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W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi EllemorThis Must Be the Place
Research Articles
This Must Be the Place:
Underrepresentation of Identity and
Meaning in Climate Change Decision-
Making
•
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and
Heidi Ellemor*
Introduction
Climate change is presently causing disruption to social and ecological systems,
and major disruptions in the future are likely given even the most optimistic of
emission reduction scenarios. Climate change puts at risk a wide range of phe-
nomena that people value, ranging from ecosystem services, species, and eco-
nomic sectors to landscapes, homes, and human health.
1
In much of climate
and related science there is an implicit assumption that climate change only be-
comes important to society when it affects material aspects of well-being, those
most easily summarized in economic costs. In this article we suggest that the
utilitarian notions implicit in this science underrepresent at least half the story:
cultural and non-material impacts, including irreversible loss of nature, are of
equal and potentially growing importance. Yet the interface of science with the
social world seems dominated by the material paradigm. Hence we argue for
the need to demonstrate that alternative issues and framings are important, not
least for the instrumental reasons that cultural impacts have traction and mean-
ing to people and can induce action.
The scientiªc discourse around undesirable and irreversible impacts of cli-
mate change has focused on deriving measures of what constitutes dangerous
* This work was supported by NERC, ESRC and EPSRC grants to the Tyndall Centre for Climate
Change Research in the UK; an Australian Research Council Fellowship, and a Dean’s Visiting
Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. We thank three anonymous reviewers for construc-
tive comments and pay tribute to the late Steve Schneider, who ªrst suggested we write this
article.
1. IPCC 2007.
Global Environmental Politics 11:2, May 2011
© 2011 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
anthropogenic interference in the climate system, as enshrined in the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). While there are now
identiªable thresholds in the impacts of climate change, and the lexicon of dan-
ger has moved center-stage,
2
the science has quickly abutted against the inevita-
bly normative judgments about what is valuable and signiªcant to a society.
3
Thus Pachauri, for example, argues that dangerous climate change “is no doubt
a question that must be decided on the basis of value judgment: what is danger-
ous is essentially a matter of what society decides,” and that a fundamental
principle of such a decision “is, of course, universal human rights.”
4
In this article we argue that localized material and symbolic values have
hitherto remained undervalued in the standard political and welfare economic
calculus of climate change policy and science. We do this through considering
the risks climate change poses to valuable and unique places. We focus on
places as a means to highlight the “emotional, symbolic, spiritual, and widely
perceived intrinsic values of the environment.”
5
A focus on places highlights the
local material and symbolic contexts in which people create their lives, and
through which those lives derive meaning.
We argue that climate change policy underemphasizes, or more often ig-
nores completely, the symbolic and psychological aspects of settlements, places,
and risks to them.
6
We suggest that legitimate and fair implementation of cli-
mate change policy is impeded by the use of common decision-making frame-
works that reduce all risks to aggregate measures of human welfare. High-
lighting the risks climate change poses to place and identity poses a challenge to
notions of fairness in adaptation. The critique in this article is therefore aimed
at both the scientiªc assessment and the predominantly economic arguments
for climate change policy. Both of these rely on material and instrumental rea-
sons for acting on climate change. Focus on place and identity gives greater force
to alternatives to such arguments, based on precaution, rights, or wider notions
of well-being and what people care about.
The article progresses by reviewing evidence on the impacts of climate
change on two important, valued and unique places: the Arctic region, and
Paciªc small island atoll nations. The scientiªc evidence strongly suggests that
climate change will result in the loss of many of the unique natural and cultural
components of these places. We then explore two major and related challenges
these cultural losses and issues of identity and place present to climate change
negotiations and policy: the problem of managing the risk of irreversible loss;
and the problem of reconciling the non-market and non-instrumental compo-
nents of place with the economic metrics used in decision-making about cli-
2 • This Must Be the Place
2. Oppenheimer and Petsonk 2005.
3. Oppenheimer 2005.
4. Pachauri 2006, 3.
5. Brandenburg and Carroll 1995.
6. See also Agyeman, Devine-Wright, and Prange 2009.
mate change. We then suggest ways forward for climate change decision-making
based on the principles of human rights and justice.
