The political impacts of adaptation actions: Social contracts, a research agenda

Abstract

Managing climate and disaster risk is a deeply political act sitting at the interface of popular expectations, legal mandate, and political fiat. This article makes the case for an expanded research agenda on social contracts in climate and disasters scholarship as a mechanism to better reveal activity across this interface, identify the winners and losers of adaptation, and improve the equity outcomes of negotiated and imposed risk management settlements. Social contracts are defined as multiple and constructed (not singular or fixed), and three distinct yet intersecting forms of social contracts are identified: imagined, practiced, and legal-institutional. The article argues that mapping the disjunctures, overlaps and transitions between these concurrent social contracts can help reveal gaps between responsibilities held de facto and de jure. This makes a timely contribution to understanding tensions between need, obligation and entitlement that underlie contestations over "who" is responsible for "what" in risk governance. It also helps reveal the dynamic boundaries of social acceptances at the centre of debates around fair adaptation governance. Such work can provide insight on how development relations, including but reaching beyond risk management and climate change adaptation, can be transformed progressively and fairly in a changing climate. This article is categorized under:Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for AdaptationAdaptation, fairness, politics, social contracts, transformation | INTRODUCTIONThis article argues that social contracts offer a rich lens for research on the politics and fairness of adaptation and its consequences. It is now well-established that the risks associated with climate change, and the effects of adaptive actions, have unequal social, spatial and temporal distributions. These inequities are mediated by and accentuate cultural and political differences (Adger, Barnett, Brown, Marshall, & O'Brien, 2012;Eriksen et al., 2011;Norgaard, 1988). Cultural norms and assumptions, legal frameworks and everyday practice constantly iterate in ways that produce and reflect dynamic but invariably asymmetric relations of power between development stakeholders and across scales. The same social-political relations through which power is exercised in development decision-making and action (interactions that might collectively be termed "development relations"), will also determine who carries the burden of impacts and the costs of absorbing losses, adapting or transforming in the face of escalating disaster risks (Pelling, 2011). The social reproduction of power through adaptation policy and action, and embedded questions of equity and representation, are increasingly recognized as important to

Assemblage theory and disaster risk management

“…Such interactions are conceptualised as acting not across hierarchical scales but rather between sited assemblages where power is differentially distributed across scales as outcomes or effects of these interactions (Agrawal, 1995;Escobar, 2001;Legg, 2009). Disaster studies have a lot to offer such inquiries, particularly the idea that while powerful human actors are generally better positioned to resist the impacts of, recover from, and adapt after, disasters (Blackburn and Pelling, 2018;Pelling, 2012), it is difficult to suggest disaster events -such as volcanic eruptions -emerge in ways that always serve the needs of the powerful (Bennet, 2005), even if their impacts are frequently manipulated in that way.…”

An agenda for ethics and justice in adaptation to climate change

“…And are there gaps in responsibility that are currently not filled by any accountable actor? Questions of scale and politics are critical here (Blackburn & Pelling, 2018). Theories of ethics and justice, we argue, can provide useful guidance to consider what roles and responsibilities that can be allocated to different actors and according to what principles of allocating duties (Patterson et al, 2018).…”

A three-tier risk assessment process for climate change adaptation at a local scale

“…identifying vulnerable systems). Finally, it is widely recognised that management of risks associated with climate change can lead to inequitable outcomes (Blackburn and Pelling 2018;Chen et al 2018). The risk assessment approach described here does not seek to address equity issues around adaptation.…”