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With climate change adaptation and resilience-building initiatives proliferating at a global scale, more knowledge on how they unfold on the ground is needed. Critical scholars have long argued that adaptation is a political process mired by political equalities between those who fund and implement it locally, and those who are expected to adapt (Eriksen et al., 2015; Mikulewicz, 2019; Nightingale, 2017). Thus far, however, the focus of scholarship has primarily focused on the strategies and intentions of adaptation initiative funders, implementors, experts, and elites, often stripping individuals and collectives of agency and obscuring the creative, plural ways in which beneficiaries resist adaptation projects.

To address this gap, there is a growing number of studies and reports on instances where recipients of external adaptation assistance have resisted, opposed, or refused to participate in these initiatives (Goh, 2021; Henrique and Tschakert, 2019; Mikulewicz, Under review; Mills-Novoa, Under Review; Paprocki, 2021). In this sense, climate change adaptation becomes a vehicle of subjection and oppression, rather than transformative and emancipatory change, as proposed by critical scholars and climate activists (Head, 2020; Newell et al., 2021; Schipper et al., 2021). While we recognize that resistance to external interventions is not a new phenomenon in the public space, we are particularly interested in the ways in which climate change adaptation and resilience-building efforts act as catalysts for material or discursive resistance in places thought to require external intervention. Additionally, we are interested in resistance as not just oppositional but also generative, with attention to the alternative visions or notions of adaptation advanced by individuals and collectives.


Works Cited

Eriksen, S., Nightingale, A., Eakin, H., 2015. Reframing adaptation: The political nature of climate change adaptation. Global Environmental Change 35, 523–533.

Goh, K., 2021. Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Head, L., 2020. Transformative change requires resisting a new normal. NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE 10, 173–174. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0712-5

Henrique, K.P., Tschakert, P., 2019. Contested grounds_ Adaptation to flooding and the politics of (in)visibility in São Paulo’s eastern periphery. Geoforum 104, 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.04.026

Mikulewicz, M., 2019. Thwarting adaptation’s potential? A critique of resilience and climate-resilient development. Geoforum 104, 267–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.010

Mikulewicz, M., Under review. Resisting post-political adaptation to climate change: How a small community stood up to Big Development. Antipode.

Mills-Novoa, M., Under Review. Resisting, Leveraging, and Reworking Climate Change Adaptation Projects from Below: Placing Adaptation in Ecuador’s Agrarian struggles. Journal of Peasant Studies.

Newell, P., Srivastava, S., Naess, L.O., Torres Contreras, G.A., Price, R., 2021. Toward transformative climate justice: An emerging research agenda. WIREs Climate Change 12. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.733

Nightingale, A.J., 2017. Power and politics in climate change adaptation efforts: Struggles over authority and recognition in the context of political instability. Geoforum 84, 11–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.05.011

Paprocki, K., 2021. Threatening Dystopias: The Global Politics of Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.

Schipper, E.L.F., Dubash, N.K., Mulugetta, Y., 2021. Climate change research and the search for solutions: rethinking interdisciplinarity. Climatic Change 168, 18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03237-3

Non-Presenting Participants