Development Futures in the Context of Climate Change: Challenging the Present and Learning from the Past

Abstract

Climate change poses a challenge to the dominant development paradigm with its concepts of modernisation, economic growth and globalisation which treat the environment as an externality and largely ignore climate variability. This article explores the extent of the challenge, drawing on archaeological evidence showing that adaptation to severe climate change can involve much more radical changes in human societies than are currently envisaged. Furthermore, short‐term adaptation can result in long‐term maladaptation, increasing vulnerability to climate shocks. The article argues that development urgently needs to shift its focus away from prevailing growth and yield‐maximisation models towards alternatives encouraging resilience and risk‐spreading.

Lakeside View: Sociocultural Responses to Changing Water Levels of Lake Turkana, Kenya

“…Economic investment in the developing world is increasingly focused on Bsustainability,^which requires understanding how past human societies adapted to climate change to maximize resilience and risk spreading in an increasingly precarious ecological landscape (Adger et al 2013;Brooks et al 2009;Dodman and Mitlin 2013). If not contextualized within the broader scope of Holocene climate change, temporary shifts in the distribution of monsoon rainfall may be erroneously perceived as a newfound agricultural development opportunity (Brooks et al 2005).…”

Social Protection and Climate Change: Emerging Issues for Research, Policy and Practice

“…Developing policies that can reduce poverty and vulnerability to climate change is a pressing global priority (Klein et al, 2007;Boyd et al, 2009;Brooks et al, 2009;Prowse et al, 2009;IPCC, 2012). This Special Issue of Development Policy Review explores the role that SP can play in this process.…”

Societal transformation in response to global environmental change: A review of emerging concepts

“…Transformation is seen by some scholars as the consequence of societal collapse, and therefore considered a negative outcome (e.g., Butzer 2012), while others see the capacity to actively transform (i.e., transformability) as an essential property of longlasting functioning systems (Folke et al 2010), and concomitantly view transformation as an effective means of promoting ecological sustainability and social prosperity (Beddoe et al 2009;Jackson 2009). The latter perspective has been influenced by debates in Marxist and post-Marxist theory, with some scholars defining societal transformation as change within the frame of the capitalist economic system (WBGU 2011), while others viewing transformation as a radical change of the social structures (e.g., world views and power relations) underpinning a capitalist economy (e.g., Brooks et al 2009). …”