Dana C. Thomsen

The Australian Experience

The past focus of climate change action in Australia was dominated by mitigation initiatives and these remain a critical and urgent issue. However, the global imperative for planning and action to adapt to likely climate change impacts articulated by the scientific community has now been adopted as a key imperative for governments, industries, and communities alike. While it is often difficult to separate climate change adaptation initiatives from existing risk management or sustainability initiatives, over recent years there has been clear identification of new climate change adaptation policies and programs. These initiatives range from local-scale planning to reduce vulnerability, to national research programs such as the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Climate Adaptation Flagship. The Australian Government has also created a Department of Climate Change to coordinate and support activities at the national level. One of the key challenges that remains is mainstreaming the understanding of vulnerability to climate change impacts and associated adaptation initiatives, across and within sectors. For example, the emphasis of research and action has been based on assessments of exposure, with only a limited number of past research projects focused on the understanding of sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Furthermore, climate change adaptation is usually framed within an economic rationalist paradigm, rather than a quality of life paradigm, and consequently there are challenges and potential paradoxes associated with achieving overriding goals such as short-term economic growth. Nevertheless, Australia continues to build upon existing mitigation and risk management initiatives and has now embraced a range of policies, strategies, and promising actions to enhance climate change adaptation.

Adaptation or Manipulation? Unpacking Climate Change Response Strategies

Adaptation is a key feature of sustainable social-ecological systems. As societies traverse various temporal and spatial scales, they are exposed to differing contexts and precursors for adaptation. A cursory view of the response to these differing contexts and precursors suggests the particular ability of persistent societies to adapt to changing circumstances. Yet a closer examination into the meaning of adaptation and its relationship to concepts of resilience, vulnerability, and sustainability illustrates that, in many cases, societies actually manipulate their social-ecological contexts rather than adapt to them. It could be argued that manipulative behaviors are a subset of a broader suite of adaptive behaviors; however, this paper suggests that manipulative behaviors have fundamentally different intentions and outcomes. Specifically, adaptive behaviors are respectful of the intrinsic integrity of social-ecological systems and change is directed toward internal or self-regulating modification. By way of contrast, manipulative behaviors tend to disregard the integrity of social-ecological systems and focus on external change or manipulating the broader system with the aim of making self-regulation unnecessary. It is argued that adaptive behaviors represent long-term strategies for building resilience, whereas manipulative behaviors represent short-term strategies with uncertain consequences for resilience, vulnerability, and the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Of greatest significance; however, is that manipulative strategies have the potential to avoid authentic experiences of system dynamics, obscure valuable learning opportunities, create adverse path dependencies, and lessen the likelihood of effective adaptation in future contexts.

Building adaptive capacity in South East Queensland, Australia

The effectiveness of various adaptation options is dependent on the capacity to plan, design and implement them. Understanding the determinants of adaptive capacity is, therefore, crucial for effective responses to climate change. This paper offers an assessment of adaptive capacity across a range of sectors in South East Queensland, Australia. The paper has four parts, including (1) an overview of adaptive capacity, in particular as a learning process; (2) a description of the various methods used to determine adaptive capacity; (3) a synthesis of the determinants of adaptive capacity; and (4) the identification of mechanisms to build adaptive capacity in the region. We conclude that the major issue impacting adaptive capacity is not the availability of physical resources but the dominant social, political and institutional culture of the region.

Toward a new conceptualization of household adaptive capacity to climate change: applying a risk governance lens

Increasing evidence highlights the importance of context-specific understanding of the impacts of climate change and the need to move beyond generalized assumptions regarding the nature and utility of adaptive capacity in facilitating adaptation. The household level of impact and response is an under-researched context, despite influential decisions affecting local and system vulnerability being made at this scale. Assessments of household adaptive capacity currently assess the influences of adaptive capacity or the influences on adaptive capacity in isolation. We argue that comprehensive assessments need to examine these influences in combination to capture a dynamic and integrated view of households that better reflects their positioning and role(s) in broader social- political contexts. To transition assessments away from examining households as discrete units to recognizing their role within a larger governance context, we outline four themes focused on: (1) analysis of governance contexts, (2) determination of adaptive capacity sources, (3) assessment of cross-scalar trade-offs, and (4) integrated goal setting to facilitate boundary critiques. By considering these themes, the relationships between capacities and actions are highlighted, and the simultaneous outcomes of adaptive choices at individual and broader system scales can be evaluated. We argue that such boundary critique has the potential to yield a more comprehensive assessment of adaptive capacity focused upon cross-scalar influences and impacts.

Community-based Research: Facilitating Sustainability Learning

Interpretations of the processes and outcomes of community-based research were explored through three case studies in South-East Queensland over a two year period. The findings indicate that the ultimate goal of community-based research is to achieve sustainability learning through a combination of experiential learning, social learning and action, with a primary focus on monitoring and improving the condition of local socio-ecological systems. In addition, community-based research can provide an effective framework for public participation in natural resource management and for achieving sustainability outcomes by facilitating an extension from social interaction, to social learning through to sustainability learning.

