Adaptation to Climate Change Part 4

5 Organisational external action The organisation takes action to modify its relations.h.i.+p with the external environment.

The organisation changes its external communication strategy.

model excludes routine responses to external stimuli which are considered part of the legacy of past rounds of adaptation already integrated into existing management and culture.

As has been argued above, self-organised (agent centred), reflexive adaptation targeted at the external environment (4) or inst.i.tutional architecture (2) are arguably the most significant indicators of resilience. An organisation that enables reflexive adaptation through internal critical reasoning is more likely to be able to respond to abrupt and unforeseen threats and opportunities a.s.sociated with climate change. Reflexive adaptation, especially that which seeks to challenge existing canonical inst.i.tutions, is strengthened by a strong shadow system. The key challenge for organisations is how to support but not to manage the shadow system. This is a question we turn to in Chapter 6.

Conclusion.

Adaptation as resilience is characterised by actions that seek to protect priority functions in the face of external threat. In this way resilience does not directly seek to realign development relations. However, within individual organisations protecting priority functions can require internal transitional or potentially transformational change. Existing literature on resilience has attached a range of meanings to this term. Most developed is the socio-ecological systems literature that characterises resilient systems as those that exhibit capacity for social learning and self-organisation as well as displaying functional persistence. Social learning describes the pathways and social relations.h.i.+ps that shape information exchange and can lead to new ways of thinking or acting; self-organisation is attributed to novel and un-directed collective action. Both are generic social phenomenon that can be used to examine the shaping of transitional and transformative adaptation. The distinction between these levels of adaptation is the focus and intention behind social learning and self-organisation rather than the mode.

Organisational theory is complementary to SES in providing a framework to examine the ways in which relations.h.i.+ps between canonical and shadow systems within and between organisations shape information exchange, providing scope for learning and innovation. Shadow systems provide a key resource for experimentation because ideas and actions are hidden from formal scrutiny. They can also be a challenge for formal management and so represent a source of conflict between the imperatives for flexibility and transparency. This is an especially difficult problem to resolve in public sector organisations and corporate civil society organisations. Wenger's concepts of boundary organisations and individuals that can work to transfer information between epistemic communities helps to identify a key resource in adapting to climate change where conversations between science and policy are required to prevent maladaptation. They can also help to overcome the limited conceptualisation of climate change adaptation which continues to be framed as a primarily technical rather than a social and political agenda. This framing is in part an outcome of professional specialism and the division of development policy into ministerial silos, and also of the short-term decision-making enforced through budget and electoral cycles. Working to support boundary organisations and to better understand the shadow systems are two ways in which resilience as adaptation can be supported and potentially allowed to contribute towards wider movements of transitional and transformative social change.

4.

Adaptation as transition.

Risk and governance.

When special efforts are made by a diffusion agency, it is possible to narrow, or at least prevent the widening of, socioeconomic gaps in a social system. In other words, widening gaps are not inevitable.

(Rogers, 1995:442).

Because socio-ecological relations are embedded within economic, political, social and cultural relations, adaptation will touch every aspect of social life, not simply an actor's vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. This will include relations with distant others, to future generations as well as those living in geographically far-away places, now connected by the times.p.a.ce compressions (Ma.s.sey, 1994) and teleconnections (Adger et al., 2009b) of globalisation and global environmental change. Rogers' (1995) opening observation reminds us of the intimate connections between the spreading of new ideas and practices in society and social context. Even planned innovation and adaptation in society can exaggerate existing inequalities or generate new ones. Without care, those with most a.s.sets and freedom to adapt to climate change will gain additional advantage over those who do not. Rogers' work on the interaction of social and cultural context with the diffusion of innovations in society has wider relevance to studies of adaptation (Atwell et al., 2008). These are returned to in Chapter 9.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a broad conceptual framework to examine adaptation as transition. This is incremental change to social (including economic, political and cultural) relations as part of adapting to climate change. Transitional acts can describe both those that do not intend, or do not result in, regime change (see Chapter 5), but do seek to implement innovations and exercise existing rights within the prevailing order. Transitional adaptation is therefore an intermediary form of adaptation. It can indicate an extension of resilient adaptation to include a greater focus on governance, or an incomplete form of transformational adaptation that falls short of political regime change. From an empirical perspective intent is as important as outcome in indicating transitional, resilient or transformational adaptation. Not all transitional actions will achieve the intended outcomes but they nonetheless reveal critical capacity through intention.

