Alexander Bisaro

Clarifying vulnerability definitions and assessments using formalisation

The purpose of this paper is to present a formal framework of vulnerability to climate change, to address the conceptual confusion around vulnerability and related concepts. The framework was developed using the method of formalisation – making structure explicit. While mathematics as a precise and general language revealed common structures in a large number of vulnerability definitions and assessments, the framework is here presented by diagrams for a non‐mathematical audience. Vulnerability, in ordinary language, is a measure of possible future harm. Scientific vulnerability definitions from the fields of climate change, poverty, and natural hazards share and refine this structure. While theoretical definitions remain vague, operational definitions, that is, methodologies for assessing vulnerability, occur in three distinct types: evaluate harm for projected future evolutions, evaluate the current capacity to reduce harm, or combine the two. The framework identifies a lack of systematic relationship between theoretical and operational definitions. While much conceptual literature tries to clarify vulnerability, formalisation is a new method in this interdisciplinary field. The resulting framework is an analytical tool which supports clear communication: it helps when making assumptions explicit. The mismatch between theoretical and operational definitions is not made explicit in previous work.

Methodological choices in solution-oriented adaptation research: a diagnostic framework

Abstract While methodological choices are critical for solution-oriented adaptation research, the current debate on these is underdeveloped and characterized by simple dichotomies such as bottom-up and top-down as well as vaguely defined concepts such as vulnerability. Adaptation challenges and approaches for addressing them are more diverse than these labels suggest. This paper addresses this deficit by developing a diagnostic framework that helps to identify approaches suitable for addressing a given adaptation challenge. The framework was developed out of the necessity to discuss diverse approaches from natural science, social science and practice in a set of adaptation case studies conducted within the European funded MEDIATION project. Based on these case studies complemented by the literature, we iteratively abstracted typical adaptation challenges researched, typical approaches taken, and empirical, theoretical and normative criteria applied for choosing a particular approach. Our results refine the methodological debate by distinguishing between the three general adaptation challenges of identifying adaptation needs, identifying adaptation measures and appraising adaptation options. Adaptation challenges are further classified according to private and public interest involved, individual or various types of collective action involved, data/model availability, decision-making time horizon, etc. For each type of challenge and approach, we give examples and discuss salient issues. Our results point to the opportunity to apply institutional and behavioural research to support the identification of measures and possibly avoiding barriers in practice. The diagnostic framework also serves as the basis for the forthcoming guidance for assessing vulnerability, impacts and adaptation to be published by the UNEP programme of research on climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation.

Framing climate vulnerability and adaptation at multiple levels: Addressing climate risks or institutional barriers in Lesotho?

Adaptation to climate change occurs largely through action at the local level, which is influenced by international and national levels of political and social organization. This article explores the impact of discourse at the international level on adaptation policy at the national and local level. Discourse defines which knowledge claims, methods and rationalities are accepted and reproduced by actors as a basis for policy development and implementation; this is called ‘framing’. Scientific literature defines adaptation and vulnerability in a general way and so accommodates different framings. This article reviews the history of the concepts of adaptation and vulnerability in the literature and their relation to development. Evidence is presented for the presence of two framings of CCIAV in the literature: the ‘decision-analytic’ and the ‘institutional-analytic’. Wetlands and climate-related projects in Lesotho are analysed and evidence is presented for the reproduction of the two framings. A decision-analytic framing favours projects focusing on technological solutions and reducing projected impacts. Conversely, institutional-analytic framing tends to produce projects that more explicitly include governance issues. It is concluded that framings exert a significant influence on policy when linked to, for example, sources of funding for adaptation. It is argued that methods linked to the ‘decision-analytic’ framing risk limiting the scope of effective adaptations.