Places at Risk
Places, in the context here, are spaces that have been given meaning by people
associated with them (though not necessarily residents). They are manifesta-
tions of economic, ecological, and cultural resources and meanings.
7
Recog-
nizing that social processes and relations deªne place does not mean that the
physical characteristics of an area are unimportant. Just as the meanings at-
tached to a place may be transformed through changes in the social and politi-
cal context, proposed changes to the physical environment may lead to the ar-
ticulation of new meanings, and actual changes to the physical environment
may contribute to the renegotiation of meanings. For example, the degradation
of the Barmah-Millewa Forest and ºoodplain in south-eastern Australia has led
sections of the local community, previously unaware of the environmental re-
quirements of the ecosystem, to develop an interest in the ecology of the area
and subsequently to re-emphasize the river as being of genealogical and cultural
signiªcance.
8
Thus, it is not just changing social relations and context that
change the meaning of places; changing environments—as is occurring due to
climate change—can also change meanings.
Places and their constitutive elements are valued in various ways by vari-
ous groups. As Hess and colleagues suggest, places are “localities within which
people and communities have particular affective relationships.”
9
It is not sur-
prising, then, that many people have a strong stake in the management of par-
ticular places.
10
The failure of the resource planning and management process to
include the range of meanings of places, and its singular focus on environment
as a set of biophysical characteristics, can lead to conºict. Harvey argues that a
consideration of environmental issues is almost impossible without (at least at
some point) confronting the idea of place: “some of the ªercest movements of
opposition to the political-economy of capitalistic place construction are waged
over the issue of the preservation or upsetting of valued environmental qualities
in particular places.”
11
Disputes may also arise in response to changes in the en-
vironmental conditions and associated meanings of places due to climate
change.
Because places are unique and valued by people, managing them often
entails trade-offs between some degree of conservation and some degree of
development. The ways in which societies manage places and conservation-
development trade-offs reveal much about their values; for example, some man-
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 3
7. Rodman 1992; and Jackson and Penrose 1993.
8. Ellemor 2003.
9. Hess, Mallilay, and Parkinson 2008, 468.
10. Gill 1994.
11. Harvey 1996, 303.
agement regimes are inclusive of people and others are exclusive. Some seek
economic growth while others seek conservation, some seek short-term rewards
while others seek to serve future generations, and some are responsive and
adaptable to change while others resist it. The ways in which places are man-
aged and the constraints to management options are important determinants of
their vulnerability to climate change. At the same time, growing awareness of
risks and climate change induce individuals to detach themselves from places
that will have decreased utility in future and which they may eventually have to
leave.
12
Locally experienced climate is a direct part of the psychological concep-
tion of place.
13
Places are symbols, products, and containers of the various cultures that
value them.
14
By culture we mean what people think, what they do, and the ma-
terial products (and landscapes) they produce; culture is shared, learned, sym-
bolic, cross-generational, adaptive, and integrated.
15
In North America and Aus-
tralia the idea of wilderness has deep resonance and great political power, at
least for settler cultures.
16
At the same time, human-dominated landscapes such
as the terraced rice paddies of Bali, the Yorkshire Dales of England, and the for-
ests and lakes of Sweden are highly valued as manifestations of the cultures that
produced them. Equally, the built environments of cities such as New York and
Tokyo are valuable not just as homes and nodes of power, but also as products
of the cultures that create and recreate them. Other sites of cultural signiªcance,
such as caves with prehistoric paintings in France or Northern Australia and an-
cient cities in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Peru, are highly valued as powerful em-
bodiments of culture. All of these places are valued by those with cultural asso-
ciations to them, such as the descendants of farmers, indigenous peoples, and
former civilizations, as well as the various inhabitants of cities and iconic land-
scapes. There are also those who have had no direct experience of these places
worth keeping, but who nevertheless value their existence.