The a.s.sociation of innovation making with rights makes the social dimension of adaptation explicit, even when there is no observed change to regime form. This is especially true in those social contexts where rights may have been dormant or suppressed under the prevailing social system. Where this is the case, their invocation can generate transitional social change. There are many examples of this from the environmental justice movement where the a.s.serting of existing legal rights is seen as a method for reducing vulnerability to industrial pollution, and at the same time reinforces these same rights (as well as building other capacities in local social organisation, confidence and so on) (Melosi, 2000; Agyeman et al., 2003).

The multiple scales at which social systems operate means that transition can theoretically be implemented and observed operating at the levels of local, community or regime systems, and in more complicated a.n.a.lysis across these scales. Where adaptations and a.s.sociated rights claims involve multiple levels of actor (for example, a squatter community and munic.i.p.al government) transitional adaptation demonstrates the importance of multi- or cross-scale a.n.a.lysis (see below).

In this chapter we are interested in the potential for adaptation a.s.sociated with climate change to open s.p.a.ce for wider and connected reform within the constraints of existing governance regimes. This provides a driver for actors to a.s.sert rights or claim ent.i.tlements to partic.i.p.ate in development and risk management and enable progressive transition; that is, improved action on social justice and environmental integrity as part of everyday development.

This chapter extends the framework of social learning and self-organisation put forward in Chapter 3 by considering two additions. First an actor-oriented approach to regime theory is offered. This is then developed by literature on socio-technological transitions to examine in more detail the pressures shaping innovation and the dissemination of alternative visions and practices through governance regimes. The combined framework is then ill.u.s.trated through an a.n.a.lysis of the opportunities for transitional adaptation in a single management regime rising to prominence in climate change adaptation: urban disaster risk management. This also helps to prefigure the detailed a.n.a.lysis of urban, primarily transitional adaptation presented in Chapter 7.

A vision of adaptation as transition.

Transitional action is targeted at reform in the application of governance. It goes beyond the aim of functional persistence but falls short of aiming directly to realign political structures. Both transition and transformation indicate adaptation in governance systems. For transitional adaptation reform is incremental, undertaken at the level of individual policy sectors or specific geographical areas. There is the potential for bottom-up, aggregate transformational change through, for example, the promotion of stakeholder partic.i.p.ation in decision-making, leading to the inclusion of new perspectives and values in emerging policy. By contrast adaptation as transformation is composed of adaptive acts that consciously target reform in or replacement of the dominant political-cultural regime as primary or secondary goals (see Chapters 5 and 8).

Governance and transition.

Governance systems are composed of multiple actors including public, private or civil society organisations held together through formal and informal inst.i.tutions that reproduce the balance of power and direction of development pathways in society. Governance operates at multiple scales with overlapping influence; for example, a local water management regime including user groups might be responsible for day-to-day decision-making but given legitimacy by, and made accountable to, national regulators. The nested and overlapping quality of governance regimes provides opportunity for adaptations to spread horizontally and vertically through communication networks and also for the top-down support or dissemination of adaptive capacity and practices. Where progressive adaptation as transition challenges established practices, or those of other competing emergent adaptations, overlapping administrative responsibilities with internal interactions, alliances and linkages can generate resistance to change (Foxton, 2007). Some degree of inst.i.tutional inertia is healthy for governance systems to provide stability and so a predictable policy environment for development actors to invest. The focus of adaptation as transition is on the s.h.i.+fting balance between stability and reform in the organisational structure played out through movement in the social distribution of exercised rights and responsibilities motivated by perceived and felt pressures a.s.sociated with climate change. This is articulated through the degree of information dissemination, inclusiveness and influence in decision-making within governance systems and const.i.tuent organisations and sectors of practice.

The role of governance in determining the speed and direction of innovation dissemination is ill.u.s.trated by Atwell et al.'s (2008) study of adaptation within the north-central US Corn Belt. They observed that individual farmers' decisions to accept or reject environmentally friendly farming practices were influenced by three scales of governance: individual, community and overarching regime. Interaction between these three layers is further elaborated in transitions theory (see below). The dissemination of new information was most likely to result in the uptake of new practices when communicated to a farmer by a neighbour. Trust embedded in personal relations.h.i.+ps and the shared challenges neighbours face was more persuasive than government initiatives and also acted as a sanction on individual actions that might not have been locally socially acceptable as respondents chose between competing strategies in the exercising of farming rights.

