Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation

`This is an important book. Adaptation to climate change is going to be the order of the day for the foreseeable future. This book is grounded in evidence and presents a positive vision of progress for that monumental transition, Highly recommended.' Professor Neil Adger, University of East Anglia

`Mark Pelling provides a refreshing perspective on adaptation to climate change in his accessible book. The wisdom on these pages is vital to ensuring that we do not forget the broader development context in which climate change is taking place. This is sure to be a satisfying text for students and adaptation experts alike.' Dr. Lisa Schipper, Stockholm Environment Institute

`This book offers an insightful conceptual approach to adaptation to climate change, and demonstrates its usefulness by applying it to varied empirical situations. It will appeal to scholars, students and practitioners alike.' Professor Jouni Paavola, University of Leeds

The impacts of climate change are already being felt. Learning how to live with these impacts is a priority for human development. In this context, it is too easy to see adaptation as a narrowly defensive task - protecting core assets or functions from the risks of climate change. A more profound engagement, which sees climate change risks as a product and driver of social as well as natural systems, and their interaction, is called for.

Adaptation to Climate Change argues that without care, adaptive actions can deny the deeper political and cultural roots that call for significant change in social and political relations if human vulnerability to climate change associated risk is to be reduced. This book presents a framework for making sense of the range of choices facing humanity, structured around resilience (stability), transition (incremental social change and the exercising of existing rights) and transformation (new rights claims and changes in political regimes). The resilience-transition-transformation framework is supported by three detailed case study chapters. These also illustrate the diversity of contexts in which adaption is unfolding, from organisations to urban governance and the national polity.

This text is the first comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions to climate change adaptation. Clearly written in an engaging style, it provides detailed theoretical and empirical chapters and serves as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in climate change, geography and development studies.

Mark Pelling is a Reader in Geography at King's College London and before this at the University of Liverpool and University of Guyana. His research and teaching focus on human vulnerability and adaptation to natural hazards and climate change. He has served as a lead author with the IPCC and as a consultant for UNDP, DFID and UN-HABITAT.