Equitable Adaptation: a Human-Centric Approach?

In order to tackle climate change, we should review its effects with a dualistic approach both from a more scientific and as well a human-centric perspective. The former analyses more in depth the ecological consequences that changes in climate variables, such as temperature, precipitations etc would have in different forecasted scenarios in a rational logic of cause-effect. The latter considers more in depth the involvement into the warming of the climate as well the socio-economic-political aspects which affect different regions in the world in different ways. By doing so, we come also to the matter of equitability: can we approach climate change policies in a more equitable way? And how would this then benefit the whole globe? How do we convince policy makers of the advantages in sustaining such policies?

Today's globalization and global supply chains impact both positively and negatively all regions in the world in a two way stream. Today's situation is an example, we might face ourselves with a high surplus of production of wheat in regions such as Ukraine or Poland, whereas African countries suffer from malnutrition. Canada is one of the biggest providers of drinkable water in the world, while at the same time Mexico suffers from seasonal droughts which destroy the crops and cannot satisfy the necessary water demand. If there would be global goals in place by policy makers in alignment with the SDGs and not based on short-term profitability, the equitability of climate change action would collectively influence positive outcome in climate mitigation and adaptive capacity. It would be then scientists' role must elucidate links between poverty, risk and loss to allow global targets to be reset accordingly, therefore merging a more purely scientific approach with a socio-human centric one.

The people most affected by climate change present a clear proportionate link to the poverty level: they tend to lose a bigger proportion of their wealth when hazards occur, they do not own any private insurance, cannot purchase medicine and their professions are more likely to be influenced by climate change (farming, fishing...), all of this leading as well to higher flows of migrations.

Development is often also not a viable option to improve the conditions of the poorest: technical and mechanical development of farming and housing tends to make their professions obsolete and financially unsustainable or to create more marginalized areas in cities where more advanced housing is not affordable. Hence, overall the risks are increased rather than minimized. 

For adaptation to be equitable, argues Pelling, M. and M. Garschagen (2019), it needs to be centric to the poorest, for moral and ethical reasons, as well as to improve productivity, social cohesion, peace and overall global economies and supply chains efficiencies. 

"Adaptation projects should create opportunities as well as reduce risk. More emphasis should be placed on the rule of law, security of the person, equality of opportunity and inclusivity."

The author comes also with three main points to be improved by the academic research in order to thoroughly analyse equitable adaptation: first, to communicate more with the locals in order to understand their needs and not impose what externals might assume as the correct pathway; second, adaptation policies must consider all communities of the region and not only for example the least vulnerable ones im order to obtain a more cohesive approach; third, measures and research is usually based on averages and aggregates, creating a unequal outcome for those positioned at the extremes of the spectrum.

I believe that the biggest challenge to equitable adaptation is really the lack of political leadership and commitment, which can come from a lack of long-term planning, knowledge in the political factors that affect climate warming and generally speaking institutional settings and legislation. Deep diving into this, we can maybe be more specific in saying that the commitments usually come from international institutions and are then not facilitated in the local implementation which might present also heavier financial barriers.

References:

European Committee of the Regions, Gancheva, M., O’Brien, S., Tugran, T., et al., Adapting to climate change : challenges and opportunities for the EU local and regional authorities, European Committee of the Regions, 2020

Pelling, M. and M. Garschagen ’Put equity first in climate adaptation’, Nature 569(7756) 2019, pp.327–329.