17
In the past thirty years growing environmental consciousness, coupled
with an increasingly pervasive media, has heightened awareness of the impor-
tance of iconic places. Television and newspapers carry stories and pictures of
places at risk that must be saved in some way. Whether these places are saved de-
pends on a number of factors, including the ability of place-savers to demon-
strate the universal qualities of the place such that a broader community agrees
that it is worth saving. Indeed, icons such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia,
the snows of Kilimanjaro, and polar bears in the Arctic
18
are used to great effect
4 • This Must Be the Place
12. Agyeman, Devine-Wright, and Prange; and Crate 2008.
13. Knez 2005.
14. Ellemor 2003.
15. Salick and Ross 2009.
16. On wilderness, see Langton 1998.
17. Bonyhady 1993.
18. Polar bears have been listed as ‘threatened’ under the US Endangered Species Act by the US Fish
and Wildlife Service, with the primary threat to the species coming from shrinking sea ice due to
climate change (US Fish and Wildlife Service 2010). This raises the possibility of litigation in the
to represent the risks of climate change to places and species that are valued well
beyond their proximate human populations.
19
In advanced technological cul-
tures, most environmental changes, including climate changes, are now experi-
enced through so-called technological nature: virtual environments, television,
and other media. Psychologists suggest that the distancing of experience from
the natural world is detrimental to the physical and psychological well-being of
people.
20
Many subsistence and indigenous societies retain traditional ecological
knowledge of their environments, enabling them to monitor, observe, and man-
age environmental change. By traditional ecological knowledge we mean sys-
tems of practice and belief of how the natural world works. This knowledge is
often integral to a traditional community’s culture, and is a large part of its rep-
ertoire of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct their liveli-
hoods. Berkes argues that such knowledge is manifest not only through people’s
knowledge of land, animals, and plants in their particular environments, but
also through higher levels of interaction: through rules about governing re-
source management systems and through worldviews about the place of hu-
mans within the natural world.
21
These levels of ecological knowledge may over-
lap, change over time, and interact with each other. Worldviews and religious
beliefs, for example, inform what new knowledge is legitimate and can be ab-
sorbed into resource management practices. Social and religious sanctions and
taboos on food, hunting and farming practices and on sacred places are widely
observed as mechanisms that promote sustainable and resilient social and eco-
logical systems building on traditional knowledge.
22
Traditional ecological
knowledge is an important resource for guiding adaptation to climate change,
and there are numerous examples of how this knowledge is used to manage wa-
ter resources, predict weather, and forecast the onset of periodic climatic events
such as El Niño.
23
Cultural heritage is vulnerable to global forces and trends. In the industri-
alized era there has been an overall decrease of cultural diversity with the rise of
larger forms of social organization and their appropriating and displacing ten-
dencies. Numerous languages are threatened or have become extinct in the Asia
Paciªc region through processes of settlement and migration and the subse-
quent creation of translocal communities. Sutherland has shown that the pro-
portion of the world’s languages at risk is larger than the proportion of bird and
mammal species at risk.
24
Isolation of language speakers, for example in remote
islands, appears to reduce the risk of extinction. Thus climate change, if it re-
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 5
US against states that by their actions are causing climate change and thereby threatening this
species.
19. Slocum 2004.
20. Kahn, Severson, and Ruckert 2009.
21. Berkes 1999.
22. Elmqvist et al. 2007.
23. Orlove and Straus 2003; and Lefale 2003.
24. Sutherland 2003.
duces the viability of human populations on small remote islands, could have
impacts on cultural and linguistic diversity.
In summary, societies value places and their cultures and environments,
yet we argue in sections below that risks to both cultural and natural heri-
tage appear to be undervalued in scientiªc and policy considerations of the
costs and beneªts of climate change. To elucidate our arguments here about val-
ued places and cultures we examine two places that are at risk from climate
change—atolls in the South Paciªc and the Arctic high latitude regions.
Paciªc Atolls
Dramatic changes associated with climate change pose serious risks to low-
lying-island nations and their cultures. Atolls, in particular, are unique places:
they contain unique biophysical systems and species; they sustain unique mate-
rial cultures, social orders, diets, stories, languages, habits, and skills; they are
the homes of peoples; and they are at risk from climate change. That they are
small in every way and distant from the world’s centers of political, economic,
and cultural power, does not make them any less unique or valuable.
