Lauren Rickards

Adaptation opportunities, constraints, and limits

Since the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), demand for knowledge regarding the planning and implementation of adaptation as a strategy for climate risk management has increased significantly (Preston et al., 2011a; Park et al., 2012). This chapter assesses recent literature on the opportunities that create enabling conditions for adaptation as well as the ancillary benefits that may arise from adaptive responses. It also assesses the literature on biophysical and socioeconomic constraints on adaptation and the potential for such constraints to pose limits to adaptation. Given the available evidence of observed and anticipated limits to adaptation, the chapter also discusses the ethical implications of adaptation limits and the literature on system transformational adaptation as a response to adaptation limits. To facilitate this assessment, this chapter provides an explicit framework for conceptualizing opportunities, constraints, and limits (Section 16.2). In this framework, the core concepts including definitions of adaptation, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity are consistent with those used previously in the AR4 (Adger et al., 2007). However, the material in this chapter should be considered in conjunction with that of complementary WGII AR5 chapters. These include Chapter 14 (Adaptation Needs and Options), Chapter 15 (Adaptation Planning and Implementation), and Chapter 17 (Economics of Adaptation). Material from other WGII AR5 chapters is also relevant to informing adaptation opportunities, constraints, and limits, particularly Chapter 2 (Foundations for Decision Making) and Chapter 19 (Emergent Risks and Key Vulnerabilities). This chapter also synthesizes relevant material from each of the sectoral and regional chapters (Section 16.5). To enhance its policy relevance, this chapter takes as its entry point the perspective of actors as they consider adaptation response strategies over near, medium, and longer terms (Eisenack and Stecker, 2012; Dow et al., 2013a,b). Actors may be individuals, communities, organizations, corporations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governmental agencies, or other entities responding to real or perceived climate-related stresses or opportunities as they pursue their objectives (Patt and Schroter, 2008; Blennow and Persson, 2009; Frank et al., 2011).

Keywords in planning: what do we mean by ‘community resilience’?

ABSTRACT In this paper, we critically explore the combination of a dynamic, multilayered understanding of community with an open-ended, ‘emergent’ understanding of resilience, and highlight the relevance for planners. We argue prevailing planning policies and practices on community resilience tend to work with rather simplistic, one-dimensional understandings of both ‘community’ and ‘resilience’. The multiple layers of meaning that are embedded in the word community are ignored when it is treated as an add-on intended to give underlying ideas about resilience planning greater public appeal. Apart and together the concepts of community and resilience bring into play a host of tensions between, for example, continuity and change, resistance and adaptation, inclusion and exclusion. This paper offers a framework for ensuring that these important considerations are openly negotiated within transparent normative frameworks of planning policy and practice.

Metaphor and the Anthropocene: Presenting Humans as a Geological Force

Intellectually as well as materially, the Anthropocene is a deeply cultural phenomenon. This includes its communicative form, which is a contested trope-rich narrative, even within the sciences. In this essay I focus on the role of metaphor in Anthropocene thought and in particular, on the provocative, ambiguous, and potentially far-reaching idea of humans as a geological force. By considering the different interpretations and meaning this metaphor encourages - including differences in what is meant by geological and force, both within and beyond stratigraphy and Earth System Science - we gain a stronger sense of the deeply allegorical and theological character of the Anthropocene story and the way it promises to reposition humans in the world.