All governance systems require actors with varying degrees of power, transparency and legitimacy to undertake at least some limited form of negotiation, causing Young (1999) to describe governance regimes as bargaining processes. The outcomes of negotiation are a product of the relative power of actors during bargaining and the implementation of agreed rules. Change in a governance system 'involves the alteration of the rules and decision-making, not of norms nor principles' (Krasner, 1983:5). This is an important distinction to make and points research to the possibility that difference and changes within norms or principles over time and s.p.a.ce may not be mirrored in changes in the rules and decisions made in the regime. This allows for adaptive changes in administrative structure, technical innovation, land use and so on at the level of governance and its subsequent policy framework without challenging the overarching regime of norms and principles within which governance rests. Over time or as a result of sudden changes in the operating environment or in internal relations discontinuities between norms and principles on the one hand and governance mechanisms and practices on the other can potentially trigger transformative change in the regime or top-down pressures for transitional change in the governance system. The extent to which dominant norms and principles and governance rules are antagonistic or complementary may be a good indicator of the resistance of both the governance system and the wider regime to reform including that of progressive adaptation.

A sense of the scope for aspects of governance to enable progressive adaptation to climate change can be indicated by the relations.h.i.+ps between actors and inst.i.tutions. Actors include individuals and organisations with stakes in a policy domain; inst.i.tutions are for formal (legislation and guidelines) and informal (cultural norms) rules that determine how actors interrelate (North, 1990). Inst.i.tutions constrain the aspirations and behaviour of actors but can also facilitate change by legitimating processes of critique and reform (Seo and Creed, 2002). Much of the literature on governance change privileges inst.i.tutions over agency (for example, Krasner, 1983); it focuses on the power of decision-making procedures, rules and cultures to determine scope for reform. The focus is on understanding the persistence of inst.i.tutions over time rather than how they may be changed and the role of actors in this. For example, Gunderson and Holling (2002) refer to rigidity traps where people and inst.i.tutions try to resist change and persist with their current management and governance system despite a clear recognition that change is essential.

Emerging actor-oriented approaches offer scope for exploring how inst.i.tutions come to be changed a central question in studies of adaptation. Work here focuses on networks of social relations and information flow within governance regimes and their capacity to surface new ideas that may generate individual policy entrepreneurs and the evolution of epistemic communities, where actors from across a governance regime come to share a common viewpoint and can collectively promote change through purposeful advocacy or as a result of collective changes in practice where governance systems are more resistant to change (Hasenclever et al., 1997; Warner, 2003).

The points at which change in the inst.i.tutional architecture might be expected arises from internal contradictions inherent in the inst.i.tutional systems of governance. Seo and Creed (2002) propose four contradictions which help identify pinch points, where challenges to existing inst.i.tutional arrangements might be expected to arise. First, where rules and norms are encompa.s.sing and general they may confer reputation rewards but constrain other organisational aims such as efficiency or rent-seeking. This tension encourages selective-decoupling where ritual conformity hides deviations. As the gap between the demands of legitimacy and other behaviour expands so pressure for inst.i.tutional change grows. Second, path dependency (Arthur, 1989) suggests that incremental investments in physical, human and social capital lead organisations to prefer investments to protect established functions and practices even in the face of environmental change, until a crisis point forces inst.i.tutional change. Third, where the wide range of inst.i.tutions within society can lead to conflicts or inconsistencies generated by the interactions between the inst.i.tutional arrangements of different levels or sectors within a regime forcing change. Fourth, a.s.suming inst.i.tutions reflect and protect the interests of the more dominant political actors in society, inst.i.tutional change can arise from political realignment and also when previously pa.s.sive or marginal actors become conscious of the inst.i.tutional conditions that leave their needs unmet (Benson, 1977). The capacity for critical consciousness and actor reflection on established inst.i.tutions is arguably the most fundamental element of any actor-oriented governance reform. The extent to which critical consciousness is able to generate actor mobilisation and collective action is explored in more detail in Chapters 6, 7 and 8.