Foremost among these are the atoll islands of the South Paciªc. There are
261 atolls in the Southwest Paciªc Ocean. By country, the largest number of
atolls (77) is found in French Polynesia. The only Paciªc Island countries and
territories that do not contain atolls are the Commonwealth of the Northern
Marianas, Guam, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna, and Samoa. Four Paciªc Island
territories (Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu) are comprised
entirely of atolls. There are also uplifted atolls (Makatea) across the region, in-
cluding Nauru, Niue, and islands in Tonga and in the Cook Islands. These share
many of the environmental and social constraints of other atolls, if not their
low topography.
Analysis of climatic data show that there has been a slow warming trend in
the South Paciªc region of between 0.6 to 1.0
o
C in the area southwest of the
South Paciªc Convergence Zone (SPCZ) since 1910, with more rapid decadal in-
creases of between 0.3 and 0.5
o
C per decade since 1970 in the areas northeast of
the SPCZ.
25
There has also been a signiªcant increase in the number of hot days
and nights and a signiªcant decrease in the number of cool days and nights, but
no clear regional trends regarding rainfall.
26
There is also, as yet, no clear evi-
dence of changes in tropical cyclones, although many older Paciªc Islanders
perceive that cyclones have become more intense over the course of their
lifetimes.
Paciªc Islanders have become increasingly aware of changes in the natural
environment. These changes include multiple seasons without mangos (due to
high rainfall in periods when mangos ºower), withered yams that cannot be
6 • This Must Be the Place
25. Salinger, Renwick, and Mullan 2001; and Folland et al. 2002.
26. Manton et al. 2001.
harvested at the usual time, smaller and less appetizing breadfruit, coastal ero-
sion and inundation on low lying islands, and changes in the migratory pat-
terns of tuna. It is difªcult to attribute these changes to climate change per se, al-
though in some instances—such as changes in the movement of tuna—there is
a strong conºuence between traditional knowledge, the knowledge of commer-
cial ªshing captains who have been ªshing in the South Paciªc for decades, and
formal scientiªc assessments.
27
Climate models consistently predict that surface air temperatures in the
South Paciªc will increase as a result of climate change by 1 to 3°C by the end of
the century. Annual rainfall is not expected to vary greatly (between a 14 percent
decrease and 14 percent increase relative to the period 1961–1990); however, an
increase in intense rainfall events and decrease in the number of days with rain
is possible.
28
There is evidence to suggest that tropical cyclones may become
more intense in the future—meaning that such cyclones may last longer, exhibit
higher wind speeds, and have more intense rainfall.
29
Sea levels are projected to
rise by 1–7 mm per year, and a sea-level rise of 14–32 cm by 2050 is very likely.
There is general agreement among a wide range of scientists that these are
the most vulnerable of all countries to climate change.
30
The adaptation options
of these countries are limited by their small land area, high population densi-
ties, limited economic resources, economic marginalization due to isolation,
and generally low levels of human resource development. There is little that can
be done to adapt to incremental sea level rise. There is no land to which atolls
people can retreat–short of international emigration—should severe coastal
erosion occur. In the worst-case scenario, the carrying capacity of atolls may be
signiªcantly or completely reduced (either progressively or suddenly) by cli-
mate change and its associated impacts such as increasing mortality and mor-
bidity, decreasing growth, and, means permitting, increased outmigration.
While there is little doubt that atoll peoples are prima facie vulnerable to
climate change, many features of life in such small island nations suggest
signiªcant ability to implement adaptation and change. First, there is a rela-
tively high degree of reciprocity among people, communities, and neighboring
islands, especially in non-urban areas.
31
This facilitates the kinds of exchanges of
materials and information that assists in coping with surprises. Second, atoll
communities have a long history of exposure to short-term environmental per-
turbations, and have various strategies that enable learning and adjustment.
32
Third, there is in most atoll societies a high degree of traditional ecological
knowledge, and hence there are opportunities for building on traditional re-
source management institutions.