Opinion leaders and complex sustainability issues

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify mechanisms and strategies involved in individual and local responses to complex global sustainability issues such as climate change.Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes an innovative approach to understanding the role of informal leadership and its utility in influencing societal attitudes and practice. The approach builds on theories of diffusion in which learning about new ideas, practices or technologies occurs through interpersonal communication with informal opinion leaders. It draws on findings from studies in other fields of social research, such as community health, development aid, and agriculture, in which the engagement of opinion leaders has been found to speed up the spread of responsive behaviours. The approach also analyses linkages between the concepts of response capacity to climate change and social capital with the strategies of opinion leaders for influencing societal change through informal social networks.Findings – Res...

Perceptions of Risk among Households in Two Australian Coastal Communities

There is limited knowledge of risk perceptions in coastal communities despite their vulnerability to a range of risks including the impacts of climate change. A survey of 400 households in two Australian coastal communities, combined with semi-structured interviews, provides insight into household perceptions of the relative importance of climatic and non-climatic risks and the subsequent risk priorities that may inform household adaptive action. In contrast to previous research, the results demonstrated that geographic location and household characteristics might not affect perceptions of vulnerability to environmental hazards. However, past experience was a significant influence, raising the priority of environmental concerns. Overall, the results highlight the priority concerns of coastal households (from finance, to health and environment) and suggest to increase the profile of climate issues in coastal communities climate change strategies need to better demonstrate links between climate vulnerability and other household concerns. Furthermore, promoting generic capacities in isolation from understanding the context in which households construe climate risks is unlikely to yield the changes required to decrease the vulnerability of coastal communities; ;

Perceptions matter: household adaptive capacity and capability in two Australian coastal communities

Abstract This paper presents empirical data on household perceptions of capability to adapt to climate hazards and associated capacity needs. Households play an important role in responding to the impact of a changing climate by creating a functional link between individual and community responses to change. However, household perspectives on their capacity needs are rarely sought in programs seeking to provide incentives for household action—despite the influence of normative values and perceptions on household action. Rather, interventions are often informed by quantitative measures of adaptive capacity, such as access to financial or social capital. An alternative approach involves analysis of social narratives of capability that reflect normative perceptions of climate risk and capacity needs. Implementation of this approach reveals that a significant number of households in vulnerable locations consider existing capacities sufficient to manage familiar climate hazards, regardless of socio-economic circumstance. Our comparative study of two Australian coastal communities also suggests that a dominant narrative of capability to manage climate hazards reduces the likelihood of household investments in adaptive actions. While socio-political influences on narratives are often deeply embedded and difficult to change in the short term, identifying perceived risk and response capacity is pivotal in determining the likely utility of adaptive capacity stocks as measured through quantitative means.

Scaling Sustainability Learning: Size and Scope Matter

Working across scales presents barriers and opportunities to Education for Sustainability (EfS) programmes. It changes the way these programmes are implemented and can provide the tools for addressing systemic problems that have so far eluded localized approaches to sustainability learning. In particular, issues of scale affect the implementation of contemporary EfS through: (i) greater use of communication technologies that can support information exchange and educational programmes across ever-increasing distances; (ii) the development of a broader scope for educational investment from outcomes based around individuals to opportunities for societies and even globally; and (iii) increased emphasis on the intractable nature of complex sustainability issues towards a focus on approaches that can effectively link local and global scales. Decentralized, global networks have emerged in the development, operation and implementation of EfS programmes to capitalize on these advantages and address issues associated with scale. However, there is little documented evidence of the success of decentralized global network approaches or of the inherent barriers and opportunities in scaling up EfS programmes from the local to the global scale. This article examines the concept of ‘scalability’ to develop a theoretical framework for the evaluation of EfS programmes delivered through decentralized global networks.

Adaptive capacity and climate change: the role of community opinion leaders

The contribution of the informal community sector to the development of collective response strategies to socioecological change is not well researched. In this article, we examine the role of community opinion leaders in developing and mobilising stocks of adaptive capacity. In so doing, we reveal a largely unexplored mechanism for building on latent social capital and associated networks that have the potential to transcend local-scale efforts – an enduring question in climate change adaptation and other cross-scalar sustainability issues. Participants drawn from diverse spheres of community activity in the Sunshine Coast, Australia, were interviewed about their strategies for influencing their community objectives and the degree to which they have engaged with responding to climate change. The results show community opinion leaders to be politically engaged through rich bridging connections with other community organisations, and vertically with policy-makers at local, state, national and international levels. Despite this latent potential, the majority of community opinion leaders interviewed were not strategically engaged with responding to climate change. This finding suggests that more work is needed to connect networks knowledgeable about projected climate change impacts with local networks of community opinion leaders. Attention to the type of community-based strategies considered effective and appropriate by community opinion leaders and their organisations also suggests avenues for policy-makers to facilitate community engagement in responding to climate change across sectors likely to be affected by its impacts. Opportunities to extend understanding of adaptive capacity within the community sector through further research are also suggested.