This doctoral dissertation project seeks to understand how adaptation to climate change is conceptualized by some policy makers. As global negotiations regarding the long-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions continue without reaching a consensus, adaptation to the impacts of climate change becomes increasingly significant. Adaptation, broadly speaking, refers to actions that proactively or reactively minimize the negative impacts of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even if carbon emissions were drastically and immediately reduced, global warming over the next few decades as a result of past emissions is unavoidable. Adaptation is necessary, yet how it is defined, financed, and implemented remain subjects of great uncertainty. The main objective of this study is to understand how adaptation works alongside and with development in adaptation funding policy. By empirically understanding how a concept of adaptation is defined and operationalized, this research will capture the nuanced integration of adaptation and development that is materializing in one leading international institution: the Adaptation Fund. The Adaptation Fund is the primary mechanism for financing adaptation in developing countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As such, the ways in which the Adaptation Fund defines, finances, and implements adaptation policies are critically important for understanding future responses to global climate change. Using research methods that include archival data collection and analysis, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews with policymakers and other key individuals involved in the preparation of a proposal to the Adaptation Fund, this study seeks to understand what adaptation is according to the Adaptation Fund, how this concept is implemented and operationalized in the funding process, and finally, how the concept is accepted, challenged, or transformed by nations applying for funding, drawing on the specific application experiences of one case study, the country of Tanzania.
This research will contribute to knowledge about how different conceptualizations of adaptation to climate change are integrated with development practices, circulated through policy, and shape the type of adaptation projects proposed and undertaken in developing countries. How adaptation occurs, who pays for it, and whose needs are prioritized are among the most urgent questions currently under debate in international policy. This project will advance research and policy on adaptation funding by providing specific empirical detail on how one developing country (Tanzania) is working to receive funding support for climate change adaptation. This will generate insights into how developing countries are able to respond to climate change given the priorities, constraints and requirements encountered in adaptation funding mechanisms. This research has direct policy relevance for global institutions including the Adaptation Fund and other climate finance mechanisms housed in governmental and non-governmental institutions and the private sector. In particular, findings will contribute to the development and implementation of the UNFCCC's new multi-billion dollar Green Climate Fund. Finally, this research will provide beneficial insights to countries, communities, and institutions applying for funding by clarifying the funding process and illustrating the less explicit factors that shape the decision to fund or reject proposals. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.
Intellectual Merit: This dissertation research adds significantly to the body of knowledge on adaptation to climate change. Climate change adaptation is a complex problem that must be addressed by a wide range of disciplines in order to be well-understood and effectively undertaken. Within the discipline of geography, research on adaptation has tended to focus on how to promote adaptation to climate change at the local scale. Adaptation has been framed as a primarily local problem, since the impacts of climate change tend to be localized. In other words, localities or communities tend to experience the impacts of climate change in very unique ways, and the experiences and adaptations of one locality may not be the same as or applicabl to another community. Thus, geographers have tended to focus on the local scale when researching how adaptation occurs or should occur. This research project agrees that impacts are experienced locally and that adaptation occurs locally, but moves beyond the local focus to examine how policy processes at national and international scales shape the adaptation options and approaches that are taken at the local scale. This broadens our understanding of the contexts that shape local adaptation, and deepens our knowledge of the specific cross-scale interactions that occur between the local, national, and international scales as a result of climate finance policy. The disciplines of political science, anthropology, sociology, economics, and law have all contributed to research on policy of climate finance. However, much research on climate finance, and adaptation finance specifically, has tended to take either a mechanistic approach that focuses on economic efficiency and practical outcomes or an ethical approach that examines the various justice of various claims and outcomes of policies. This research project deepens our knowledge of climate adaptation finance and bridges these two approaches by: 1) using discourse and institutional analyses to understand how adaptation and related concepts are defined and how this translates to specific outcomes and 2) applying critical development theory and justice framework lenses to understand how these outcomes shape the experiences of vulnerable, and often marginalized, populations. Thus, this research is novel in two ways: it links a mechanistic and outcome-oriented approach with an ethical, justice-based appraoch, and it applies existing theoretical frameworks in new ways to the question of adaptation finance. Broader Impacts: New climate finance mechanisms are being rapidly established, existing mechanisms are quickly growing, and billions of additional dollars are being pledged by developed countries to support adaptation. This research project will likely make an impact on how the insitutional structure of new climate finance mechanisms are developed, how existing mechanisms are maintained, and to whom and how future funds are distributed. This research will likely have direct policy relevance for global institutions including the Adaptation Fund and the Green Climate Fund, by identifyng how discourses and institutions shape local-scale adaptation options and practices. Furthermore, this research will likley provide beneficial insights to countries, communities, and institutions applying for funding, by clarifying the funding process and illustrating the less explicit factors that shape the decision to fund or reject proposals. Research findings will be shared with Tanzanian civil society stakeholders, government officials, and decision-makers; with policy makers at the Adaptation Fund; and through publications in academic and policy-oriented journals. Finally, as an instructor and teaching assistant, I actively integrate my research practices and findings into the classroom, most notably by encouraging students to engage with policy through geographic scholarship.
