Your article departs from the mainstream trend towards replicating existing development-aid-designed solution structures in the context of climate change adaptation. What has led you to this position?

I think my concerns with the mainstream approach were first raised while conducting fieldwork for my PhD in Peru at the national, regional and local levels, as well as watching the international discourse on adaptation emerge and gain prominence in 2000–2010. It was surprising to what extent historical discourses related to development seemed to be reappearing, this time in the name of adaptation. In many cases, and at all levels, from IPCC reports to interviews with local-level development practitioners, I was startled to see how easily pre-existing statements regarding development were being reproduced so easily, with the word “development” simply replaced with “adaptation”, “poverty” with “vulnerability”, etc. Hameed Jamali found similar issues in his work on adaptation in Pakistan, while Marc Hufty (our PhD supervisor at the time) highlighted the continuity of these issues with historical development practice. Since then, this concern has been raised in the critical literature, mostly as individual case studies. While case studies are crucial from an empirical standpoint, we thought it was time to not only bring this experience and literature together, but to attempt to outline why and how reproducing existing development structures depoliticises what is an inherently political issue. The paper represents a long collaboration between the three of us that really began with our initial discussions while designing the SNSF-funded project Adapt2.

You and your co-authors highlight several risks of uncritically mainstreaming adaptation into depoliticised developmentalist logic. Which of those risks should be most urgently addressed?

I suppose the simplest and most urgent message to get out would be that yes, supporting adaptation in the global South is important, but it should in no way be viewed as an “easy fix”. The most effective adaptation is mitigation – we should be addressing the causes of the problem in the first place, and this is something that has to happen primarily in the global North through direct political action. Techno-managerial solutions and drawn-out bureaucratic international negotiation processes are not going to save us.

What are the main conclusions of your study, and in particular why is it important to study the inherently political nature of adaptation? 

Reusing existing development aid channels and practices to deliver support for adaptation in developing countries has become a forgone conclusion in many circles. Our paper points out that in this process, many of the past criticisms of development aid are not being attended to. Adaptation carried out along the lines of development in many cases can lead to side-lining already marginalised voices or redistributing vulnerability in inequitable ways. Essentially, adaptation interventions in the global South appear to be reproducing development-as-usual rather than providing an opportunity to rethink development. We argue that attention to the political nature of responsibility, vulnerability and decision-making at different scales can provide entry points both for critical analysis and practical change in how we address climate change as a social justice issue.

But why is that attention continuously lacking despite the growing scholarship of critical analysis? Why do adaptation projects continue to be fashioned in the mould of existing development mechanisms?

Viewed from the perspective of decision-makers in the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) bodies as well as in development-oriented institutions at different scales, I think mainstreaming is basically a simple and convenient solution to the problem of how to deliver adaptation finance. It is also a win-win solution for a whole series of actors at different levels, such as development NGOs, who have a stake in the continuance of the existing aid delivery system. Many of these people are passionately dedicated to their work; in any case we don’t raise that question. However, the constraints that exist within development structures are not conducive to creative or critical thinking, nor are these structures particularly responsive to concerns raised by “beneficiary populations” or development practitioners themselves. Despite reforms, aid is by its very nature top-down. Learning is difficult when feedback is constrained.

In your view, why are the majority of scholars and international authorities in general reticent about acknowledging the discussion on power and politics?

I have never understood the power “blind spot”. For me, power is at the centre of social analysis. For others, it seems to be outside the realm of analysis, critique and potential intervention. Maybe it is “just” a difference in worldviews, or maybe it is part of the process through which power relations themselves become naturalised.

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Full citation of the article:
Scoville-Simonds, Morgan, Hameed Jamali and Marc Hufty. “The Hazards of Mainstreaming: Climate Change Adaptation Politics in Three Dimensions.” World Development 125 (January 2020). doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104683.

Good to know: the article is available to members of the Graduate Institute via this page of the repository.

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Interview by Ana Beatriz Balcazar-Moreno, PhD candidate in International Law; editing by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.
Banner image: excerpt from an image by nikkytok/Shutterstock.com.