The actor-oriented approach is also useful in avoiding simple, causal explanations for social organisation outcomes. This includes a.s.sumptions about the hegemony of state power, the subordination of the local communities and the superiority of the laws of the market (Booth, 1994). In this way one of the significant features of the actor-oriented approach is that it places explanatory value on the agency of even apparently weak or marginal actors (Zimmerer and Ba.s.set, 2003). This has encouraged work that has placed emphasis upon the importance of marginal actors (Farrington and Bebbington, 1993) such as small local NGOs or people at risk. It also allows a more detailed treatment of the state and how it interacts with the non-state groups than was possible under more structural interpretations that saw the state bluntly as a h.o.m.ogeneous ent.i.ty and also as a tool of the most powerful cla.s.ses to protect their best interests (Watts, 2000).

The context specific nature of the interaction between actors and inst.i.tutions is well ill.u.s.trated by Warner's (2003) comparative a.n.a.lysis of political entrepreneurs.h.i.+p in flood management for Bangladesh and the Netherlands. In Bangladesh rigid governance and a conservative administrative culture constrained opportunities for change from within so that governance responded best to pressure exerted by powerful, external actors; in this case development aid donors. In the Netherlands a flexible governance form fostered political entrepreneurs.h.i.+p and allowed interdepartmental alliances to form and collectively push for reform from within, although the partic.i.p.atory Dutch administrative culture actually slowed this process through drawn-out rounds of consultation which also acted as an opportunity for thorough review of proposed reforms.

Where might alternative visions and practices be fostered within existing governance regimes, and how might such innovations be tested and diffused to the wider society? Where canonical systems resist change Chapter 3 shows the scope for shadow systems to act as a place of experimentation and learning within organisations. Can shadow s.p.a.ces exist at the level of the governance systems in collaborations between social organisations on projects that are not supported by or run counter to the dominant governance regime? If yes, can they offer a place for building diversity in thinking and practice that can be formalised if new problems arise (Cohen et al., 1972)? The evidence presented in Chapters 7 and 8 suggests strongly that shadow systems operating as informal networks are a powerful influence of capacity for transitional adaptation. Such polycentric forms can both spread and reduce risk in society, and compensate for failures in other levels of governance (Ostrom, 2005). An example of this is the provision of services or information that are not available formally information on how to undertake local adaptive measures or by providing post-disaster lifelines when state agencies are compromised (see also IFRC, 2010). Work on socio-technical systems offers some insight onto these questions and it is to this literature that we now turn to add some detail to the broad framework of actor-oriented a.n.a.lysis of regimes.

Socio-technical transitions.

Socio-technical transitions work has sought to examine what it is that directs individual development pathways. Reminiscent of coevolutionary theory, transitions in policy or economic domains are explained through changes in and interaction between technological innovation, cultural preferences, industrial production processes, government incentives and demography (Seyfang and Smith, 2007). Insight from this literature is helpful in refining a framework to help understand processes of transition in adaptation, although the emphasis of enquiry moves from delineating histories of socio-technical change to identifying those characteristics of societies that can influence the emergence of opportunities for transition as part of adaptation, the consequences of which might be progressive or regressive for social justice and environmental integrity.

The socio-technical transitional literature, which draws broadly from systems science, is compatible with our existing framework in so far as it acknowledges the role of power (Rip and Kemp, 1998) and agency (Seyfang and Smith, 2007) of competing interests, embodied in innovations, established practices and inst.i.tutions interacting often across governance scales in shaping the inst.i.tutional architecture of development. One confounding limitation of this literature is a failure to distinguish adequately between transitional and transformational change. Both are used, sometimes synonymously. At root this is a failure to separate governance systems from the overarching socio-political regime. The former is taken as a sub-set of the latter with transitional change an aspect of transformation and not identified as a goal in itself. Thus, drawing on Rotmans et al. (2001), Jerneck and Olsson (2008:176) are able to claim that 'Transitions and transformation processes in societies, or subsystems thereof, change profoundly in terms of structures, inst.i.tutions and relations between actors. After a transition, the society, or a subsystem, operates according to new a.s.sumptions and rules'.

While on the ground it may not always be clear or helpful to distinguish between transition and transformation, it is nonetheless important to identify transformation as an extreme case where profound change alters the distribution of rights and responsibilities and visions of development across society (see Chapter 5). Individual transitions fall short of this and describe incremental changes to the aims and practices of geographically or sectorally bound activities that push but do not overturn established political regimes. For this reason the transitions perspective is used below to help identify pathways for change. These can then be applied to a.n.a.lyse capacity for, or past trajectories with, transitional (claiming rights within existing regimes) or transformational (replacing regimes with new rights compacts) outcomes. Empirical work presented in Chapter 7 applies this framework to examine transitional adaptation and its messy connections with resilience and transformation in the Mexican Caribbean.

