Understanding climate change adaptation strategies in social-ecological systems
According to the IPCC (2022), threats of climate change have emerged as more widespread and rapid, and are intensifying because of an increase in global temperature, change in precipitation pattern, and intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. In 2020, over 50 million people around the world were affected by floods, droughts, or storms and the rate of global yearly mean sea-level rise accelerated to 4.4mm between 2013 and 2021 (UNEP, 2021a). Globally, in 2021 at least 7 million people were displaced because of natural hazards alone (UNEP, 2021b). During the 2018-2020 period globally the estimated economic losses of disasters were USD 5.2 trillion, while the livelihoods of 89.93 million people were affected by climate hazards (WMO, 2021). UNEP (2021a) projects that by 2050 more than 5 billion people may suffer water shortages due to climate change. Climate change may force more than 100 million people below the poverty line in developing countries by 2030 (WMO, 2021). To address these challenges of the 21st century, purposeful actions i.e., climate change adaptation (CCA), must be planned and implemented across human society and ecosystems (IPCC, 2022; UNFCCC, 2016; Nalau, 2021; Conway and Mustelin, 2014).
In Assessment Report- 6 (AR6) the IPCC has highlighted the importance of studying interactions among the climate systems, ecosystems, and human society (IPCC, 2022). According to the report, these interactions are the basis of emerging risks from climate change including ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and loss of socio-economic well-being. AR6 also emphasizes that underlying interconnectedness and interactions among climate change, ecosystems, and society offer opportunities for the future, if are managed from system perspectives (IPCC, 2022). This consensus in the AR6 for understanding adaptation from multidimensions and scales will be one of the main focuses of the current study. Hence, research providing empirical evidence on social-ecological interactions can contribute to understanding and implementing adaptation strategies from system perspectives.
Fedele et al. (2019) find that successful adaptation cannot only be achieved through reducing vulnerabilities from a single dimension (e.g., capacity building, ecosystem management, policy, information, physical infrastructure, financing, or technology) but through addressing both social and ecological dimensions of vulnerabilities simultaneously. In an adaptation action, the issue of concern should not be considered in isolation but as a part of a whole system (Epstein et al., 2013). Only focusing on the affected part of the system (e.g., scarcity of irrigation) is not sufficient to address interconnected problems (e.g., excessive groundwater extraction led to worsening irrigation problems). Therefore, it is essential adaptation strategies are planned and
implemented by incorporating necessary system-level determinants1 that impact the issue of concern (Salgueiro-Otero and Ojea, 2020; Ostrom, 2007).
Charles (2012) argues that an adaptation response needs to consider the mechanisms of analyzing how determinants (attributes) of a resource system (wetland), resource unit (rice produced), local people, organizations, and policies involved jointly affect its outcome i.e., saving crops from flash floods. However, current approaches to adaptation perceive climate risks mainly through a governance lens, limiting the effectiveness of adaptation strategies in the long run (Dasgupta et.al, 2021). Adaptation strategies are needed to move beyond static perspective by conceptualizing complex interactions of social and ecological components that could be planned and implemented under the social-ecological systems (SESs) approach.
Adaptation measures must accept that climate change not only comes with environmental challenges but also with other contextualized social, economic, and political risks (Pelling, 2011). To deal with such a problem requires an integrated system approach i.e., SES, to what people adapt to (Salgueiro-Otero and Ojea, 2020). However, there is a lack of evidence in the current literature about how adaptation actions can be implemented across SESs (Dasgupta et.al, 2021) This lack of an SES-based approach to adaptation is limiting the scope and impacts of current CCA strategies (Berrang-Ford et al., 2021).
Current approaches to adaptation distinguish between ecosystems and social systems in framing adaptation strategies (e.g., addressing adaptation either in the context of climate risks or people’s general wellbeing), missing SES context (Singh et al., 2021). Rocha et al. (2020) suggest that society, and ecosystems are intertwined, and their adaptation needs should not be understood separately. For example, under adaption strategies, if people are only protected from climate vulnerabilities (saving lives from storm surges) but fail to adjust to emerging socioeconomic scenarios (livelihood losses from disasters) from the climatic events, the objectives of adaptation are evident to fall short (Adger et.al., 2008). Here, it is critical to understand that vulnerabilities to climate change do not consist of single environmental or socio
economic risks alone. Rather every underlying cause of vulnerabilities has social-ecological dimensions and scales, which is important to avoid maladaptation (Cinner and Barnes, 2019).
