SA-YSSP Project 4
Multi-scale adaptations to climate change and
social-ecological sustainability
Christo Fabricius, Sustainability Research Unit, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, George
6530, South Africa
Anthony Patt, Risk, Policy and Vulnerability Program, International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis (IIASA), 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Background and motivation
Social-ecological systems are classical examples of complex adaptive systems, which makes their
management, particularly in the context of global change, particularly challenging (Adger et al.
2011). Their drivers of change often act synergistically, with complex non-linear feedbacks across
spatial and temporal scales, and between governance systems, users, resources and resource
systems (Ostrom 2009). This can result in complex and unpredictable outcomes (Ludwig 2001;
Ostrom 2009) which vary from one context to another (Ostrom 2007). A better understanding of
complex feedback loops is thus required to promote better decision making for social-ecological
sustainability, particularly in the context of adaptations to climate change.
Adaptation plans are a popular response to the perceived risk and vulnerability associated with
climate change and have become a prerequisite for all local authorities. While many adaptations
have beneficial outcomes, some adaptations result in unintended consequences for vulnerability,
either for the decision makers themselves or for other stakeholders. Few if any of these plans have
taken a multi-scale and multi-stakeholder perspective and are frequently developed from an isolated
perspective, looking exclusively at a single focal scale and context and without due consideration of
their knock-on effects to other scales, stakeholders or areas (Adger et al. 2011). In this proposal we
focus on decision makers’ perceptions of the external impacts of their adaptation plans on the risk
and vulnerability of other stakeholders.
Project outline
Our approach is to view adaptation as a key driver, and not just an outcome, of vulnerability. We:

adopt a social-ecological systems approach (Ostrom 2009), with a focus on feedbacks and
interactions between individual users at different scales and different contexts;

use a multi-scale approach, assess vulnerability and adaptations at the focal scale of a local
social group, at a scale below that of the social group (i.e. at the level of individual’s
cognitive frames and processes) as well as at a scale above that of a local community, i.e. at
the scale of regional coastal planning processes;

