Adaptation Strategies for Reducing Vulnerability to Future Environmental Change

Adaptation Strategies for Reducing Vulnerability to Future Environmental Change Ioan Fazey Gamarra, J., Fischer, J., Reed, M.S., Stringer, L.C., Christie, M.ioan.fazey@st-andrews.ac.uk

Key message: Responses to environmental change often exacerbate problems or create new ones, so we need to be careful in the way we respond/adapt to change.

Outline Fazey, I., Gamarra, J.G.P., Fischer, J., Reed, M.S., Stringer, L., Christie, M., In Press. Adaptation strategies to reduce vulnerability to future environmental change. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 3 key prerequisites to prevent increases in vulnerability to future change: Responses need to: • Remove causes of impacts/change • Maintain and enhance response diversity • Nurture human capacities to take up response options

Prerequisite #1:Responses need to remove causes of impacts • E.g. Flooding • Bio-physical: Flood storage capacity • Human behaviour: Development on the floodplain Without removal, impacts can increase or be reinforced by responses; Bio-physical and human behavioural causes

Removal of ultimate causes COMPLETE CHANGE Mis-Alignment Full Alignment Partial Alignment Change in Behaviour Partial Techno-Fix Buffering Full Techno-Fix NO CHANGE/ REMOVAL Reduction in Bio-Physical Factor FULL REMOVAL

Key Points: Reducing causes of impacts • But adaptation strategies have different qualities; • To reduce impacts, buffering strategies usually least desirable, aligning strategies most desirable; • Multiple causes, not easy to identify.

Prerequisite #2Maintain and enhance response diversity • Responses can result in loss of response diversity; • Why is response diversity important? • Resilience and thresholds; • Altering trajectories.

Key points: Maintaining response diversity T. Hartel and C. Moga • Requires understanding of the relationships between social, economic, ecological and local contexts. Response diversity becomes more important as rates of change increase; Need to remove conditions that constrain, and design policies that directly enhance, response diversity;

Prerequisite #3Nurture human capacities to take up response options Social capacities • Conflict resolution, shared learning, flexible institutions; • Such capacity can be eroded, for example, by adaptations that promote individualism and top down policies.

- Exposure to change L. Cliggett Individual capacities: • Adaptive expertise

Values • Need values conducive to environmental sustainability; • These can be eroded by, e.g. dissociation from environmental change • - e.g. buffering responses (air conditioning, flood defences)

Conclusions Implementing effective adaptation is much more complex than is often perceived; Most strategies do not result in changes in human behaviour; Very little consideration of the ‘lock-in’ effects of responses; Challenges in maintaining capacities for people to change; Complexity and uncertainty around adaptation highlights importance of mitigation; Complexity provides opportunities as well as difficulties.

Adaptation Strategies for Reducing Vulnerability to Future Environmental Change