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 7
27. Barnett and Campbell 2010; and Lehodey, Chai, and Hampton 2003.
28. Lal, Harasawa, and Takahashi 2002.
29. Walsh 2004.
30. Nurse and Sem 2001; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2000; and Barnett and Adger 2003.
31. Connell 1993.
32. See Hooper’s (1990) account of cyclone impacts on Tokelau.
While island nations are clearly at risk, cultures are adapting to new loca-
tions and situations and transforming in ways that weaken older cultural forms
and render them less visible. In Niue and the Cook Islands, for example, large-
scale migration has resulted in more islanders living in New Zealand than in the
islands, yet the cultures of New Zealand-based islanders have not been wholly
displaced, nor have the cultures of the islands themselves. In both Niue and the
Cook Islands, however, reciprocal exchange has been weakened through diverse
and sometimes simple processes such as deep freezers curtailing the distribu-
tion of ªsh among households (which would otherwise be shared for immedi-
ate consumption); the dominant use of English (such that a conscious effort is
made in both countries to sustain the languages of Vagahau Niue and Cook Is-
lands Maori); the disinterest of youth in traditional ecological knowledge; and
the replacement of many traditional food procurement strategies by supermar-
kets and local shops.
33
These changes problematize the identities of Cook Is-
landers and Niueans and are lamented, particularly by older generations who
most keenly feel the loss of many traditional ways.
Traditional ecological knowledge in atoll cultures varies among island
groups and tends to be less inºuential in places that have been most modern-
ized (such as the populous islands of Majuro and Ebeye in the Marshall Is-
lands). Nevertheless, in more remote and undeveloped atolls such as in Kiribati,
Tokelau, and Tuvalu, traditional ecological knowledge underpins most resource
management practices. This knowledge is vast and is integral to the governance
of atoll societies. It includes techniques for growing swamp taro, knowledge of
ªsh locations and ªshing techniques that are ªnely attuned to seasonal and
wind patterns, and knowledge of plants and birds and their temporal and spa-
tial patterns. It also consists of systems of conservation, including controlling
access to or banning resource extraction in some motu and ªshing areas when
abundance seems low or when species appear unhealthy (often after cases of
Ciguatera ªsh poisoning) and banning of certain ªshing techniques at time
scales ranging from selected days to multi-year periods.
34
These kinds of prac-
tices may or may not have useful resource management functions, and they can-
not be understood merely as cultural devices to achieve beneªcial material out-
comes; rather, they are intrinsic to culture irrespective of their outcomes. Thus,
while traditional ecological knowledge often has considerable instrumental
value, it also has cultural value. In turn, then, if climate change impacts resource
abundance and distribution, this will challenge both the form and the function
of those many aspects of atoll cultures that are tied up with the land and seas.
In recent times there have been many initiatives to implement sustainable
resource management that build on traditional knowledge and traditional insti-
tutions in atoll societies. Many of these concern ªshing. For example, in Aitutaki
(Cook Islands) there has been successful implementation of an Individual
8 • This Must Be the Place
33. Barker 1994; UNDP 2002; and Sissons 1999.
34. Adams 1998.
Transferable Quota (ITQ) Scheme on trochus harvesting. The scheme is based
on an initial reserve area established by the Island Council, which later imple-
mented the ITQ system with the assistance of the Cook Islands Ministry of Ma-
rine Resources. This system of management, which blends modern and tradi-
tional techniques, has produced a resilient ªshery.
35
Also in the Cook Islands,
a lapsed traditional system of customary prohibition—the Ra’ui—has been re-
implemented by traditional chiefs with the assistance of the World Wide Fund
for Nature (WWF) and the Ministry of Marine Resources. This system, which is
also based on customary practices, has resulted in higher densities of coral and
ªsh inside the restricted areas. In Kiribati and Niue alike, island councils have
restricted the use of certain ªshing techniques, restricted the access of outsiders
to ªshing grounds, and placed prohibitions on ªshing in certain areas.
36
These
and many other practices across the atoll islands suggest that, while climate
change poses grave risks to the critical coastal environments that are atolls, atoll
cultures have some capacity to respond, and this capacity is the product of inter-
actions across international, national, and local institutions using both tradi-
tional and contemporary forms of knowledge.
The potential abandonment of sovereign atoll countries and impacts on
unique cultures can be used as the benchmark of the “dangerous” change that
the UNFCCC seeks to avoid. This danger is as much associated with the narrow-
ing of adaptation options and the role of expectations about the impacts of cli-
mate change as it is with uncertain potential climate-driven physical impacts.
The challenge for adaptation research and policy is to understand the adapta-
tion strategies that have been adopted in the past and which may be relevant for
the future.