Frontiers of solution-oriented adaptation research

Adaptation is heterogeneous and relevant for a range of sectors and levels of decision-making. As adaptation moves up the policy agenda, solution-oriented adaptation research requires addressing questions that are salient to stakeholders and decision-makers at various scales and involves applying a wide range of different methods. Yet while solution-oriented adaptation research is being increasingly undertaken, there is to date a lack of synthesis of these experiences in the literature. In this paper, we aim to address this gap by synthesising findings in nine cases from the MEDIATION project (Methodology for Effective Decision-making on Impacts and AdaptaTION), an EC-funded solution-oriented adaptation research project. We do so by, first, describing methods applied for solution-oriented research in Europe and sequences of methods carried out in individual cases. Second, we assess strengths and weaknesses of individual methods in given empirical situations. Third, we analyse patterns observed in the sequences of methods and reflect on their implications for adaptation research. A strength of our approach is that detailed data on choices of research questions and methods were collected through in-depth and iterative interaction with the case study teams. We find that there is no standard recipe for adaptation; that even though social science methods are often indicated, they are often not applied; and that robust decision-making methods, while available, are often constrained because of their resource intensity. Reflecting on the implications of these findings, we argue that greater flexibility and transdisciplinarity are needed in adaptation research and that social science methods should be further supported. Finally, we find that stakeholder engagement is not a panacea and that engagement requires a more differentiated understanding of stakeholders and careful design in order to be effective.

Towards a diagnostic adaptation science

How should climate change adaptation research be performed? Two principles are widely accepted and articulated in current adaptation-related research programmes such as the global Future Earth programme, the European Horizon 2020 programme and the Dutch Knowledge for Climate programme, just to name a few examples. The first one is that adaptation research should be transdisciplinary and solution-oriented (also called problem-oriented) in that it aims at contributing to ‘‘real-world’’ problem solving rather than purely advancing research in its own right (Cash et al. 2003; Gibbons et al. 1994; Moss et al. 2013). Achieving this aim entails co-designing and co-producing research together with stakeholders (Swart et al. 2014). The second principle is that adaptation research should be interdisciplinary in that it integrates knowledge from a range of natural and social science disciplines. And indeed, a wide variety of methods are currently applied in adaptation research, including participatory, experimental, decision analysis, behavioural analysis, institutional analysis and climate and impact simulation methods (Hinkel and Bisaro 2014). Less consensus can be found on how exactly those two principles shall be put into practice. Regarding transdisciplinarity, there is a substantial literature that has proposed various definitions and models for transdisciplinary research, including ‘‘mode-2’’ knowledge production (Gibbons et al. 1994), post-normal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993) and action research (Lewin 1946). Regarding interdisciplinarity, there is hardly any dedicated literature exploring how to realise the integration of knowledge from diverse disciplines and beyond (Hinkel 2008). Nevertheless, there is a widespread model on how to combine methods, often called top-down approach (Dessai and Hulme 2004), which has dominated adaptation research from its beginnings. Climate models are run to produce climate scenarios, which are then downscaled and results are put into various sectoral climate impact models, sometimes followed by valuation methods to value projected climate impacts. Finally, the results may be fed into macroeconomic models in order to estimate economy-wide implication and/or decision analysis methods. But is the top-down model the only meaningful model of interdisciplinarity for climate adaptation? It certainly was a meaningful model in the early days of climate change research when the main question addressed was by how much adaptation could offset climate impacts at an aggregate level in order to prevent ‘‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’’, which is the ultimate objective of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 1992, Article 2). In recent years, adaptation has become a practical necessity, and the field has progressed from focusing on questions concerning climate impacts and costs and benefits of adaptation at an international scale to a much wider array of questions at all scales, related to, e.g., human perception, institutional change, equity, development and barriers to & Jochen Hinkel hinkel@globalclimateforum.org

Introduction to the special issue on adapting institutions to climate change

This article introduces the special issue on climate adaptation and institutions. Economic accounts of climate adaptation have stressed its collective action nature and the limitations of standard economic approaches to the matter. Governance accounts, on their part, have shown that adaptation does not always happen when it is expected. Against this background, institutional economics has the potential to shed light on those societal processes and collective mechanisms leading to and shaping adaptation (or the absence of it). The selection of articles contributing to this special issue shows that climate adaptation can indeed be explored successfully through institutional economics, and that doing so fits well within the institutional economics agenda. Some recommendations for future research are provided at the end.