Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: 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 inAfrica in particular. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research inRwanda 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.
Source: Area
DOI: 10.1111/area.12168
Authors: Claudia Gebauer, Martin Doevenspeck
Institution: University of Bayreuth
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award: G647312985
OpenAlex ID: W1493830018