Since adaptation studies originated within the social sciences, the key research questions and the methodological approaches guiding adaptation research have an actor-oriented focus, such as studying the impacts of climate change on communities and their responses (Nelson, Adger, and Brown, 2007). However, Nalau and Verrall’s (2021) highlighted that beyond actor centric approach there is a need for a greater understanding of underlying drivers of vulnerabilities, including interactions among various social and ecological elements (e.g., ecosystems, climate stressors, people, institutional settings) of an adaptation process, and how they change over time. This gap within adaptation research can be addressed by incorporating insights from the system approach that investigates interactions of social-ecological components of adaptation across spatial and temporal scales (IPCC, 2022).
Despite the given urgency of studying adaptation from social-ecological perspectives, previous studies have mainly focused on either social or ecological dimensions of adaptation needs (Singh et al., 2021). Though some studies (Fedele et al., 2020; Barnes et.al., 2020; Adams et al., 2018; Salgueiro-Otero and Ojea, 2020) have focused on adaptation from system perspectives, their focus was mostly on natural resource-based adaptation e.g., water, pasture, fisheries, forestry, and in similar common pool resource areas (Nalau and Verrall, 2021). These studies largely focused on either developed or African countries, missing many climate-vulnerable developing countries in the global South and mega deltas (Cochrane et al., 2017).
Studies need to go beyond adaptation for any specific natural resource sector (forestry, fisheries, water management). Rather should focus on vulnerable ecosystems (e.g., wetlands, drought prone agricultural regions, and disaster-prone coastal areas) where natural resources are produced. Through broadening this scope of adaptation research, researchers will be able to study the needs of diverse social and ecological components in an adaptation strategy. This extension into the coverage of SES study while enriching our understanding of adaptation from system perspectives, equally will widen the application of the SES framework in analyzing different social-ecological problems in the society.
To date, there are considerable empirical scientific studies about how human systems adapt (through changing behaviour, policy reforms, improving social relationships, and economic activities) to climate change (Berrang-Ford, Pearce, and Ford, 2015). Yet, our knowledge of how adaptation happens in SESs (e.g., wetland agriculture, drought irrigation, floodplains) remains limited by the lack of sufficient study using system perspectives (IPCC,2022). Most studies examine adaptation based on vulnerability contexts at a given scale. However, the nature and intensity of vulnerabilities do not depend on only the considered scale but also on the wider socio-economic and political contexts where the adaptation problems are embedded (Salgueiro
Otero and Ojea, 2020). So, adaptation must be studied across scales to understand the complex relationships between SES components and adaptation outcomes. The SES approach can mitigate this limitation through its cross-scale considerations of adaptation responses.
Adaptation entails adjustments in human systems at different scales by different actors, and its success is likely to be perceived differently among scholars, policymakers, and communities (Adger et al., 2007). Given this conceptual diversity of adaptation, it is critical to develop certain common attributes that can understand the characteristics of adaptive capacities across SESs (Dasgupta et.al, 2021). However, there are not enough studies on how the components of SESs interact, how these interactions are managed and how the outcomes of interactions influence adaptation to climate change (Conway and Mustelin, 2014). Above all, how adaptation varies across SESs is yet not supported by enough conceptual and empirical studies (IPCC, 2022; Nalau and Verrall, 2021), which could be limiting policymaking on adaptation strategies.
Given the above research gaps, it is essential to extend the scope of adaptation studies by understanding how the interactions between social and ecological determinants influence adaptation to climate change across SESs. To this end, the adaptation research may use the social-ecological system framework (SESF) developed by Ostrom (2007). SESF is a comprehensive conceptual framework for analyzing interactions and outcomes in SESs from multiple social, ecological, climatic, and political perspectives (Partelow, 2018). Ostrom (2009) argues that SESF can be used to understand a specific problem embedded in complex SESs such as climate change. Thus, SESF helps understand adaptation from system perspectives and to explore underlying relationships between adaptation strategies and SES components (Folke et al., 2021; Hinkel et al., 2015; Nelson, Adger, and Brown, 2007).
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