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Adaptation to climate change and resettlement in R wanda
Author(s) -
Gebauer Claudia,
Doevenspeck Martin
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/area.12168
Subject(s) - climate change , adaptation (eye) , livelihood , corporate governance , climate change adaptation , politics , political science , environmental resource management , economics , agriculture , geography , ecology , psychology , management , archaeology , law , biology , neuroscience
During the last ten years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a prominent new paradigm in environmental politics in developing countries in general and in A frica in particular. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in R wanda presented in this paper indicates. The paper analyses why forced resettlement of farmers is considered an innovative action among the climate change adaptation efforts and argues that the concept of adaptation to climate change is a travelling idea that is constantly translated and used politically to frame environmental and developmental interventions in concrete places that heavily impact the everyday lives of rural dwellers. Drawing on actor‐network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by providing a critical assessment of the linkages between global climate change governance and concrete local adaptation measures, revealing that adaptation to climate change does not always have positive effects on people's livelihoods.