Burning planet

Humanity’s failure to halt environmental destruction arises principally from a ‘wicked collective action problem.’

A ‘collective action’ problem is a situation where individuals would benefit from working together, but each individual has an incentive to free-ride or not contribute, so collaboration ends up being insufficient.

A ‘wicked’ problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because understanding of the problem is fragmented, incomplete, and often divergent, and this is worse when the problem’s very structure makes co-ordination and solution difficult (e.g. a collective action problem!). Standard thinking and interventions fail because they do not capture its complexity. The true nature of the problem and why and how it exists is often contested.

We can’t prevent decarbonisation from being a wicked problem. But a route to incentivising and enabling collective action is available: I will set out succinctly here, in a set of numbered steps, how it lies in a strategy that centres climate adaptation:

1. UK communities are not immune to catastrophic climate impacts

We have entered the age of climate consequences. From escalating floods to wildfires, extreme climate impacts are no longer a future problem, and they will continue to get worse.

The 1.5°C Paris climate target as set out in the ‘Paris Agreement’ in 2015, tragically, is in the rear view mirror, and emissions are still rising.

Countries in the global South will likely bear the brunt of impacts soonest, despite the greater culpability of long-industrialised nations. But it’s time to accept that the global North is not immune to very damaging and potentially catastrophic impacts.

Complacent governments in the global North have not prepared for climate impacts, and vulnerable communities will pay the price.

Uncertainty regarding the nature of impacts is a particular problem in the global north, with SPG/AMOC vulnerability meaning that Europe could face extremes of cold, as well as heat.

When we think of climate impacts we typically imagine things like heatwaves, floods, droughts and fires. We must also be aware of very real second-order threats that can destabilise at a local and national level. From crop failures here and abroad leading to food shortages, to overwhelm of water systems, supply chain collapse and business disruption, economic upheaval, and overwhelm of health services.

2. Locally led adaptation measures require national funding as a matter of urgency

Unlike the global task of decarbonisation, adaptation challenges vary enormously according to local geography.

Adaptation of communities, homes and infrastructure to the local effects of human-caused dangerous climate change are badly needed.
Funding for locally appropriate adaptation is absolutely necessary.

3. Adaptation and prevention go hand in hand

Just because we’re adapting, doesn’t mean prevention isn’t important. Every fraction of a degree of warming that can be prevented matters now more than ever, to protect vulnerable communities here and across the world.

Local adaptation is helping UK communities wake up to the threat of climate breakdown!

As we work to adapt our communities to climate impacts, we’re realising how important it is to demand that our governments step up to prevent climate breakdown at the source.

Transformative Adaptation approaches not only protect against impacts, but also help prevent climate breakdown. From retrofit: (reduces carbon, bills, discomfort, and extreme-weather exposure) to peatlands restoration (draws down carbon, helps biodiversity and prevents flooding).

4. Adaptation done right strengthens communities

When we come together to adapt our homes, towns and neighbourhoods for climate impacts, we build friendship and trust, look out for each other and take pride in our communities.

In turn, building strong relationships within our communities is among the most important things we can do to become resilient against climate shocks in the medium and long term.

Many individuals and networks are already involved in community organising and mutual aid independent of the climate narrative, and consulting their existing wisdom should be a priority when considering advocacy and coordination of adaptation.

People are hungry to move beyond painful polarisation, and depolarisation is essential for climate success. Adaptation action and mutual aid are actively depolarising – typically more so than existing climate action, helping build relationships and solidarity.

5. The government must deliver on adaptation in order to succeed.

‘Mitigation’-centric climate policy thus far has failed. Any impression of slow-and-steady progress is a fantasy: GHGs are still growing in volume, year on year.

Sooner or later, the Government will therefore be forced to understand that adaptation is necessary to protect its citizens, and to deliver securely on all their other promises and priorities.

From the economy to jobs and public health, Governmental priorities are vulnerable to disruption and derailment without commitment and funding for emergency resilience.

Decarbonisation strategy is wholly contingent upon adaptation to protect the relevant infrastructure from severe vulnerability to climate impacts.