look beyond the immediate impacts of adaptive strategies and take a step back to also
assess their knock-on and longer term effects.
Based on an adapted model of “private proactive adaptation to climate change” proposed by
Grothmann & Patt (2005) (Figure 1) we ask: how do four factors: i) actual risk due to global change,
e.g. climatic extreme events, global economics and human migrations; ii) perceptions of risk ; iii)
perceptions of adaptive capacity; and iv) access to capacity-enhancing resources such as knowledge,
time, money and entitlements ; influence the adaptive actions and strategies of agents (or Ostrom’s
(2009) ‘users’). In the second stage, we ask: how have these adaptations affected the vulnerability of
other stakeholders? (Figure 1).
Adaptations at one level often have a knock-on effect which can be either positive or negative.
“Windfall” or unexpected win-win adaptations have beneficial outcomes for everyone, e.g. when
conservation co-management initiatives result in reduced crime rates, which act as positive
feedbacks on new co-management programmes. But many adaptations have unintended negative
consequences, called maladaptations. Examples of maladaptations include strategies which merely
transfer vulnerability, e.g. across space (e.g. from an upstream community to its neighbours
downstream when they over-extract water during drought), across scales and/or stakeholders (e.g.
from a household or community affecting a keystone ecosystem service, thereby affecting an entire
region), across time (e.g. current generations adopting strategies which increase the vulnerability of
the next generation) or across policies and strategies (e.g. a municipality which constructs a dam to
regulate floods, thereby increasing its vulnerability to drought since dam has to be remain half-full
for effective flood prevention). There is therefore a need for a typology, to describe the different
types of knock-on effects of adaptation plans on external stakeholders. “Unexpected drawback” or
“win-lose” adaptations benefit one group but negatively impact another, e.g. when the construction
of a dam reduces vulnerability to drought on the one hand, but causes biodiversity loss on the other.
“Perverse” or “lose-lose” adaptations aims to decrease vulnerability, but increases it everywhere. An
example is when man-made infrastructure such as flood levies replace ecological infrastructure such
as coastal dunes, resulting in an over-all increase in vulnerability.
1.Biophysical and social trends & cross-scale impacts
(sea level rise; floods; demographic change)
Reliance on
public
adaptation
Risk
experience
appraisal
Cognitive
biases
Reflection
6.Engagement
& Situated
Learning
2.Climate Change
Risk Appraisal:
Perceptions of
-Probability
- Severity
3.Adaptation
Appraisal:
4.Adaptive
actions and
strategies:
VULNERABILITY
TRANSFER
5.Outcomes
Perceptions of
- Adaptation efficacy
-Self-efficacy
-Adaptation costs
7a.Objective Adaptive Capacity Resources such as time, money, knowledge &
entitlements
7b.Incentives
Adapted from Grothmann & Patt (2005)
Figure 1. Flow diagram of multi-scale adaptations to climate change
Methods and data
Focusing on South Africa, we will identify examples in the published and grey literature where local
and provincial authorities have designed adaptation plans and policies. We will compile an
annotated inventory of such adaptation plans, in the form of a database, and then plan to assess
actual and potential impacts of these adaptations on the focal social-ecological system, as well as on
external social-ecological systems. We will then classify these examples into different ‘types’.
The adaptive strategies in each example will be described and annotated in the database, using a
standardized format across case examples. Their knock-on effects or unintended consequences will
be assessed, using an attribute table which includes: a) description of the external group that could
be affected; b) the potential impact of the adaptation on the vulnerability of the external group or
area; c) the perception of the original decision makers of the secondary risk, as reflected in the
documentation; c) the predicted outcomes.
Our research thus includes three sequential steps: 1) Selection of case study examples where
vulnerability has been, or could potentially be transferred between a deciding party and an affected
party/ies; 2) Development of a database structure and data capturing template; 3) Assessment of
the potential transfers of vulnerability to other stakeholders, using interpretative document analysis
methods.
Relevant skills
Ability to work and think across disciplines, and across scales
Ability to conceptualize and take a systems perspective
Previous involvement in integrated systems research
References and recommended reading
Below, the references serving as recommended reading are highlighted in bold.
Adger W.N. (2006). Vulnerability. Global Environmental Change 16: 268-281. [weblink]
Adger, W. N., Brown, K., Nelson, D. R., Berkes, F., Eakin, H., Folke, C., Galvin, K., Gunderson, L.,
Goulden, M., O'Brien, K., Ruitenbeek, J. & Tompkins, E. L. (2011). Resilience implications of
policy responses to climate change. WIREs Clim Change 2: 757-766 [weblink]
Bunce, M., Brown, K. & Rosendo S. (2010). Policy misfits, climate change and cross-scale vulnerability
in coastal Africa: how development projects undermine resilience. Environmental Science &
Policy 13: 485-497 [weblink]
Cinner, J.E., McClanahan T.R., Graham N.A.J., Daw T.M., Maina J., Stead S.M., Wamukota A., Brown,
K, & Bodin O. (2012). Vulnerability of coastal communities to key impacts of climate change on
coral reef fisheries. Global Environmental Change, 22: 12-20 [weblink]
Füssel H-M. & Klein, R.J.T. 2006. Climate change vulnerability assessments: an evolution of thinking.
Climatic Change 75: 301-329 [weblink]
Grothmann T. & Patt A. (2005). Adaptive capacity and human cognition: The process of individual
adaptation to climate change. Global Environmental Change 15: 199-213 [weblink]
Olsson, P., l. H. Gunderson, S. R. Carpenter, P. Ryan, l. Iebel, C. Folke, & C. S. Holling. (2006).
Shooting the rapids: navigating transitions to adaptive governance of social-ecological
systems. Ecology and Society 11: 18. [weblink]
Ostrom E. (2009). A General Framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems.
Science 325: 419-422 [weblink]