Integrating power, justice and reflexivity into transformative climate change adaptation

Abstract

• Provides strong normative grounding for the idea and practice of transformative adaptation. • Contends that transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who implement interventions. • Presents four vectors of transformative adaptation as a reflexive form of organisational learning. • Highlights the importance of power, knowledge, coalitions and tradeoffs within programming. • Provides a clear guide to existing literature on transformative adaptation. Transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who fund, plan, implement and evaluate interventions. In response, we emphasise the need for donor and implementing organisations to self-reform to create the necessary space and support for adaptation projects that embrace a transformative ethos. We argue that projects can appropriately centre justice as the primary goal of transformative adaptation by (1) confronting power relations, (2) embracing knowledge pluralism, (3) fostering bottom-up coalitions, and (4) recognizing trade-offs and unexpected outcomes. At the heart of this reflexive approach is the foregrounding of learning processes targeted towards shifting knowledge and power that is critical to avoid adaptive outcomes that exacerbate the vulnerability and exclusion of already marginalised groups.