What is it about?
What are the socioeconomic and cultural factors that constrain climate change adaptation? In this article with Jon Barnett we use a political economy angle to show that adaptation barriers are not only behavioural or cultural - people not wanting to adapt - but are also shaped by governments, markets and institutions.
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Photo by Vernon Raineil Cenzon on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Adaptation to climate change - managing the unavoidable - is becoming increasingly urgent, yet there are many factors delaying adaptation. It is crucial to understand what these constraints or barriers are, especially those of a socio-economic nature, which involve context-specific elements that cannot be applied across the board. This article looks at the root causes of powerlessness and social injustice and conceptualises constraints to adaptation as emanating from outside the actor’s reach. Interests, institutions and ideas often interact in ways that do not protect public goods, constituting a barrier to adaptation.
Perspectives
We argue that overcoming constraints to adaptation largely depends on the willingness to act on the deeper political economic processes that give rise to them
Dr Sergio Jarillo
University of Melbourne
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The political economy of the social constraints to adaptation, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, December 2024, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.cosust.2024.101475.
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