The Political Economy of Climate Change Adaptation

Adaptation policies and measures are essential components of any global attempt to cope with the pending impacts of climate change. Drawing on concepts in political economy, political ecology, justice theory, and critical development studies, this book offers the first comprehensive, systematic exploration of the ways in which adaptation projects can produce unintended, undesirable results. The authors present a political economy framework revolving around four key processes: enclosure, exclusion, encroachment, and entrenchment. They document the presence of these four inequitable attributes in adaptation projects across four case studies: the displacement of char communities in Bangladesh; the Dutch Delta Works in the Netherlands; Hurricane Katrina reconstruction efforts in the United States; and the politics of technology transfer and knowledge inequality within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.