; estimated over 20,000 killed Limited in contrast to widespread civil society mobilisation Initial response slow, ad hoc and chaotic Widespread; support for partic.i.p.atory reconstruction schemes from multilaterals Response reinforced the strength of civil society in India; reconstruction criticised for exacerbating socio-cultural inequalities; some a.s.sociate this with subsequent religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 Global security: advanced privatisation of national economies and services Affected city/country Year State/civil society Hazard and loss Local/regional government/civil society response National government response International response Socio-political impact/change/legacy Nicaragua 1998.
Electoral democracy; free press; active civil society politically polarised Hurricane Mitch; 2,000 die when entire town buried in mudslide; estimated 3,800 killed in total Following a decade of state downsizing, civil defence, fire and police poorly staffed, resourced, and disconnected from central government and scientists, unable to function properly Government scientists report on impending storm; President denies crisis World Bank and UNDP sponsor the development of a national disaster reduction system; international mediation to open governance in reconstruction Brief opening of discourse between state and civil society development actors under international mediation; joint development of a reconstruction plan; retrenchment and re-imposition of pre-disaster political culture with strengthened leverage for global economic interests; a lost opportunity for social reform Morocco 2004.
Authoritarian kingdom; failure of political liberalisation; civil society weak Earthquake strikes marginalised region; kills more than 560 Concentrates aid in port town; refuses to extend appropriate aid to villages Spends almost equal amounts of aid monies on reconstruction and repression US and European countries compete to come to Morocco"s aid First political mobilisation in Riff mountain region for many years; youths protest failure of state response; neoliberal political economy; state repression Affected city/country Year State/civil society Hazard and loss Local/regional government/civil society response National government response International response Socio-political impact/change/legacy Sri Lanka 2004.
Entrenched political and armed conflict between Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority; Muslim minority marginalised from both; an electoral democracy with limited but free press Tsunami devastates coastline; 35,322 killed Civil society in rebel held areas especially prepared for emergency response Concentrates resources in government-held and economically important regions Ma.s.sive supranational and international humanitarian and geopolitical response; swamps local capacity and reignites political tensions International interventions fail to support transition from ceasefire to peace accords; fishermen worst affected sector; many barred from returning to home site while hotels acquire land; civil society continues to operate in a war zone New Orleans, USA 2005.
Electoral democracy; free press; strong civil society and private sector interests; voter alienation Hurricane Katrina floods city and region: 1,836 confirmed dead; more than 700 in New Orleans Mayor does not want to alienate business leaders by calling for mandatory evacuation; acts too late; governor fails to convey urgency of needs Federal government fails to act on warnings that levees might breached Some international aid accepted but also politicised, e.g. offers of aid from Venezuela and Cuba Nation undergoes intense but brief a.n.a.lysis race/cla.s.s relations; impact of neoliberal policies on disaster reduction now under scrutiny; maladaptive development under scrutiny; real estate speculation and investment soars in flooded region social systems that respond to threats with only limited, transitional change. The prospect that without transformational adaptation undertaken with some measure of planning and inclusivity dangerous climate change may force uncontrolled and more anarchic forms of transformation onto societies is worthy of consideration.
Part III.
Living with climate change.
6.
Adaptation within organisations.
What matters is not structures, but relationships.
Scientific Advisor to the Welsh a.s.sembly.
This comment, made by a scientific advisor to the Welsh a.s.sembly, is a very clear acknowledgement of challenges facing managers having to consider the organisational challenges of climate change risk management alongside existing imperatives including efficiency and transparency. Here our respondent was clear that while formal inst.i.tutional structures are necessary to give organisations shape and direction, when adaptation is required to protect core functions this is nuanced potentially championed by the contingent, shadow world of informal relationships. This chapter presents the viewpoints of actors within two different kinds of organisation who reflect on the interplay of social relations within canonical and shadow systems that characterise adaptive capacity. Communities of practice and networks of looser ties are considered. The aim is not simply to ill.u.s.trate adaptation as resilience but rather to give some substance to the complexity of social relations that give rise to adaptive capacity originating from within organisations. As noted in Chapter 3, while resilience may be the dominant external outcome of the social agency described within organisations, internal acts that could be cla.s.sified as transitional and arguably transformational are also observed.
The empirical evidence presented draws from interviews held with members of the UK Environment Agency active in Wales, and a dairy farmers" cooperative from Carmarthenshire called Gra.s.shoppers. Earlier work (Pelling et al., 2007) has provided a synthesis of these interviews and also with those from scientific advisor groups to the Welsh a.s.sembly. The aim in this chapter is to provide a detailed examination of the viewpoints of key informants reflecting on their relationships with organisational structures and other actors to use or open s.p.a.ce for social learning and self-organisation. Such internal acts of adaptation targeting inst.i.tutional modification are identified, as are adaptations directed at the external environment.
The following section provides policy and methodological context for the empirical data, which is then presented.