Historical, present, and future emissions of greenhouse gases, principally through energy use, are altering the climate. Hence they are imposing harm and will impose harm in the future. This volume concentrates, rightly, on the ethical issues of stewardship, responsibility, and precaution that are relevant to questions of reducing emissions and avoiding climate change. But the remit of ethical questions relevant to the climate change challenge is wider: the ethics of science, evidence, and foresight; the ethics of public discourse and media; and the ethics of representation of the future and nonhumans, to name but a few. Here we examine issues around how society will adapt to a changing climate and its related impacts and challenges.

The impacts of human-induced climate change are with us, and in anticipation of future risks, adaptation to those changes is under way. While individuals and societies have always adapted to risks associated with changing climates and environments, adaptation to human-induced climate change is categorically different in that it involves the avoidance of harm imposed by others. In this chapter we explore the ethical issues raised by imposed harm and the need for sustainable adaptation. In particular, we explore the landscape of issues around the governance process and procedures by which climate justice for adaptation could potentially be implemented. We focus on the three issues of (1) identifying climate change adaptation; (2) identifying vulnerability; and (3) managing the responsibility for action.

Introduction

Adaptation to the impacts of climate change is happening now. No-one asked for the opportunity to adapt – clearly it is a set of actions in a situation caused by past and present human-induced change and hence a manifestation of past inequitable use of the earth's resources (Adger et al., 2006). But adaptation is a central part of the changing landscape of human security and insecurity brought about by a changing climate.

Justice in the context of adapting to this new set of risks does not, therefore, simply involve a set of decisions on intertemporal and intergenerational equity involving trade-offs between unrepresented future agents and present actors and their interests. Rather, present day adaptation to climate change itself involves those justice dilemmas inherent in implementing sustainable and equitable development. The actions to maintain security are structured by present and historic inequalities in the distribution of access to resources and to power and decision making. There is now incontrovertible evidence of observed warming and trends in climate variability, and on the impacts of these trends on plants, animals, water, glaciers and ice is already apparent (Rosenzweig et al., 2007). These impacts are consistent with projected future climate change, though the possibility of significant and even catastrophic impacts outside the assessed range is also real (Schellnhuber et al., 2006). But the key point is that adaptation is already underway (Adger et al., 2007).

Almost every day new scientific evidence suggests that the climate is changing due to human action and will continue to change over our lifetimes and those of the next generations. It would be inconceivable that humans, as the most adaptable of species, would not adapt to this challenge. But the state of science about how and whether we adapt and the cost and consequences of such adaptations is nowhere near that of science of atmospheric change. Of course, societies adapt all the time to diverse risks and challenges. So, drawing on theoretical and empirical research, we should be able to discern how adaptation to a changing climate will proceed. Herein lies the impetus for this book.

Until recently, adaptation has been somewhat sidelined, or some would say, actually tabooed, in the climate change discourse. Many argue that investing in adapting to the impacts distracts from the major task of mitigating the causes of anthropogenic climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Others are convinced that adaptation will automatically happen, once environmental changes become visible. But the time for adaptation action has arrived and the demand for information and rigorous science in this area is increasing exponentially. The funding for adaptation research is growing, and so are the questions that need to be addressed. Many of these questions are directly related to the process of adaptation, and to one overarching question: can we live with climate change?

Introduction

There is considerable evidence that rural economies in Africa use diverse strategies to adapt to environmental variability and change (Davies, 1996; Scoones, 1996; Mortimore, 1998; Mortimore and Adams, 2001; Eriksen et al., 2005). This finding is reiterated in to the context of climate change (for example Thomas et al., 2007). Much of the evidence so far, however, has been location-specific and has not drawn out commonalities between context-specific adaptations, particularly on how they are accessed, by whom, and their relevance for policies and planned adaptation responses to climate change. It is thus not clear to what extent location-specific findings provide useful lessons for adaptation policy and practice, and what opportunities and barriers may exist. We address this gap in the understanding of adaptation by comparing local adaptation responses to similar climatic events in rural societies across three case study locations in South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. The chapter captures the diversity of adaptation actions in a wide range of livelihood contexts that include economies with arable farming, livestock, fisheries, forestry, and strong urban linkages through migration, arguing that there are common constraints to accessing adaptation strategies. In other words, it is wide resource access and appropriate governance structures that are the keys to successful adaptation.

Theorising adaptation

We draw on theories on entitlements and access (Sen, 1981; Leach et al., 1999; Ribot and Peluso, 2003) to conceptualise barriers to and opportunities for adaptation in terms of access to resources mediated by institutions.

Introduction

Look out the window and assess the weather. If it is hot, change into a lighter shirt. If it is raining, take an umbrella. This is adaptation to changing weather.

Adaptation to changing climate is a different matter. The climate may change either slowly or rapidly, and the changes may be irreversible and impossible to predict with any accuracy. The simple principles of adapting to changing weather begin to break down when the climate changes. In the context of climate change the options for adaptation may involve relocating homes, moving cities, changing the foods we grow and consume, seeking compensation for economic damages, and mourning the loss of our favourite place or iconic species. The difference between adapting to changing weather and adapting to a changing climate lies both in the time-frame and in the significance of the changes required. Moreover, the consequences of not adapting to climate change may be far more serious than not adapting to changing weather.

There are two aspects of climate change that have profound significance for adaptation. First is the growing recognition that the weather is no longer ‘natural’. While the weather varies and changes seasonally as part of the natural rhythm of our lives, climate change, as it is presently observed, is now beyond all reasonable doubt driven by human activities. This induces a feeling, for some, that the world is sullied, and nature itself is at an end (McKibben, 1999).

Process and outcome: an introduction

The concept of sustainable development commands wide, almost universal, support. The idea of sustaining human development resonates with strongly held convictions in every society about the present and the future. It does so, in large part, because as individuals we tend to be instinctively averse to losing anything. Indeed, social scientists tell us that most people are much more averse to losing than they are open to the possibility of gaining. Hence we do not wish, either collectively or individually, to lose what we already have in our environment and society. But ever since the principle of sustainable development was first articulated (for example in Our Common Future by the Brundtland Commission in 1987), promoting human wellbeing while simultaneously conserving the natural environment has proven to be highly elusive.

In fact, the more that society has sought to develop more sustainably, the more it has come to realise the immensity of the change it implies for human societies. Sustainable development – or sustainability (we regard the two as being synonymous) – challenges us to understand the nature of the natural resources on which we ultimately depend. But it also challenges us to articulate and act on the values that are inherent in our relationship with nature. We meet both these challenges through the institutions that allow collective action in governing the environment and our relationship to it. Both the processes and outcomes of these relationships are critical.