6. The right kind of adaptation must be modelled and implemented, to prevent the worst kind becoming dominant.

There are many ways to respond to climate impacts. Short term adaptation measures adopted in reaction to impacts can be high cost, high carbon, insufficiently protective, and fuel a cycle of increasing fragility.

Political opportunists (Step forward Reform UK) will likely push for reactive adaptation measures (usually maladaptive) in response to emergent public demand for help.

To prevent reactive measures from becoming the norm, strategic adaptation approaches must be developed, trialled and implemented to lead by proof of practice.

‘Transformative’ adaptation approaches are best; taking a wholistic view and preferring low carbon measures, regenerative of local ecosystems and supporting long-term stability and wellbeing; including sustainable jobs and careers.

7. Inner work is an inseparable part of adaptation.

Climate grief, anxiety and other difficult emotional responses should properly be considered climate impacts, and supportive resources and strategies must be part of adaptation.

The inner resilience of communities – the strength of networks, familiarity, trust and understanding, and mutual care – is among the most important factors in resilience amid disasters, and will be vital in limiting the cascading effects of climate impacts upon social order, cohesion and quality of life. These factors must receive due consideration and investment as part of adaptation plans.

SAFER is a campaign from the Climate Majority Project that aims to shift adaptation from the margins to the mainstream of climate advocacy and action.

8. Adaptation campaigning does not mean giving up on decarbonisation

Quite the opposite: climate is rightfully a popular issue but, 50 years of activism have not produced nearly enough democratic support for decarbonisation. Local adaptation can be a wake up call that brings the reality of climate breakdown home to the voting public, whose support is necessary for high-level prevention.

Promoting adaptation helps dismantle a harmful narrative of wilful optimism that has dampened high-level climate response. It’s no longer ‘five minutes to midnight’, and extreme measures can’t be forever postponed until a future date when technology will save the day.

Adaptation will be vital to protect decarbonisation measures such as renewable energy infrastructure

For the sake of global outcomes including climate justice, adaptation should become a central campaigning focus within the climate movement.
The best chance of a successful climate politics/policy in the 2020s rests upon rerouting it: via an adaptation-centric strategy:

The ‘Ideal’ story of change, going forward:

  1. As climate damage escalates, citizen pressure calling for adaptation ramps up.
  2. At first, shallow, reactive adaptation approaches dominate, in communications and in practice, while advocacy for Strategic Adaptation begins to spread.
  3. Medium-term experience reveals shallow adaptation (downstream) measures to be self-defeating and fragilising. Strategic Adaptation approaches (upstream) grow in popular appeal.
  4. As policy mindset shifts to ‘upstream’, strategic approaches, the urgent case for prevention is clear, and democratic support for decarbonisation grows. For it becomes understood that ultimately there is no alternative but to switch to an eco-sane, ultra-low-carbon trajectory. For: even the best forms of adaptation have their limits. Ultimately, one has to tackle the trouble at source.
  5. Are the above steps enough to trigger the serious ‘real zero’ agenda that brings the decarbonisation we need? SAFER suggests that they are our best shot.

As climate damage escalates, we risk a vicious cycle where a dwindling pool of resources is sucked into ever-growing reactive adaptation and disaster-recovery costs, and decarbonisation increasingly deprioritised. The journey from I through V and beyond is necessary to avoid this scenario – and so ultimately to avoid hard societal collapse. To reach III is necessary at least to set ourselves on a ‘thrutopian’ trajectory.

Conclusion

The remorseless line of logic set out above is available to everyone. Any and every Party ought to adopt it (though Reform of course will not). Caroline Lucas and I have been and are working on it precisely because of its wide importance to the future, if there is to be one.

However, the relevance of the argument I have laid out here to the Green Party is doubly obvious. This ought to be our natural and central terrain.

Thus I am delighted to be chairing a major panel at the Green Party Conference in a couple of week’s time, on exactly this theme. If you are free at 9am on the Saturday morning in Bournemouth, do come, and join the conversation…

Thanks to Rosie Bell and others in the CMP’s SAFER team for crucial input at the drafting stage of this piece.

Image credit: LQD – Creative Commons