The Arctic
Like the Paciªc atolls, the Arctic is at the frontline of the impacts of climate
change—not because the land will physically disappear, but because it will fun-
damentally transform to land-and-seascapes that local residents have never ex-
perienced in their thousands of years of residence in these places. The Arctic is
the belt of treeless terrestrial ecosystems and adjoining seas that extend around
the circumpolar North. The striking differences in culture and connections to
the land and sea between the Arctic of North America, Europe, Siberia, and the
Russian Far East indicate a diverse range of adaptations to these ecologically dis-
tinct regions. In this section, we focus on the North American Arctic, although
many of the generalizations apply more broadly. The Inuit people of arctic
North America are linguistically and culturally related groups extending from
Greenland to Alaska. Most communities are situated on the coast, enabling peo-
ple to access subsistence resources from both the land and sea. Ice-dependent
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 9
35. Hoffman 2002.
36. Thomas 2001.
marine mammals have been particularly important to Inuit livelihoods and
identity.
37
Caribou, waterfowl, berries, and other plant and animal resources
form important ties to the land.
In many senses, people are what they eat. Hunting, gathering, and food
preparation have been essential for survival and structure gender roles and so-
cial relationships within communities. Hunting and gathering provide opportu-
nities to strengthen kinship and other social bonds, as elders mentor youth and
people share in labor-intensive activities. For example, hunting whales requires
a team of hunters and processing the meat engages most of the community.
Similarly, berry picking is a group activity that broadly crosses age groups.
Hunting and gathering provide opportunities to share stories and experi-
ences that maintain ties to the land and sea. Elaborate sharing networks distrib-
ute and redistribute food and other goods within the community. Often 30 per-
cent of the hunters harvest 70 percent of the food, with elaborate systems of
reciprocity. These subsistence activities and stories depend upon and maintain
an ethic of respect for the land and sea and for the animals and plants that give
“themselves” to harvesters. This ethic views the Inuit as an integral component
of this social-ecological system. In this framework, if people fail to show respect,
they are unlikely to be successful hunters in the future, and nature is more likely
to treat them badly. In an environment as harsh as the Arctic, this often trans-
lates into a difference between death and survival. In summary, the Inuit view
themselves as an integral component of the land and sea, bound to it by an
ethic of respect and reciprocity and dependent on it for food and survival.
The Arctic is warming as rapidly as any place on the planet—twice the
global average warming rate.
38
This warming is most pronounced in western
North America and Eastern Eurasia, with increases of 2–3°C in mean annual
temperature in the past 50 years. Warming in these regions occurs in all seasons,
especially in winter. Sea ice has become thinner (40 percent in the last half-
century) and less extensive (9 percent per decade), with the record summer
minimum in 2007 being 40 percent lower than the long-term average. That year,
the ice edge retreated north of continental shelf break, causing walrus, which
usually use ice ºoes as feeding and nursing platforms, to abandon the ice and
move ashore in western Alaska for the ªrst time in recorded history. Polar bears,
another ice-dependent mammal, have been listed as a threatened species in the
United States due to warming-induced loss of habitat. Loss of sea ice and in-
creased intensity of winter storms interact to accelerate coastal erosion. This di-
rectly threatens life and property of many coastal villages. For example, several
Alaskan villages are eroding into the sea and are being forced to relocate, just
as on Paciªc atolls. There are currently no government agencies with the man-
date or authority to address climate-induced relocation, so relocation has not
yet been possible, despite loss of homes and other infrastructure to coastal ero-
10 • This Must Be the Place
37. Nuttall 2005.
38. Correll 2005; and Anisimov and Vaughan 2007.
sion.
39
Their situation illustrates the institutional challenge of adapting to cli-
mate change.
On land, snowmelt occurs earlier by about 1.5 days per decade, and the
permafrost has warmed 2–4°C, causing uneven subsidence of the ground
surface, formation and enlargement of thaw lakes, and changes in landscape
structure that disrupt both infrastructure and habitat.
40
Vegetation is becoming
more shrubby, shading out the lichens, which are the primary winter food of
caribou.