From its origins in industrial history, the transitions literature has expanded to critiques of sustainable development, arguing that not only contemporary practices but the solutions they generate for development challenges are unsustainable because they fail to address fundamental values driving dominant development paths (Rotmans et al., 2001). Transitions framings have most recently been applied to climate change mitigation through, for example, research on transition to low-carbon living in the UK (Haxeltine and Seyfang, 2009). Both agendas demonstrate the potential utility of transitions framing for contributing to understandings of transitional (and transformational) adaptations. This is particularly so in the context of poorer societies at risk to the local impacts of climate change where adaptation is a more pressing priority than mitigation and extremes in social inequality and access to human rights and basic needs demand adaptation confront failed development policy regimes.

Like the socio-technical transitions proposed for sustainable development challenges, a.n.a.lysing opportunities and outcomes for a progressive, transitional adaptation benefits from a lens that can examine technological innovation and evolution as a social process. Geels (2005) describes the protected s.p.a.ces where new technological or management innovations develop as socio-technical niches, suggesting that innovation originates from local experimentation. Niches are set in contrast with the dominant socio-technical regime operating at the meso-level, and the larger macro-level contextualising political, economic, cultural and environmental 'landscape'. Berkhaut et al. (2004) also observe that change in the regime may be driven top-down by perturbations in the wider landscape. Amongst the most useful findings of this literature are proposals, supported by case study work, for specific pathways and strategies that determine how far a socio-technical innovation is able to escape from its protective niche and overturn the dominant regime (Geels and Schot, 2007), and the identification of the barriers to regime change that promote path dependence. These barriers include the repet.i.tion of cognitive routines that blind professionals to developments outside their focus (Nelson and Winter, 1982), regulations and standards that enforce rigidity (Unruh, 2000), lock-in of adaptation to technical systems so that the costs of transition relative to resilience increase over time through fixed investments in machines, infrastructures and competencies until systems thresholds are crossed by external drivers such as regulation, market changes or natural disaster (Tushman and Anderson, 1986). These drivers and constraints have suggested to some a.n.a.lysts that activity at the niche level alone is not enough to generate transitions and rather this is an outcome of multi-level collaboration and in the process local experiments and regime practices will be mutually adjusted and compromised (Seyfang and Smith, 2007).

The closest empirical focus to adaptation has perhaps been made by Seyfang and Smith (2007) who recalibrated socio-technological transitions theory to examine the emergence and diffusion of ideas and practices from gra.s.sroots environmentalism in Europe including social businesses, cooperatives and informal community groups. This is helpful in drawing out differences between entrepreneurial innovation, where risks and rewards are managed through the market with modest government support; and innovation in the social economy, where local groups and individuals invest social as well as economic capital in innovations and where rewards tend to be more dissipated and motivations are driven more by ideology than economics. Gra.s.sroots niches are found to be catalysts for partic.i.p.ation where individuals and communities can build confidence, a shared sense of values and ambition for change, skills and capacity for further rounds of learning and innovation. Some of these very a.s.sets that make communities adapt at innovation can also be barriers for diffusion including the geographical specificity of experiments, strong ident.i.ty and visions for the future which may be antagonistic with overarching regimes suggesting that some degree of translation and compromise is required for bottom-up reform, or that there is significant change affecting the regime from the top down to motivate the search for alternatives (Church, 2005). This is precisely the opportunity that climate change brings.

Haxeltine and Seyfang (2009) identify three modes through which local innovations can come to influence the wider regime: * Replication: horizontal reproduction through multiple, small initiatives * Scaling-up: the expansion of individual initiatives as they attract more partic.i.p.ants * Mainstreaming: the absorption of innovations into dominant policy and practice.

