Planned Adaptation

Planned adaptive responses to climate variability and change are measures undertaken by governments, organizations, and sometimes businesses, to reduce vulnerability and spread risk. Such measures are often not as spontaneous as those employed by individuals and the scale of constraint (for example, resources, responses to global markets, and political will) is different than that for individuals and households.

Our approach to strengthening planned adaptive responses involves the development of strategies that are capable of responding to both the incremental changes that can be anticipated and, probably more importantly, to changes that are either impossible to predict or where changes will occur in a pulsed manner with the specific timing and magnitude subject to high levels of uncertainty. Specifically, we are attempting to change the mindset surrounding planned adaptive strategies from one in which plans are developed for specific, well defined disasters to one embracing flexible frameworks that allow for uncertainty in the nature, timing, severity and impacts of disasters.

Most approaches to planned adaptation to date, particularly in developing countries, are framed as specific projects for addressing well defined disasters. Huq and Khan (2003: 2) describe the traditional approach to planned adaptation, development, and disaster risk reduction as the following:

The development approach has traditionally focused on implementing projects to realize specific objectives, rather than looking at their macro-linkage and addressing the underlying issues that improve policy frameworks and governance structures. In a similar manner, policies and institutions focusing on the short-term exploitation of natural resources, often to maximize benefits, has led to maladaptation of different kinds.

The National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPAs), which are being implemented by developing countries, tend still to focus on specific measures for responding to specific anticipated climate events, such as prolonged droughts or the increase in frequency and intensity of flooding. These measures encourage activities such as the planting of drought resistant crops, often without considering the much wider array of autonomous adaptive behaviors that individuals, households, and businesses already undertake to reduce the risks they perceive. As a result, most planned adaptive measures generally do not address the factors that enable or constrain individuals, households and communities in responding to both anticipated and unanticipated risks. As such, they can encourage maladaptive behaviors such as living and building livelihoods in hazard prone zones.

The changes to planned adaptive measures that we advocate do not focus solely on measures designed to adapt to specific climate hazards. Rather, we seek to identify points of entry where policy changes or other “planned” measures can enhance beneficial local autonomous adaptive processes and the adaptive capacity within communities to respond to a variety of risks and challenges. As part of this we are, for example, supporting interventions to increase diversification of livelihood options and economic systems. We are also supporting strengthening of the basic communication, transport, financial, educational and other systems that enable people to respond flexibly as climate and other conditions change.

References

Huq, S. and M. Khan (2003), Mainstreaming National Adaptation Plans, Tiempo, 49: 1-8.