Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance?

作者：Siri Eriksen, E. Lisa F. Schipper, Morgan Scoville-Simonds, Katharine Vincent, Hans Nicolai Adam, Nick Brooks, Brian Harding, Dil Khatri, Lutgart Lenaerts, Diana Liverman, Megan Mills‐Novoa, Marianne Mosberg, Synne Movik, Benard Muok, Andrea J. Nightingale, Hemant Ojha, Linda Sygna, Marcus Taylor, Coleen Vogel, Jennifer Joy West · 发表于：World Development · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105383 · 被引用次数：833 · 研究领域：Agricultural risk and resilience、Climate change impacts on agriculture、Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare

This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of ‘local’ vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with ‘vulnerable’ populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose ...