• Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change
• Resilience
• Justice and Equity
• Institutions and decision-making

Click on the above links for details of projects and publications under the different headings. Most of the publications are available to download as pdf files (click the pdf links).



CLIMATE CHANGE - VULNERABILITY AND ADAPTATION

This work seeks to develop an overarching theory of societal adaptation to climate change. It is mainly under the Adaptation theme in Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

What we need to know about adaptation to climate change Neil at the IPCC Lead Authors' Meeting in Vienna, September 2004

Projects include:

• Vulnerability to climate variability and change in Vietnam (ESRC funded).
• New national level vulnerability and adaptive capacity indicators (Tyndall Centre).
• Adaptation strategies to climate change in resource-dependent societies in southern Africa (Tyndall-funded with Universities of Sheffield amd Oxford)
• The Impacts of Rapid Climate Change in the UK (with Nigel Arnell (Southampton) and Dr. Emma Tompkins) (ESRC-funded under the Environment and Human Behaviour initiative)

Publications

Arnell, N. W., Tompkins, E. and Adger, W. N. (2005) Eliciting information from experts on the likelihood of rapid climate change. Risk Analysis 25(6), 1419-1431. (pdf file 110 kb)

Tompkins, E. L. and Adger, W. N. (2005) Defining a response capacity for climate change. Environmental Science and Policy 8(6), 562–571. (pdf file 169 kb)

Adger, W. N., Arnell, N. W. and Tompkins, E. (2005) Successful adaptation to climate change across scales. Global Environmental Change 15(2), 77-86. pdf file (240 kb)
Adaptation to climate change is occurring now and can be observed in markets, civil society and government action. Not all adaptations are sustainable. To promote the sustainability of adaptation they need to be appraised for their effectiveness, equity and legitimacy.

Brooks, N., Adger, W. N. and Kelly, P. M. (2005) The determinants of vulnerability and adaptive capacity at the national level and the implications for adaptation. Global Environmental Change15(2), 151-163. pdf file (306 kb)
Where in the world can we adapt to climate change? This paper shows that those places with low capacity to adapt are often made so by war and civil strife and the breakdown of governance.

Adger, W. N. and Vincent, K. (2005) Uncertainty in adaptive capacity. ( IPCC Special Issue on ‘Describing Uncertainties in Climate Change to Support Analysis of Risk and Options’) Comptes Rendus Geoscience 337(4), 399-410. pdf file (222 kb)
This paper is from an IPCC meeting on describing uncertainty. It argues that adaptive capacity is uncertain because of competing paradigms and explanations for phenomena such as growth and good governance.

Adger, W. N. (2003) Social capital, collective action and adaptation to climate change, Economic Geography 79 (4). pdf file (221 kb)
How and when networks and social capital are important for adapting to climate change. Uses examples from Vietnam and the Caribbean.

Adger, W. N., Huq, S., Brown, K., Conway, D. and Hulme, M. (2003) Adaptation to climate change in the developing world, Progress in Development Studies 3(3), 179-195. pdf file (640 kb)
Adaptation to climate change is fundamental to human history. But parts of the developing world face new and uncommon risks associated with global change, brought about without the consent of anyone.

Dessai, S., Adger, W. N., Hulme, M., Turnpenny, J., Köhler, J. and Warren, R. (2004) Defining and experiencing dangerous climate change. Climatic Change 64, 11-25. pdf file (113 kb)
Danger is what we experience as threats to our security. It isn’t just thresholds in impacts.

Adger, W. N. (1999) Social vulnerability to climate change and extremes in coastal Vietnam, World Development 27(2), 249-269. pdf file (172 kb)
Vulnerability to climate variability and change defined and observed – poverty, distribution of wealth and institutional variables are major determinants of vulnerability.

Adger, W. N., Kelly, P. M. and Ninh, N. H. (eds.) (2001) Living with Environmental Change: Social Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability in Vietnam, Routledge: London. Now read the book. Climate change, policy reform, industrialisation and shared international resources all feature in this assessment of sustainable development challenges for Vietnam.

RESILIENCE

Resilience of social-ecological systems is determined by their ability to absorb disturbance, their ability for self-organisation, and the capacity to learn and adapt (see Resilience Alliance website). In this area I am working on links between resilience and equity and on defining social resilience in a range of resource contexts. Professor Katrina Brown (School of Development Studies, UEA) and I constitute an institutional node of the Resilience Alliance.

Ongoing research includes:

• Migration and resilience in coastal areas in Vietnam (MaArthur Foundation funded)
• Resilience and adaptation to climate change (Tyndall Centre)
  

Publications

Adger, W. N., Brown, K. and Tompkins, E. L. (2005) The political economy of cross-scale networks in resource co-management. Ecology and Society 10 (2), 9 www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss2/art9/ (pdf file 142 kb)

Adger, W. N., Kelly, P. M., Winkels, A., Huy, L. Q. and Locke, C. (2002) Migration, remittances, livelihood trajectories and social resilience, Ambio 31(5), 358-366. pdf file (332 kb)
Migration, rather than being something undertaken in distress, is a central part of the livelihood resilience of many rural populations. Remittance income and new skills and knowledge build the resilience of coastal communities. This paper documents trends in one migrant ‘sending’ area in northern Vietnam using data from 1995 and 2000.

