Abstract:The adaptation science enterprise has expanded rapidly in recent years, presumably in response to growth in demand for knowledge that can facilitate adaptation policy and practice. However, evidence suggests such investments in adaptation science have not necessarily translated into adaptation implementation. One potential constraint on adaptation may be the underlying heuristics that are used as the foundation for both adaptation research and practice. Here, we explore the adaptation academic literature with … Show more
“…The concept of adaptive capacity is receiving increasing attention in the adaptation literature because it problematizes the linear thinking that adaptation will happen if we only have enough knowledge (e.g., Preston et al 2015;Moser and Ekstrom 2010). It is increasingly recognized that the ability to respond or adapt to perturbations hinges on the degree to which adaptive capacity is activated, utilized, or enabled (e.g., Keskitalo et al 2011;Hovelsrud et al 2010).…”
Drawing on case studies in 12 Norwegian municipalities, this paper investigates how local context matters for developing national climate adaptation policies that are applicable at the municipal level. Moreover, it explicates which factors constitute this context and how these factors vary across the case municipalities. National climate adaptation policy in Norway can currently be characterized as top down, providing standardized requirements and advice to municipalities. However, Norwegian municipalities vary greatly with respect to physical conditions, organizational resources, and societal needs. They are autonomous to a great extent and are almost solely responsible for developing climate policy and planning within their own territories. Therefore, municipalities adapt national policies to their own context, reflecting local physiographic, organizational, and resource challenges, but these local translations are not fully recognized by national and sectoral actors. This paper underscores that the significant variation in contextual factors between municipalities is not sufficiently addressed and understood by national and sectoral governmental authorities. With the identified variation of the contextual factors across the case municipalities, an adaptive comanagement strategy within a multilevel governance system is suggested as a suitable framework to ensure a proactive approach to local adaptation, that is, mutual understanding and better cooperation between the national and local levels.
“…The concept of adaptive capacity is receiving increasing attention in the adaptation literature because it problematizes the linear thinking that adaptation will happen if we only have enough knowledge (e.g., Preston et al 2015;Moser and Ekstrom 2010). It is increasingly recognized that the ability to respond or adapt to perturbations hinges on the degree to which adaptive capacity is activated, utilized, or enabled (e.g., Keskitalo et al 2011;Hovelsrud et al 2010).…”
Drawing on case studies in 12 Norwegian municipalities, this paper investigates how local context matters for developing national climate adaptation policies that are applicable at the municipal level. Moreover, it explicates which factors constitute this context and how these factors vary across the case municipalities. National climate adaptation policy in Norway can currently be characterized as top down, providing standardized requirements and advice to municipalities. However, Norwegian municipalities vary greatly with respect to physical conditions, organizational resources, and societal needs. They are autonomous to a great extent and are almost solely responsible for developing climate policy and planning within their own territories. Therefore, municipalities adapt national policies to their own context, reflecting local physiographic, organizational, and resource challenges, but these local translations are not fully recognized by national and sectoral actors. This paper underscores that the significant variation in contextual factors between municipalities is not sufficiently addressed and understood by national and sectoral governmental authorities. With the identified variation of the contextual factors across the case municipalities, an adaptive comanagement strategy within a multilevel governance system is suggested as a suitable framework to ensure a proactive approach to local adaptation, that is, mutual understanding and better cooperation between the national and local levels.
“…They illustrate some of the ways in which cognitive biases like anchoring, framing, false representativeness, availability, attention to intentionality, and affective forecasting lead to systematic errors in judgment, and bad policy decisions [12]. In a similar study in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Preston and colleagues examined the role of heuristic biases in "adaptation discourse", which all too easily lead to ways of framing the problems, and to policy proposals for solving them, that rely on affective (quick, innate) reasoning processes rather than analytic (slow, methodical) reasoning [13]. Increasingly, scholars in these fields are recognizing the extent to which cognitive biases help to explain resistance to the scientific consensus about climate change and the relative lack of success in policies aimed at promoting pro-environmental behavior.…”
Section: Climate Change Cultural Cognition and "Religion"mentioning
Why is it so easy to ignore the ecological and economic crises of the Anthropocene? This article unveils some of the religious biases whose covert operation facilitates the repression or rejection of warnings about the consequences of extreme climate change and excessive capitalist consumption. The evolved defaults that are most relevant for our purposes here have to do with mental credulity toward religious content (beliefs about supernatural agents) and with social congruity in religious contexts (behaviors shaped by supernatural rituals). Learning how to contest these phylogenetically inherited and culturally fortified biases may be a necessary condition for adapting to and altering our current natural and social environments in ways that will enhance the chances for the survival (and flourishing) of Homo sapiens and other sentient species. I outline a conceptual framework, derived from empirical findings and theoretical developments in the bio-cultural sciences of religion, which can help clarify why and how gods are imaginatively conceived and nurtured by ritually engaged believers. Finally, I discuss the role that "adaptive atheism" might play in responding to the crises of the Anthropocene.
“…There exists today a great deal of variation in the meanings and heuristics assigned to a variety of concepts which address the nature of a response to change (Moser and Ekstrom 2010;Preston et al 2013). The distinction and definitional or conceptual consistency between the terms adaptation, mitigation, resiliency and coping is a practical hurdle to framework development in a variety of applied domains.…”
Section: Understanding Concepts Of Changementioning
This article is a formulation of a framework for understanding the nature of change, particularly climate change, as it applies to the scale of a building. Through an exploration of various scientific and social scientific literutre, the article positions the concept of adaptation as the appropriate mode for understanding and managing change. Through the classification of a duality of material and social construction in the ontological composition of a building, various lines of thought relating to adaptive capacity and adaptive cycling within systems theory are appropriated within an integrated framework for adaptation. Specifically, it is theorized that as buildings as objects are developing greater capacities for intergrated operations and management through artificial intelligence, they will possess an ex ante capacity to autonomously adapt in dynamic relation to and with the ex post adaptation of owners and operators. It is argued that this top-down and bottom-up confluence of multi-scalar dynamic change is consistent with the prevailing theory of Panarchy applied in social-ecological systems theory. The article concludes with normative perspectives on the limitations of systems theory in architecture, future directions for research and an alternative positioning of professional practices.
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