The climate-development nexus: using climate voices to prepare adaptation initiatives in the Peruvian Andes

Abstract

What are the lessons from development practice that adaptation interventions can use to engage vulnerable people? To answer this question, the paper reviews field data on perceptions of environmental and climatic change in a Peruvian mountain community and discusses the possibilities and limitations of using local climate voices to prepare for climate change adaptation. The data comprise two complementary household surveys. The first survey provides information on the community's socioeconomic situation, whilst the second survey documents the villagers' climate perception. The data reveal a paradox in the way the community understands global climate change. The villagers who live on the margin of the global world and belong to the poorest economic strata in Peru are deeply concerned about global climate change that is impacting their environment. Yet when locating the cause of climate change they point to their own community rather the industrialized world and suggest mitigation actions rather than adaptation initiatives as answer to the problems it entails. The paper suggests that adaptation initiatives must understand this paradox within the larger socioeconomic and discursive context that shapes the villagers' agency and climate perceptions. It proposes an informed participation approach that listens to the local voices but that also informs them about the global dimensions of climate change and engages them in a critical dialogue about the importance of sustainable development and the possibilities of taking advantage of the new opportunities that the changing environment offers.

Encounters Between Experiences and Measurements: The Role of Local Knowledge in Climate Change Research

“…A systematic, quantitative analysis of literature on the contribution of local knowledge to climate change research by Reyes-Garc ıa et al (2016) shows regional foci in sub-Saharan Africa, the Himalayan range, polar regions, and, to a lesser extent, Southeast Asia. In Latin America, case studies have been conducted, for instance, in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru (eg Lagos 2007;Kronik and Verner 2010;Boillat and Berkes 2013;Aldunce et al 2017;L opez et al 2017;Paerregaard 2018). Nonetheless, Reyes-Garc ıa et al (2016) identified weaknesses due to a lack of primary data, incipient methodological development, and unbalanced geographical extent.…”

Smooth flows? Hydrosocial communities, water governance and infrastructural discord in Peru’s southern highlands

“…However, the cases also show that the state's and the water users' values are not antipodal. Even though to the latter water is a good provided by the mountain deities in return for offerings, they are aware of the impact climate change is having on Peru' water resources (Paerregaard, 2013c(Paerregaard, , 2018b(Paerregaard, , 2019b. As their communities' local water supplies dry up, the water users are increasingly asking the state for assistance to alleviate the growing water shortage, not only by investing in new infrastructure and connecting it to their water supply but also by mediating their internal water disputes.…”

Climate change, power, and vulnerabilities in the Peruvian Highlands

“…Moreover, the vulnerabilities that the farmers experience take place within a specific socio-economic context that are besides climate change shaped by history, policies, and markets across multiple scales. Therefore, climate adaptation plans must also carefully consider the implications of such processes on place-specific vulnerabilities they aim to combat (Paerregaard 2018). In the next section, I discuss how Peru's climate adaptation policies (re)shape the vulnerabilities highland farmers' encounter.…”

“…In their view, farmers needed environmental capacitation to get them to abandon inefficient farming practices like "outdated" canal irrigation. While such discourses undermine smallholders' agency to determine their own adaptation needs, they also mask the structural causes of vulnerabilities (Paerregaard 2018). Some farmers, for instance, considered that climate change was a result of local people using too many plastic items, throwing trash in the rivers, and not recycling their waste.…”