Abstract

The following abstract by Philip Hall was submitted in response to a Call for Papers for the Integrating Analysis of Regional Climate Change and Response Options Conference (Nadi, Fiji, June 20-22, 2007), an Expert Meeting on Regional Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability, and Mitigation sponsored by the IPCC Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate Analysis (TGICA), the Global Change System for Analysis, Research and Training (START) and the Pacific Center for Environment and Sustainable Development at the University of South Pacific (PACE/USP).

When One’s Adaptation
Becomes Another’s Vulnerability

by Philip Hall
14 November 2006

Adaptation is the most recent issue in the international community’s discussions of effective response to natural hazards. Adaptation is closely tied to climate change, focusing on the exacerbating effect climate change is predicted to have on both the frequency and severity of natural hazards. Uncertainty around the accuracy of climate change predictions, however, has lead to an unwillingness to pursue adaptation measures purely as a response to anticipated climate changes.

The UNDP and the World Bank have recognised the need to reframe the discussion of adaptation to emphasise solutions for current vulnerabilities; solutions with the capacity to adapt for future vulnerabilities. The World Conference on Disaster Reduction, 18 – 22 January 2005, in Kobe, Japan, and the UN Convention on Climate Change, May 2005, in Bonn, emphasised the need to mainstream adaptation measures into national development planning policies. Pro-active, planned adaptation was put forth as an essential requirement in creating more robust and effective disaster risk management programmes today, with the added benefit of establishing a dynamic basis for responding to whatever effects result from climate change in the years ahead.

South Pacific countries generally agree that, for many communities, existing response plans and preparedness measures are not adequate for the natural hazards experienced today. Nor do these plans deal with emerging issues that might result from climate change. Few communities have plans to deal with relocating their community or with accepting people being resettled from other communities, yet many factors such as sea encroachment or salination of fresh water supplies could force such adaptation. Following each disaster, most communities simply rebuild in the same way and in the same place, and return to their interrupted livelihoods.

The South Pacific countries, assisted by international donors, are developing national adaptation plans that include strengthening their policy and governance environment to emphasise risk management and adaptation measures, both in new development and in disaster recovery responses. A particularly promising pilot program in Kiribati brought together representatives from all inhabited islands to consult on the nation’s vulnerabilities. The result was an understanding by all key stakeholders that the sources of vulnerability were not just isolated events but shared across the islands, and that a national policy and strategy was essential.

Using a consultative approach as was done in Kiribati will lead to addressing the possibility that one community’s adaptation measure (e.g., move to a different island) may be another’s vulnerability (e.g., the island’s resources will not support a population expansion created by resettling another community). South Pacific countries must also consider, therefore, the larger impact on the economies of other islands when the main livelihood is lost or significantly disrupted on one island. Relocation and resettlement, with its economic, social and cultural disruption, are major adaptation measures to be dealt with in any country’s national adaptation plan.

On a regional scale, the impacts of each South Pacific country’s adaptation measures on its neighbours have yet to be seriously analysed. National adaptation plans that consider the cascading effect of adaptation choices will provide a starting point for the discussions and negotiations that must take place.