The Adaptive Challenge of Climate Change

This book presents a new perspective on adaptation to climate change. It considers climate change as more than a problem that can be addressed solely through technical expertise. Instead, it approaches climate change as an adaptive challenge that is fundamentally linked to beliefs, values and worldviews, as well as to power, politics, identities and interests. Drawing on case studies from high-income countries, the book argues that it is time to consider adaptation to climate change as a challenge of social, personal and political transformations. The authors represent a variety of fields and perspectives, illustrating the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the problem. The book will be of interest to researchers, policy makers and advanced students in the environmental sciences, social sciences and humanities, as well as to decision makers and practitioners interested in new ideas about adapting to climate change.

Karen O'Brien is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the Universitetet i Oslo. She has been working on various aspects of climate change for over twenty-five years, including on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation and the implications for human security. She also works on the links between global environmental change and globalization. Her current research explores adaptation as a social, cultural and human process, the relationships between belief system flexibility and adaptive capacity, and the values and visions of youth towards the future in a changing climate. She is on the Future Earth Science Committee and has participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, as well as the IPCC Special Report on extreme events. She has co-authored and co-edited numerous books, including Environmental Change and Globalization: Double Exposures (2008), Adapting to Climate Change: Thresholds, Values, Governance (Cambridge, 2009), Climate Change, Ethics and Human Security (Cambridge, 2010), and Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices (2015).

Elin Selboe holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from the Universitetet i Oslo. She has researched local mobilization and politics in Senegal, with her dissertation focusing on the dynamics of social networks and participation in associational life in the context of economic crisis, changes in political Islam and processes of democratization. She has been researching the politics and social organization of adaptation to climate change in Norway and currently holds a postdoctoral position in the project Voices of the Future: Values and Visions of Norwegian Youth on Responses to Climate Change.