1st Edition

Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change Prioritising Social Equity and Environmental Integrity

By Katrina Brown, Siri Eriksen Copyright 2011

    This book sets out how to ensure that adaptation efforts are socially and environmentally sustainable, contributing to poverty reduction as well as confronting the processes driving vulnerability.

    Over $100 billion a year is pledged to help finance adaptation projects via the The Climate Adaptation Fund. These projects and their funding played a central role in the latest climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, ensuring that adaptation to climate change will be an international priority over the next few decades.

    Many existing adaptation projects are however, not environmentally or socially sustainable. Adaptation projects that focus on reducing specific climate sensitivities can, even if bringing benefits, adversely affect vulnerable groups and create social inequity, or even unintentionally undermine environmental integrity.

    Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change examines how adaptation to climate change (types of measures, policy frameworks, and local household strategies) interacts with social and environmental sustainability. A mixture of conceptual and case study-based papers draw on research from Europe, Asia and Africa. It will be of interest to all researchers and policymakers in climate change adaptation and development.

    1. Sustainable Adaptation to Climate Change  2. When Not Every Response to Climate Change is a Good One: Defining Criteria for Sustainable Adaptation  3. Sustainable Adaptation: An Oxymoron?  4. Converging and Conflicting Interests in Adaptation to Environmental Change in Central Vietnam  5. Sustainable Adaptation and Human Security: Interactions between Pastoral and Agropastoral Groups in Dryland Kenya  6. Gums and Resins: Challenges and Opportunities for Livelihood Diversification in Kenya's Drylands  7. The Discourse of Adaptation to Climate Change and the UK Climate Impact Programme: (De)scribing Conceptual Frames and Limits

    Biography

    Siri Eriksen is an Associate Professor of climate and development at the Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric) at the University of Life Sciences, Norway. Katrina Brown is Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK.