By Robert Kay & Carmen Elrick
The more we work with governments to help them assesses their climate change adaptation options, and to help implement those options, the more it seems to us that there are often unseen (or at least under-reported) ‘pulls’ towards the choice of particular options over time. For example, the ‘adaptation by ribbon cutting’ effect (see Kay, 2009) would seem to skew adaptive decision-making towards structural/built adaptive actions. This is analogous to pouring water into a funnel. The water swirls around in the funnel and is inevitably drawn down by the unseen force of gravity into the funnel’s stem.
It seems to us that in extremely vulnerable coastal settings such as in low-lying coral atolls, there is a ‘pull’ towards one of two adaptive options:
1 Protect – through hard coastal engineering structures
2 Migrate – the population moves out as atolls are abandoned.
The pull towards these two adaptive di-poles (mixing analogies of gravity and magnetic forces) would appear to be strong and reveals a potential mismatch between technical assessments of adaptation options (that consider a whole range of vulnerability reduction and resilience building measures) and focussing on what is practically achievable.
This funnel concept links with the notion of adaptation ‘bottlenecks’ – namely “the challenge of moving beyond acknowledgement of a changing climate in a general sense into the implementation of context-specific adaptation policies and measures that can have an appreciable influence on vulnerability” (Preston and Stafford-Smith 2009). Preston and Stafford-Smith acknowledge that what they term the ‘adaptation bottleneck’ is to some extent reinforced by traditional climate change research methods that are often undertaken with weak links to particular decision-making contexts. Preston pointed out this work in his comment on last year’s post The Adaptation Cube.
Such bottlenecks may also apply in constraining how adaptation assessments are apparently failing to recognise that, in the long-term, choices for decision-makers in highly vulnerability settings are limited (the bottlenecks turn into funnels). Or maybe the overall metaphor centres on seeking analogies for constrained adaptive decision-making?
It would seem to us that senior decision makers, such as respective Presidents of the Maldives and Kiribati, have realised that climate change projections and associated impacts on their nations are dire. Once critical thresholds are passed they are effectively left with binary protect/migrate options. To prepare for implementation, resilience-building measures are vital. In Kiribati, education and skills training for young people broadens economic opportunities, and helps them to migrate through the Governments ‘migration with dignity’ policy (recognised only as a last resort).
Perhaps by recognising this adaptation ‘funnel effect’ we can better plan for adaptation. We can critically examine the progression back up the funnel to review how adaptation evaluations are undertaken – and then further back up the funnel to review how vulnerability assessments (and underpinning scientific analysis) are carried out. This is similar to ‘working backwards from impact’ (see for example, comments on a previous blog post, the vulnerability framework presented by Turner et al 2003 and the presentation by the late Steve Snider at the 2010 NCCARF conference). Perhaps such an approach will provide the opportunity to un-block bottlenecks and metaphorically speaking, to broaden the funnel. This would expand the choice of adaptive responses in critically vulnerable areas, and in doing so, help establish an effective pipeline of critically needed adaptation projects and programmes.