Adger, W. N. (2000) Social and ecological resilience: are they related? Progress in Human Geography 24(3), 347-364. pdf file (638 kb) Defines social resilience as the ability of social systems to absorb change and to maintain their integrity. Can be defined collectively – it is a property of a system rather than of individuals.

Tompkins, E. L. and Adger, W. N. (2004) Does adaptive management of natural resources enhance resilience to climate change? Ecology and Society 9(2): 10. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art10 (pdf file 229 kb)
Resilience through co-operative management of natural resources can enhance the ability to adapt to long-term risks and changes such as those associated with climate change.

Sidle, R. C., Taylor, D., Lu, X. X., Adger, W. N., Lowe, D. J. de Lange, W. P., Newnham, R. M., and Dodson, J. R. (2004) Interactions of natural hazards and society in Austral-Asia: evidence in historical and recent records. Quaternary International 118-119, 181-203. pdf file (1 mb)
Review paper on disasters and human development in history in Asia.

Adger, W. N., Hughes, T. P., Folke, C., Carpenter, S., and Rockström, J. (2005) Social-ecological resilience to coastal disasters. Science 309, 1036-1039. Abstract, Full Text

JUSTICE AND EQUITY

This work is the focus of my Leverhulme Fellowship and activities realted to climate change and the Global Environmental Change and Human Security programme of IHDP. Other work includes:

• Climate justice and the atoll small island nations (with Jon Barnett, University of Melbourne)
• Justice in Adaptation to Climate Change (with Jouni Paavola, FIELD and IIED) (Tyndall funded).

Publications

Adger, W. N. (2004) The right to keep cold. Environment and Planning A36(10), 1711-1715. pdf file (62 kb)
This paper argues that climate justice could be prescribed as a set of rights – the right to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. But the philosophical and practical constraints are almost insurmountable.

Adger, W. N. (2002) Inequality, environment, and planning, Environment and Planning A 34(10), 1716-1719. pdf file (96 kb)
A commentary on why inequality matters. Scroll down in the pdf to find the text.

Adger, W. N. (2001) Scales of governance and environmental justice for adaptation and mitigation of climate change, Journal of International Development 13(7), 921-931. pdf file (84 kb)
Most discussion on climate change justice concerns who should mitigate – who should be responsible for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But here I show that since the impacts of climate change are unevenly distributed, adaptation is a further important justice issue.

Adger, W. N., Benjaminsen, T. A., Brown, K. and Svarstad, H. (2001) Advancing a political ecology of global environmental discourses, Development and Change 32(4), 687-715. pdf file (236 kb)
Compares the underlying managerial discourses, and their populist alternatives. There is remarkable similarity in the debates on climate change, bioprospecting, deforestation and desertification.

Barnett, J. and Adger, W. N. (2003) Climate dangers and atoll countries, Climatic Change 61, 321-337. pdf file 142 kb)
Why the threat of climate change to national sovereignty is fundamentally unjust.


INSTITUTIONS AND DECISION-MAKING

I am working with colleagues in CSERGE on governance issues and in developing methods focused on stakeholder analysis, economic valuation, multi-criteria analysis and participatory planning.

Projects include:

• Programme on environmental decision-making in CSERGE (ESRC-funded)
• Building consensus at the land water interface (DFID-funded)

Publications

Paavola, J. and Adger, W. N. (2005) Institutional ecological economics. Ecological Economics 53 (3), 353– 368. pdf file (188 kb)
All environmental problems are ultimately matters of governance and institutions.

Adger, W. N. Brown, K., Fairbrass, J. Jordan, A. Paavola, J., Rosendo, S. and Seyfang, G. (2003) Governance for sustainability: towards a ‘thick’ analysis of environmental decision-making, Environment and Planning A 35, 1095-1110. pdf file (336 kb)
An agenda for research on decision-making – argues for a reconciliation between the objectives of efficiency, effectiveness, equity and legitimacy. A tall order.

Dietz, S. and Adger, W. N. (2003) Economic growth, biodiversity loss and conservation effort, Journal of Environmental Management 68, 23-35. pdf file (180 kb)
An investigation of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for protected areas and conservation regulatory efforts in a cross-section of countries. Finds no prospect that economic growth will solve the problem of over-exploitation of the world’s biodiversity.

Brown, K., Adger, W. N., Tompkins, E. Bacon, P., Shim, D. and Young, K. (2001) Trade-off analysis for marine protected area management, Ecological Economics 37(3), 417-434. pdf file (172 kb)
Examining trade-offs and constructing values and resource management solutions requires hybrid techniques of stakeholder analysis and engagement, multi-criteria analysis and consensus-building. This paper outlines the methods and results of inclusive decision-making for protected area management in the Buccoo Reef Marine Park in Tobago, West Indies.

Tompkins, E., Adger, W. N. and Brown, K., (2002) Institutional networks for inclusive coastal zone management in Trinidad and Tobago, Environment and Planning A 34(6), 1095 – 1111. pdf file (152 kb)
Successful co-management of resources requires, however, more than sharing of responsibility between governments and users at one scale. This paper examines the pre-requisites for ‘scaling-up’. They include appropriate constitutional order, organisational innovation and the means and resources for participatory management. Trinidad and Tobago are having mixed success in these areas.

Brown, K., Tompkins, E. and Adger, W. N. (2002) Making Waves: Integrating Coastal Conservation and Development, Earthscan: London. Now read the book. This summarises our four years of research on inclusive decision-making for coastal zone co-management.