ID Artigo: 967
Titulo: Adaptation with a long-view: Promoting resilience in response to environmental and development challenges
Resumo: The concept of adaptation to environmental change incorporates more than a focus on specific risks, fixed periods of time, and readily bounded populations, communities, or geographic areas. One emerging perspective in environmental change research focuses on developing system resilience and sustainable development trajectories. Adaptation with a long view stresses a systemic perspective that recognizes the linkages and relationships between individuals, society, and the environment across space and time. This paper offers three propositions of what this perspective entails, and presents both conceptual and practical considerations. The propositions are synthesized from findings within the broader literature and the case studies that comprise this session. The propositions are: 1. Adaptations with improved chances of long-term success address the ultimate causes of vulnerabilities to environmental change. 2. Adaptive capacities are influenced by the range of choice and the choice sets of actors at different scales. 3. The ability to influence trajectories of incremental and transformational change in socio-ecological systems resides at all levels, from the very local to the very aggregate. While the rationale for adaptation with a long view and the subsequent propositions may appear sensible on paper, we recognize that immediate resource, livelihood, and institutional contexts may preclude their feasibility. Taking a long view does not imply that that the long-term should necessarily take precedence over short-term needs. To the contrary, a long view requires incorporating both short-term and long-term needs and perspectives into decision making. These principles are discussed using empirical examples of how adaptation with a long view may be constrained or facilitated.
Palavras Chave: adaptation