Experience from attempts at spreading disaster risk reduction from local community initiatives shows just how difficult gra.s.sroots socio-technical transitions can be. This is the case especially when the dominant regime is ambivalent, sceptical or antagonistic, and where innovation is perceived to threaten local or national established interests. Challenges arise when both seeking to support local innovation without disrupting preferred local social relations, and in promoting the wider influence of successful innovations. Box 4.1 summarises a review of experience generated through a workshop discussion with community-based disaster risk managers including international agencies such Tearfund, Box 4.1 Lessons in making transitions from community-based disaster risk management Community-based disaster risk management fosters inclusive approaches to disaster risk reduction, with a special focus on livelihood sustainability in light of disaster risk, and calls for the utilisation of local knowledge and skills. It has become a popular strategy for international and local development and humanitarian NGOs seeking to find ways of empowering those at risk to manage their own vulnerability. Despite such enthusiasm there are relatively few examples of long-term success. Partic.i.p.ants in the workshop identified nine reasons for this: * Ineffective translation and communication of climate science within communities.

* A lack of long-term financial support for local capacity-building and the longitudinal application of community-based disaster risk management.

* Local abuse of power granted by community-based disaster risk management to local actors, which can lead to community fragmentation.

* Resistance from local elites when community-based disaster risk management is perceived as a threat to the status quo.

* Difficulties for implementation in unstable communities facing economic or political stress.

* Difficulties for implementation on a larger scale, and related limits on the a.n.a.lytical and policy applications generated by community-based disaster risk management.

* A failure to link with broader and/or longer-term development priorities and activities.

* The generation of inequality as some neighbourhoods build resilience through community-based disaster risk management while others remain vulnerable.

* The lack of local success stories to act as examples for scaling-up and replication.

These challenges to the repeating of success are likely to apply across policy fields, to other contexts where progressive external actors seek to build local adaptive capacity through empowerment methods. Specific challenges were also reported from those actors who had attempted to support or lead mainstreaming, scaling-up and replication of local successes.

Mainstreaming in governments and communities faced distinct challenges. For governments, seeking support for community-based disaster risk management and its outputs led to compet.i.tion with other priorities and required a framework to link efforts between local and national actors.

Local communities needed inst.i.tutional channels to establish dialogue with the government, particularly about risk perception, diversity within the community (social and economic) and legal ent.i.tlements to risk reduction.

Scaling-up required a functioning inst.i.tutional infrastructure and so was most likely to be found within a supportive, inclusive and open governance system.

Replication was also be found where central inst.i.tutions were supportive but did not rely on this. It can provide a means of reproducing good local practice when governance systems are unable or unwilling to support scaling-up. In urban slum settlements and isolated rural communities beyond the reach of the state, expansion through horizontal replication was undertaken where existing networks of community actors and organisations could provide the inst.i.tutional framework for replication.

Community-based disaster risk management was found to be most successful when local actors, local leaders and government representatives led and worked together. Where this was possible, it maximised opportunities for mobilising joint action. Furthermore, partners.h.i.+ps led to additional benefits from the extension of local resources and the building of generic human capacity as local actors turned from beneficiaries to planners and advocates taking on rights and responsibility for local risk management.

Where there was an inst.i.tutional framework to support bottom-up initiatives, this enabled local actors to feed into a.n.a.lysis and interventions designed to address structural issues related to national-level vulnerabilities. These plans were otherwise beyond the reach of community-based disaster risk management and at times conflicted with it. The major challenge for reproducing community-based disaster risk management was how to successfully encourage sustained governmental involvement set against competing budgetary pressures and with the potential that bottom-up innovation may challenge existing norms and practice.

Source: ProVention Consortium (2008) Oxfam and the Red Cross, and networks of local development organisations such as GROOTS and local NGOs. All had experience of attempting to reproduce the success of pilot projects that had a.s.serted the rights of local marginalised actors (predominantly the poor and women). All were also the product of local action inspired from the outside and top-down (albeit from progressive civil society actors) and were not initiated locally. The lack of local innovation is a key aspect of vulnerability indicating a lack of adaptive capacity. It is also a challenge for external agencies that seek to facilitate local actors in the building of capacity. Experience indicates this is a long process requiring generational s.h.i.+fts in att.i.tudes and individual ident.i.ty. But extremes of poverty and now also the urgency of climate change put pressure on progressive, external actors to accelerate this process.

An important message from Box 4.1 is the difficulty experienced by external actors seeking to stimulate innovation and diffusion. In low-income countries where the market has limited reach only the state has the scope and resources to spread innovations throughout society, but is resistant to change. In this context, transitions unfolded over time and with uncertain trajectories, the majority of innovations never extend beyond local impact. For those that did, at some point transitions became coordinated either strategically through a lead actor, like the state agency, or as a convergence of the visions and actions of diverse groups (Geels and Schot, 2007) a.n.a.logous to a social movement.