Geographies of the Anthropocene

Introduction If humans have become a rival to Nature, then the epic nomenclature of the great forces – the eras, periods, and epochs of geological time – have finally been reconciled with the social, something geographers might cheer or lament. For over a century, there have been calls to recognise human impact with its own geological epoch. The most recent of these calls – and the most significant given the unprecedented shift in Earth system functioning (Steffen et al., 2011) – proposes the name the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). To date, the Anthropocene has been also the most successful in terms of its academic and popular reception. The proposal has led to an explosion of popular and academic debate among both scientific and social thinkers, and for both groups the proposal has refreshed long-standing exploration of the purported division between science and society (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). This paper introduces concepts and debates within a special issue of Geographical Research that deals with the Anthropocene. Our aim is to contribute to and help consolidate the rapidly expanding discourse that explores humanity as akin to a geological force, but with the added emphasis on geography and geographers. Geographers have a history of both being wary of ‘buzzwords’, only with hindsight to lament missed opportunities when those buzzwords are adopted by other disciplines and become the convention (see environmental studies). Is the ‘Anthropocene’ a fad, an important idea that should be embraced by geographers, or something altogether different? The notion of the Anthropocene is not so far settled that it cannot be influenced by the discipline of Geography, and there is reason to think that Geography has much to offer regardless of whether the concept becomes widely or popularly adopted or discarded. More important than the issue of its definition are the moral, cultural, and political challenges that the Anthropocene is amplifying. Geographers, then, have an opportunity to consider the concept during its ‘adolescence’ (cf Castree, 2014c) and to, simultaneously, consider whether and how the discipline might capitalise on what appears to be a rapid ascension. This ‘opportunity-challenge’ has been recognised and explored by geographers elsewhere (e.g. Dalby, 2007; Gibson-Graham, 2011; Yusoff, 2013b; Castree, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; Johnson et al., 2014; Whitehead, 2014; Young, 2014), leading us to take up a promising and daunting issue to emerge from those Anthropocene-Geography discussions: whether and how this concept might present a ‘meeting place’ for the heterogeneous groups, framings, and sub-disciplinary specialisms that make up the discipline. The Anthropocene is a concept that is being adopted in wide and divergent ways. Our goal here is not in any way to establish consensus or impose direction, but to explore emergent themes in the context of Geography. The Anthropocene requires a sophisticated approach to space, time, knowledge, politics, social action, and, perhaps most of all, interactions between human and environmental systems, including the empirical and ontological blurring of these categories. As bs_bs_banner

Geographies of the A nthropocene

Introduction If humans have become a rival to Nature, then the epic nomenclature of the great forces – the eras, periods, and epochs of geological time – have finally been reconciled with the social, something geographers might cheer or lament. For over a century, there have been calls to recognise human impact with its own geological epoch. The most recent of these calls – and the most significant given the unprecedented shift in Earth system functioning (Steffen et al., 2011) – proposes the name the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). To date, the Anthropocene has been also the most successful in terms of its academic and popular reception. The proposal has led to an explosion of popular and academic debate among both scientific and social thinkers, and for both groups the proposal has refreshed long-standing exploration of the purported division between science and society (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). This paper introduces concepts and debates within a special issue of Geographical Research that deals with the Anthropocene. Our aim is to contribute to and help consolidate the rapidly expanding discourse that explores humanity as akin to a geological force, but with the added emphasis on geography and geographers. Geographers have a history of both being wary of ‘buzzwords’, only with hindsight to lament missed opportunities when those buzzwords are adopted by other disciplines and become the convention (see environmental studies). Is the ‘Anthropocene’ a fad, an important idea that should be embraced by geographers, or something altogether different? The notion of the Anthropocene is not so far settled that it cannot be influenced by the discipline of Geography, and there is reason to think that Geography has much to offer regardless of whether the concept becomes widely or popularly adopted or discarded. More important than the issue of its definition are the moral, cultural, and political challenges that the Anthropocene is amplifying. Geographers, then, have an opportunity to consider the concept during its ‘adolescence’ (cf Castree, 2014c) and to, simultaneously, consider whether and how the discipline might capitalise on what appears to be a rapid ascension. This ‘opportunity-challenge’ has been recognised and explored by geographers elsewhere (e.g. Dalby, 2007; Gibson-Graham, 2011; Yusoff, 2013b; Castree, 2014a; 2014b; 2014c; Johnson et al., 2014; Whitehead, 2014; Young, 2014), leading us to take up a promising and daunting issue to emerge from those Anthropocene-Geography discussions: whether and how this concept might present a ‘meeting place’ for the heterogeneous groups, framings, and sub-disciplinary specialisms that make up the discipline. The Anthropocene is a concept that is being adopted in wide and divergent ways. Our goal here is not in any way to establish consensus or impose direction, but to explore emergent themes in the context of Geography. The Anthropocene requires a sophisticated approach to space, time, knowledge, politics, social action, and, perhaps most of all, interactions between human and environmental systems, including the empirical and ontological blurring of these categories. As bs_bs_banner

