| 1. |
- Brink, Ebba, et al.
(author)
-
Weapons of the vulnerable? A review of popular resistance to climate adaptation
- 2023
-
In: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780. ; 80
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Climate adaptation is not a neutral or apolitical process, but one that ignites social resistance. Government responses to risks of floods, droughts, or hurricanes – even those using a language of participation – might follow historical development pathways, strive to maintain the status quo, and directly or indirectly serve elite interests. Little attention has been paid to how people defy or resist top-down adaptation processes, overtly or covertly, in particular cultural, historical, and legal contexts. Drawing on sociological thought on popular resistance, this paper systematises research on people’s resistance to climate adaptation by scrutinising the sites, repertoires, and consequences of such resistance. We identified overt and covert resistance in 56 scientific adaptation articles, which concentrated on 5 ‘sites’ of resistance: Rural livelihoods, Urban informal settlements, Islands, First Nations, and Institutional landscapes. The findings imply that resistance to adaptation occurs globally, and not least in the context of relocation processes and participatory adaptation. We show how a resistance lens can help understand contemporary political behaviours, shed light on dynamic and compound vulnerability, and’unlock’ more context-sensitive and even transformative adaptation. Meanwhile, resistance and popular movements are not only progressive, and there might be conceptual barriers to moving from resistance to transformation or reconciling resistance with actions by or with the state.
|
|
| 2. |
- Lampis, Andrea, et al.
(author)
-
Reparation ecology and climate risk in Latin-America: Experiences from four countries
- 2022
-
In: Frontiers in Climate. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2624-9553. ; 4
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- IPCC's Sixth Assessment is a landmark in recognizing social justice and local knowledge as imperative for successful climate adaptation; however, taking this new scientific consensus seriously has profound implications. While narratives of fossil fuel companies and closing climate windows often dominate climate politics, there is an urgent need for new thinking frames, especially given that everyday adaptations by the most vulnerable are often hindered by incumbent actors at more local scales. In response, this paper tackles the issue of climate risk and human wellbeing in Latin America from an emerging and innovative perspective: reparation ecology. Reparation is a heuristic category by means of which we systematize converging evidence about the responses of local Latin-American communities to severe socio-environmental crises that are closely connected to climate risks and to long-lasting threats to the wellbeing of human societies and ecosystems. The results focus on a comparative analysis of five case studies on nature-based urban adaptation in two low-income settlements in Brazil; local ecological governance led by actors from the organized civil society in Colombia; agroecological and just innovative food production systems in Ecuador and sustainable urban-rural food markets in Guatemala. Assuming the complexity of climate change from a culturally and geographically located perspective, the paper unveils the non-doomed, ecologically reparative character of these initiatives. It therefore contributes to the recent turn in the debate on climate risk, claiming that diverse groups of people and communities around the world are contributing to radical change, tuning their behaviors and social arrangements in what an emerging scholarship defines as reparation ecology.
|
|
| 3. |
|
|
| 4. |
- Stålhammar, Sanna, et al.
(author)
-
‘Urban biocultural diversity’ as a framework for human–nature interactions: reflections from a Brazilian favela
- 2020
-
In: Urban Ecosystems. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1083-8155 .- 1573-1642. ; 23:5
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Biocultural diversity (BCD), denoting the ‘inextricable link’ between biological and cultural diversity, has traditionally highlighted the coevolution between highly biodiverse regions and the ethnic–linguistic diversity of indigenous communities. Recently, European researchers have relaunched BCD as a conceptual foundation for urban greenspace planning capable of overcoming challenges of the ecosystem services paradigm. However, the methodological foundation for this particular approach to ‘urban BCD’ is still in its infancy, obscuring preciselyhowthe framework is an advancement for studying different urban residents’ experience of and connectedness to nature and biodiversity. In this paper, we further develop the urban BCD concept by using the culturally and biologically diverse city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as a ‘critical case’. First, we employ qualitative field methods to investigate manifestations of human–nature relationships in thefavela(informal settlement) of Rocinha and the neighbouring Tijuca Forest. Second, we reflect on how the urban BCD framework and methodology emphasise i) interrelationships, ii) varied group values and iii) participation, and iv) are sensitising and reflexive. Our findings challenge the ‘usual’ narrative aboutfavelasas places of environmental degradation and disaster risk, revealing BCD and nature connectedness that are as related to popular culture, fitness ideals and citizen-building, as to traditional livelihoods and spiritual beliefs. Departing from interrelationships, BCD can portray aspects that a narrow focus on ‘services’ and ‘disservices’ cannot, but attention should be paid to how operationalisation risks perpetuating ecosystem services thinking. Nevertheless, we identify promising avenues for its use in highly diverse cities with unequal access to natural areas.