The interaction of local innovation with the wider regime in shaping transition is a repeated theme summarised by Geels and Schot (2007) into five transition pathways (see Table 4.1). Each is a specific outcome of the interaction between local innovations and the wider regime. The pathways have been renamed in Table 4.1 to better draw out the salient characteristics for transitions in regimes.

Climate change acts as an external pressure on the regime through changes in markets, international regulation, aid and trade flows as well as environmental risk. Local adaptations can then potentially be inserted into the regime to meet these new challenges as a means of strengthening the status quo following moderate impacts (weak cooption), or after catastrophic change in a search for the realignment of the regime to a new external environment (innovative subst.i.tution and innovative compet.i.tion), until a new round of challenges emerge. The framework was designed to account for change in broad patterns of production and consumption. In so doing it arguably over-emphasises the role of top-down pressure and external triggers and underplays the internal compet.i.tion between Table 4.1 Transition pathways.

Pathway.

Characteristics.

Stability.

In the absence of external and internal pressures there is limited scope for local innovations to affect change in the regime, though they can act as a resource against an uncertain future.

Top-down reform.

Moderate external pressure is acted upon by regime actors rather than local innovators to change the direction of regime policy and practice from within.

Weak cooption.

Unchallenging local innovations are incorporated by the regime but their adoption triggers unforeseen adjustments to the regime.

Innovative subst.i.tution.

Catastrophic external pressure shows the regime to have failed. A single innovation has already been developed and can be inserted into the regime.

Innovative compet.i.tion Catastrophic external pressure shows the regime to have failed. Multiple innovations compete for dominance until a new stability is achieved.

multiple viewpoints on development that persist even during periods of perceived stability and can rise to challenge existing inst.i.tutions and regimes.

There are parallels between transitions theory and the resilience framing of adaptation as discussed in Chapter 3. Both identify critical moments for adaptation as a tension between innovation in sheltered s.p.a.ces, be it niches or the shadow systems; and subsequent efforts to influence across the system of interest, be it the organisation or governance regime. This is not surprising: both approaches draw on system theory differing in the scales and contexts of application. In organisations and in wider society potential for capacity innovation is indicated through learning processes, social networks, communities of practice and advocacy coalitions that seek to modify inst.i.tutional structures to allow wider diffusions of innovations (Pelling et al., 2007; Smith, 2007). Both point to a creative optimum where top-down resources such as political will, financial and technical support are available but without undue oversight so that local actors can be left to experiment, even to take risks in doing so, with the benefit to the wider system of generating an array of ideas and practices. The necessity for a coalition of local and higher-level organisations and interests to enable diffusion is a central message from these literatures, demonstrating the limits of autonomous and spontaneous adaptations.

Urban regimes and transitional adaptation.

This section aims to ill.u.s.trate how s.p.a.ces for transition might open in adaptation processes within a single governance regime: urban risk management. There are as many different models of urban risk management as there are examples (see, for example, UN-HABITAT, 2007), but some general observations can be made that are also ill.u.s.trative of the interaction of actors, structures and visions of development to be found in other types of regime and this is the aim here.

The starting point for a.s.sessing scope and barriers for transition in adaptation is to recognise the contested social construction of the vision, a.s.sociated priorities and subsequent practices that give substance to the regime, and also describe those fault lines that are likely to come under pressure and may be realigned as transition unfolds. Competing visions of the city are underlain by ideological, material and economic interests (Kohler and Chaves, 2003). The balance of influence accorded to individual visions determines what urbanisation means, who the winners and losers are and under adaptation to climate change what aspects of urbanisation are to be protected or are dispensable for any one settlement. Indeed in different places across the city different visions and a.s.sociated actions will have more or less traction even within a single policy sector. This provides opportunities for alternative experiments that may come to dominance once governance s.p.a.ce is opened following a disaster event, political or economic change or macro-administrative decision such as decentralisation.

