Time for a systematic review: A response to Bassett and Fogelman’s “Déjà vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature”

Lorenz, Susanne; Berman, Rachel; Dixon, Jami; Lebel, Sarah

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.10.003

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…A systematic literature review approach was used to identify relevant literature pertaining to adaptation policy and practice in hotspot countries according to explicitly formulated criteria as outlined in supplementary materials and building upon recent methodological advances on the use of systematic reviews in an environmental change context Biesbroek et al in press;Ford and Pearce 2010;Lesnikowski et al 2011;Lorenz et al 2014;McDowell et al in press;McLeman 2011) (also see Berrang-Ford et al in this special edition). Full details on the review protocol and procedures are found in supplementary materials.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The status of climate change adaptation in Africa and Asia

et al. 2014

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Adaptation is a key component of climate policy, yet we have limited and fragmented understanding of if and how adaptation is currently taking place. In this paper, we document and characterize the current status of adaptation in 47 vulnerable 'hotspot' nations in Asia and Africa, based on a systematic review of the peer-reviewed and grey literature, as well as policy documents, to extract evidence of adaptation initiatives. In total, 100 peerreviewed articles, 161 grey literature documents, and 27 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change National Communications were reviewed, constituting 760 adaptation initiatives. Results indicate a significant increase in reported adaptations since 2006. Adaptations are primarily being reported from African and low-income countries, particularly those nations receiving adaptation funds, involve a combination of groundwork and more concrete adaptations to reduce vulnerability, and are primarily being driven by national governments, NGOs, and international institutions, with minimal involvement of lower levels of government or collaboration across nations. Gaps in our knowledge of adaptation policy and practice are particularly notable in North Africa and Central Asia, and there is limited evidence of adaptation initiatives being targeted at vulnerable populations including socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, children, indigenous peoples, and the elderly.

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Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The status of climate change adaptation in Africa and Asia

et al. 2014

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“…In reviewing the state of the climate change vulnerability field, the paper contributes to a growing body of environmental change scholarship that seeks to systematically and transparently assess the state of knowledge in a given area , Lorenz et al 2014, McDowell et al 2014, Porter et al 2014, Sud et al 2015. Such review work is of particular importance for the vulnerability scholarship, where rapid increases in publishing across disciplines have made it difficult for individual researchers and research teams to keep abreast of key developments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community-level climate change vulnerability research: trends, progress, and future directions

McDowell

Ford

Jones

2016

Environ. Res. Lett.

121

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This study systematically identifies, characterizes, and critically evaluates community-level climate change vulnerability assessments published over the last 25 years (n=274). We find that while the field has advanced considerably in terms of conceptual framing and methodological approaches, key shortcomings remain in how vulnerability is being studied at the community-level. We argue that vulnerability research needs to more critically engage with the following: methods for evaluating future vulnerability, the relevance of vulnerability research for decision-making, interdependencies between social and ecological systems, attention to researcher / subject power dynamics, critical interpretation of key terms, and consideration of the potentially positive opportunities presented by a changing climate. Addressing these research needs is necessary for generating knowledge that supports climate-affected communities in navigating the challenges and opportunities ahead.

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“…Systematic reviews are especially useful in synthesizing current knowledge and they are transparent in their methods (Berrang-Ford et al 2015;Lorenz et al 2014). We systematically reviewed selected climate change literature following the methodology suggested by Berrang-Ford et al (2015).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First and foremost, the sample of the studies between the reviews differs. Our review was systematic and we selected articles using systematic searches as recommended by Lorenz et al (2014), while Bassett and Fogelman (2013) chose four journals and used only one search word: adaptation. The article search process was different and our search words could have favored contextual vulnerability or mixed-focus studies.…”

Section: Analysis Of the Vulnerability Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change, multiple stressors and human vulnerability: a systematic review

et al. 2016

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We systematically reviewed current climate change literature in order to examine how multiple processes that affect human vulnerability have been studied. Of the 125 reviewed articles, 79 % were published after 2009. There are numerous concepts that point out to stressors other than climate change that were used in reviewed studies. These different concepts were used interchangeably and they illustrate processes that act on different scales. Most widely used concepts included non-climatic (40% of the articles), multiple stressors (38%) and other factors (37%). About 75% of the studies either acknowledged or carefully analyzed the social and environmental context in which vulnerability is experienced. One third of the studies recognized climate change related stressors as the most important, one third argued that stressors other than climate are more important and the rest of the studies did not analyze the relative importance of the different processes. Interactions between different stressors were mentioned in 76% and analyzed explicitly in 28% of the articles. Our review shows that there are studies that analyze the social context of vulnerability within climate change related literature and this literature is rapidly expanding. Reviewed studies point out that there are multiple interacting stressors, whose interlinkages need to be carefully analyzed and targeted by policies, which integrate adaptation to climate change and other stressors. In conclusion, we suggest that future studies should include analytical frameworks that reflect dissimilarities between different types of stressors, methodological triangulation to identify key stressors and analysis of interactions between multiple stressors across different scales.

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Time for a systematic review: A response to Bassett and Fogelman’s “Déjà vu or something new? The adaptation concept in the climate change literature”

Abstract: This critical review debates the issues raised in Bassett and

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

The status of climate change adaptation in Africa and Asia

The status of climate change adaptation in Africa and Asia

Community-level climate change vulnerability research: trends, progress, and future directions

Climate change, multiple stressors and human vulnerability: a systematic review

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