|
|
| 5. |
- Vargas, Ana Maria Falla, et al.
(author)
-
Quiet resistance speaks: A global literature review of the politics of popular resistance to climate adaptation interventions
- 2024
-
In: World Development. - 0305-750X. ; 177
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Despite that climate hazards are increasingly felt across the globe, there is widespread and often subtle resistance to climate adaptation interventions. However, adaptation research and practice have largely focused on overcoming barriers to implementation. By presuming adaptation programs are welcome, they miss that many people oppose or refuse to participate in them, and the politics hidden behind such resistance. We review the emerging academic literature on resistance to climate adaptation and uncover how diverse forms of adaptation resistance generate deep insights into overlooked local needs and aspirations. While it could be expected that ‘loud’ forms of resistance, such as protests, prompted some adaptation initiatives to accommodate local needs, it was surprising to see the effects of ‘quiet’ resistance. Quiet adaptation resistance in the forms of false compliance, foot-dragging, and gossip helped affected communities to stay in their territories, maintain certain farming practices, contest exclusionary urban policies, or simply assert their agency and freedom. These results reflect that adaptation has adopted a narrow approach to development that omits the multiple and underlying causes of vulnerability – many of which are evident to those affected. We argue that even when such acts do not directly improve material conditions, they represent an alternative political engagement to reimagine adaptation considering the needs of marginalised groups beyond the participatory and community development approach. This article provides concrete examples of how quiet resistance to adaptation speaks that can help development practitioners and policy makers to better understand the limitations of adaptation initiatives and their implications for effective local security in the face of climate change. Political accountability to adaptation-targeted populations could improve adaptation investments, making them more relevant, socially sustainable, and responsive to local needs.
|
|
| 6. |
- Woroniecki, Stephen, et al.
(author)
-
Nature unsettled: How knowledge and power shape ‘nature-based’ approaches to societal challenges
- 2020
-
In: Global Environmental Change. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-3780 .- 1872-9495. ; 65
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Nature-based solutions (NbS) are gaining traction in high-level, decision-making arenas as a response to global policy challenges. Claiming to be transformative and pluralistic, NbS aim to resolve societal problems through a focus on nature, which is understood to be a benign ally. This uncritical framing of nature may have unintended and inequitable consequences that undermine the emancipatory potential of NbS. In this paper, we highlight the need to pay attention to epistemic and power dimensions that tend to be hidden in NbS. We assume that nature is neither passive nor external to human society, but is instead expressed in frames (reifying modes of expression) that reflect both knowledge and power in social encounters where NbS are used. Drawing upon five cases, we analyse how particular ways of framing nature express and reinforce the power relations that structure people’s interactions. Each of the five cases relies on a nature-based frame to produce knowledge on climate adaptation, peacebuilding and justice. The analysis reveals how frames of nature are enacted in particular contexts, and how this conditions the potential for societal transformation towards sustainability and pluralistic knowledge. We demonstrate how frames of nature can constrain or enable opportunities for various groups to respond to environmental change. We discuss how the NbS paradigm might better incorporate diverse, situated knowledge and subjectivities, and conclude that this will require a more critical evaluation of NbS practice and research.
|
|