A range of visions that can provide narratives for the direction of dominant risk management decisions in a city are shown in Table 4.2. Different visions of urbanisation include the city as a motor for generating macro-economic wealth, Table 4.2 Linking visions of the city to pathways for managing vulnerability Vision of the city Vulnerable objects Pathways for managing vulnerability Literature An engine for economic growth Physical a.s.sets and economic infrastructure Insurance, business continuity planning Econometrics of business continuity and insurance An organism or integrated system linking consumption and production Critical/life-support infrastructure Mega-projects connecting urban and rural environmental systems Political-ecology, systems theory A source of livelihoods The urban poor, households, livelihood tools Extending and meeting ent.i.tlements to basic needs Livelihoods a.n.a.lysis and medical sociology A stock of acc.u.mulated a.s.sets Housing and critical/life-support infrastructure Safe construction and land-use planning Political-economy and urban sociology A political and cultural arena Political freedoms, cultural and intellectual vitality Inclusive politics and the protection of human rights Discourse a.n.a.lysis and public administration/political theory (Source: Pelling and Wisner, 2009) an organism turning raw materials into products and waste, a source of livelihoods for urban citizens, an historical acc.u.mulation of physical a.s.sets and infrastructure or a place for cultural and political exchange and debate.

Visions and a.s.sociated risk management preferences need not be mutually exclusive and more often visions provide only a rationale for prioritisation. As climate change and other development dynamics interact in the city existing narratives will be tested. With this comes the possibility of opening s.p.a.ce for renegotiating priorities within a single policy area and also more broadly so that resources and political will may be drawn into or away from risk management. The complexity of risk management means that there are many potential actors with a stake in the existing regime, and with an interest in any renegotiation of the balance of priorities in risk management that adapting to climate change may offer whether through replication, up-scaling or mainstreaming. Table 4.3 summarises the kinds of actors likely to have a direct stake in adapting urban risk management sector. The key message to take from this is the wide range of urban actors that can be engaged with through even a single sector, extending from applied emergency and risk management to development regulation and planning. This indicates both the number of opportunities that can exist for Table 4.3 Urban disaster risk reduction: multiple activities and stakeholders Professional community Development planning Development regulation Risk management Emergency management Core activities Land-use, transport, critical infrastructure Building codes, pollution control, traffic policing Vulnerability and risk a.s.sessment, building local resilience Early warning, emergency response and reconstruction planning Primary stakeholders Urban planners, city engineers, critical infrastructure planners, homeowners, private property managers, investors, transportation users, taxi drivers' a.s.sociations, other professional a.s.sociations, academia Environmental regulation, law enforcement, contractors, factory owners, drivers' and transporters' a.s.sociations Primary health care, sanitation and water supply, community development, local economic development, infrastructure management, waste haulers' a.s.sociation, water users' representatives Environmental monitoring, emergency services, civil defence, disaster management coordination, fire fighters, police, military, Red Cross/Crescent society (Source: Pelling and Wisner, 2009) inserting progressive practices such as inclusive decision-making or downward-accountability into policy reform in this single sector but also the challenge of overcoming inst.i.tutional lock-in and inertia that has often been found in sectors with multiple actors where existing inter-organisational alliances act to make the existing regime resilient.

Opportunities exist for innovation niches within private, public and civil sectors and through communities of practice that cross these boundaries. Through local branches or by advocacy at the landscape level international agencies and other governments may also be active in shaping niche or landscape led innovation. Where innovation is fostered and how it is evaluated and diffused throughout the regime in transition will also be a function of the balance of formal and informal or shadow systems in the city. Social networks and communities of practice that cross-cut formal organisational boundaries will influence scope for the development of novel adaptations, and the speed and direction of diffusion and reform. In urban contexts local government should play a pivotal role as a mediator and facilitator of development in addition to any direct regulatory and management roles. That the reality of local government is so often as an under-resourced actor, lacking in human capital, popular legitimacy and political influence is a great constraint. This is ill.u.s.trative of Jerneck and Olsson's (2008) observation that the regime level tends to be resistant to change and that innovation comes more often from local niches or the wider landscape and is accepted only when the regime is stressed.

Conclusion.

Opportunity for transition opens when adaptations, or efforts to build adaptive capacity, intervene in relations.h.i.+ps between individual political actors and the inst.i.tutional architecture that structures governance regimes. Transitional adaptation falls short of directly challenging dominant cultural and political regimes, but can set in place pathways for incremental, transformational change. Both actor-oriented regime theory and socio-technological transition theory provide ways forward for drawing out the connections between adaptation and social evolution short of regime change. They share an emphasis on the role of agency in the dialectical relations.h.i.+p between actors and inst.i.tutions that const.i.tute governance systems; agency that if fostered by a supportive governance regime can be a resource of alternative ideas and practices available for implementation following changes in the wider physical and economicpolitical environment.