Limits to adaptation or a second modernity? Responses to climate change risk in the context of failing socio-ecosystems

Abstract

Springer is a green publisher, as we allow self-archiving, but most importantly we are fully transparent about your rights. Publishing in a subscription-based journal AbstractThere is a concerning fallacy at the heart of the debate on climate change adaptation -that adaptation will involve re-adjustments primarily on the periphery of functioning socioecological systems. Yet, dominant modern systems are already in crisis. Case study examples from research across global, continental and regional scales are used to argue that gaps between sustainability goals and outcomes are already significant. Analyses of food security, human migration and natural resource management systems indicate that climate change forms only part of failing relationships between people and their environments. There is a need to transform socio-ecosystems so that they become resilient in the context of broader learning on environmental uncertainty, variability, change and risk. Such transformations will occur both in situ, to ensure that local environments are not further degraded or people entrenched in failing systems, and ex situ, as people, systems and infrastructure become increasingly mobile to deal with changing circumstances.

Social-ecological vulnerability to climate change in the Nepali Himalaya

“…Social processes and institutions play important roles in maintaining the sustainability of socio-systems. However, the capacity of purely anthropogenic systems to adequately understand or accommodate environmental variability and change (Osbahr, Twyman, Adger, & Thomas, 2008), and the limited transformative capacities of communities to cope with those changes, especially in developing countries, are leading many social-ecosystems towards crisis (Bardsley, 2015). In contrast, the social-ecosystem approach to analysis accommodates collective interactions among the many human and ecological sub-systems, which as a whole, tend towards vulnerable or sustainable systems.…”

Ensuring Resilience of Natural Resources under Exposure to Extreme Climate Events

“…The wisdom of a government policy stance for extreme events in rural and regional communities that relies heavily on building and maintaining local community resilience is questionable in the knowledge community coping will be exceeded in the future. It may be necessary to facilitate local transformation in order to preserve regional resilience [30][31][32].…”

“…There is already considerable autonomous adaptation occurring in response to a range of drivers including variable rainfall. These adaptations include changed practices (drought feedlots, adaptively managed stocking rates), changed land-use (both fragmentation of "unviable" farms and consolidation of agriculture on land of higher capability) and a shift to other livelihood options (reliance on off-farm employment, non-resident ownership) [30,31]. Further change along some of these pathways may be limited.…”

Wildfire risk, biodiversity and peri-urban planning in the Mt Lofty Ranges, South Australia

“…Beck, Giddens, and Lash (1994: 5) note that the emergent risk society "Designates a developmental phase of modern society in which social, political, economic and individual risks increasingly tend to escape the institutions of monitoring and protection in industrial society," and they continue on to argue that an alternative, second modernity is possible based on a recognition of the unique attributes of place, people, knowledge and cross-boundary communications. It is within such a complex, resource constrained second modernity that impacts of natural hazards, including floods, droughts, landslides, severe storms, heatwaves and wildfires are changing perceptions of human security, and generating calls for the unique, context specific integration of risk into policy through reflexive analysis (Beck, 2010;Bardsley, 2015;Cloutier et al 2015).…”

“…In his review of Beck's work, Rasborg (212: 4) summarizes this point succinctly, "The forces of production have turned into forces of destruction and progress has become negative." Important questions are now being raised about how sustainable responses can evolve to reflect the new risk in the Mt Lofty Ranges (Bardsley, 2015;Penman et al 2011;Kates, Travis, & Wilbanks, 2012). It was within such a context, that stakeholder workshops were undertaken with DEWNR managers of vegetation on public lands within the peri-urban space.…”