The possibilities and limits to dialogue

In this article, we explore the nature, value, and challenges of dialogue both within and outside the academy. After considering the possibilities and limits to dialogue, we divide our analysis into three sections, first discussing dialogue as a form of embodied action, next examining dialogue as a means of enacting a critically affirmative politics, and finally exploring the challenges of engaging in dialogue as a way of practicing public geographies. In each case, we raise a number of questions concerning the potential of, and limitations to, dialogue in an age of increasing social tensions and political divides. We conclude by suggesting that although there are times when dialogical disengagement is warranted if the conditions of possibility for meaningful dialogue are unfulfilled, scholarly dialogue continues to play an important role in fostering spaces of mutual engagement in a polarized age.

Urban studies after the age of the city

For some time now, the field of urban studies has been attempting to figure the urban whilst cognisant of the fact that the city exists as a highly problematic category of analysis. In this virtual special issue, we draw together some examples of what we call urban concepts under stress; concepts which appear to be reaching the limits of their capacity to render knowable a world characterised by the death of the city and the ascent of multi-scalar de-territorialisations and re-territorialisations. We organise the papers selected for inclusion into three bundles dealing respectively with complex urban systems, the hinterland problematic and governing cities in the age of flows. The phenomenon of urban concepts under stress stems from the existence of a gap between existing cartographies, visualisations and lexicons of the urban and 21st century spatial conditions and territorialities. Given that this disarticulation will surely increase as this century unfolds, a pressing question presents itself: what is to be done with the field of urban studies after the age of the city? In this introduction, we argue that there exist at least six ways of responding to the present conceptual difficulties, each implying a different future for urban studies. We place under particular scrutiny voices which argue that nothing less than a scholarly tabula rasa will suffice. Our conclusion is that the phenomenon of concepts under stress provides an opportunity to think afresh about what to do with the field of urban studies and that it is premature to foreclose discussion about possible futures at this point.

Critiquing, mining and engaging Anthropocene science

Among the many demands that the Anthropocene places on us is a demand to engage seriously with science. Noel Castree’s bold call to human geographers to engage with the scientific ‘Anthroposcene’ implicitly requires that we revisit and refine our intellectual stance towards science in the contemporary era. In its various guises, Anthropocene science is both a ready target for critique and a valuable resource for progressive scholarship. The resultant ambiguities mean that above all it requires genuine engagement of the sort Castree envisages: critical but interested, sceptical but open.

Neglected Transformational Responses

Greenhouse gas conventions and metrics have powerful framing effects, significantly under-reporting emissions and obscuring the impact of shorter-lived emissions. This interdisciplinary Australian case study re-calculates emissions to include short lived gases and use 20 year Global Warming Potentials (GWPs), a timeframe relevant to averting catastrophic change. Australias annual emissions more than double when compared to the national inventory, with agriculture producing 54% of the national total. Ruminant livestock emerge as a transformative mitigation opportunity. While success in rapid cuts could revitalise other mitigation efforts, it would require demand-led change and significant producer adaptation. Most siloed analyses neglect such flow-on effects.

Growing the social life of soil

This is likely to be a big week for soils. World soil day is being celebrated on the 5 December at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, and in a series of nationally-based events coordinated around the world. The theme for world soil day – ‘soils a solid ground for life’ – represents something of a culmination of the 2015 International Year of Soils. In the face of the dire warnings of ‘peak soil’, ‘peak nitrate’ and ‘peak phosphorus’ in the declaration of 2015 as the International Year of Soils soil appears as a figure of both concern and hope. Images of soil degradation and desertification that “continue to pose serious challenges to the sustainable development of all countries, in particular developing countries” are contrasted with an optimism that “good land management”, will contribute to ‘economic growth’, ‘sustainable agriculture and food security’, ‘women’s empowerment’ and ‘addressing climate change’. In the midst of the seemingly inexorable degradation of soils, soil management is increasingly being enrolled in a range of humanitarian, political and environmental projects.