41
Wildªre, which was rare historically in tundra, occurs more fre-
quently, further reducing lichen abundance because of lichens’ slow (about 80-
year) recovery time. Most caribou herds in North America are declining in pop-
ulation, a trend strikingly different from the regional asynchrony in previous
population trends.
Inuit hunters, who spend much of their lives on the land and sea, are
keenly aware of and concerned about these changes.
42
Their observations are
generally consistent with the scientiªc observations of environmental and eco-
logical change described previously but provide greater detail.
43
Hunters report
that weather is more variable and less predictable, often with more extreme
weather conditions. Consequently, past indicators of impending weather no
longer work.
44
River and sea ice are thinner and less safe for winter travel. This
presents hunters with difªcult choices when migratory animals such as walrus
and whales, on which the community depends, are available only during brief
and sometimes dangerous periods of the year. Species are arriving that were
never observed before. Some of these, such as moose migration into tundra ri-
parian areas or salmon migration into rivers, represent new subsistence oppor-
tunities. Others, such as beaver-borne giardia and the salmon parasite Icthyo-
phonus, are clearly problematic. In still other cases, new arrivals such as trees,
muskoxen, and red fox interact with locally important species, with uncertain
implications for the subsistence resources on which people depend. One thing
is certain, however: the land and sea are rapidly changing from the place with
which the Inuit have long identiªed.
Because of the long residence time of CO
2
in the atmosphere, past green-
house gas emissions commit the Arctic to at least another half-century of
anthropogenic climate forcing, with warming rates in the coming decades likely
to be similar to or more rapid than what has occurred to date.
45
Many of the
physical and ecological processes described previously respond nonlinearly to
warming. For example, as sea ice thins its spatial extent declines more rapidly
than its thickness; as ice and snow cover decline, the reduction in albedo
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 11
39. Bronen 2008.
40. Chapin, Berman et al. 2005.
41. Sturm, Racine, and Tape 2001.
42. Krupnik and Jolly 2002.
43. Huntington et al. 2005.
44. Krupnik and Jolly 2002; and Wenzel 2009.
45. IPCC 2007.
(reºectance of incoming solar radiation) causes greater heating of the land and
sea and therefore an acceleration of high-latitude climate warming and its atten-
dant ecological and societal consequences.
46
These trends and projections present dilemmas for indigenous societies in
the North. Over the past few decades, for example, Inuit communities in the
North have been forced to adapt, switching species and adjusting hunting prac-
tices in the short term.
47
Experienced Inuit hunters, dealing with changing ice
and wildlife conditions, adapt by drawing on their traditional knowledge to al-
ter the timing and location of harvesting and to ensure their personal survival.
Young Inuit, however, do not have the same adaptive capacity. Ford and col-
leagues attribute differences between the generations to reduced participation
in hunting among youth and consequent reduced transmission and develop-
ment of traditional knowledge in recent decades.
48
Ford and colleagues report
that elders and experienced hunters, who act as an institutional memory for the
maintenance and transmittance of traditional knowledge, perceive that the
young are not interested in hunting or traditional Inuit ways. The incorporation
of new technology in harvesting such as GPS, snowmobiles, and radios repre-
sents technological adaptation but has exacerbated the perception among
young Inuit that modern technologies are more important than traditional eco-
logical knowledge.
The sources of adaptability among arctic Inuit are strikingly similar to
those of Paciªc Islanders. Like the islanders, arctic Inuit show a high degree of
reciprocity among people within and among communities, buffering individu-
als and communities against resource shortages and surprises. They also main-
tain a high dependence on the traditional ecological knowledge that has en-
abled them to cope with short-term environmental perturbations throughout
their long history. The Inuit are proud of their ability to adapt and recognize the
importance of traditional knowledge and wisdom as an essential ingredient of
their resilience.
Although the details differ among countries, governments sought during
the twentieth century to provide modern housing, infrastructure, education,
and health services to Inuit communities, often moving communities to new lo-
cations. This well-intentioned policy of assimilation into Western society under-
mined language, culture, and ties to the land and sea and seriously challenged
the resilience of Inuit culture. This led to reduced interest among the youth in
subsistence and culture, loss of language, greater use of store-bought food, mi-
gration from villages to urban areas, and a host of social problems. More re-
cently, the recognition and negotiation of indigenous land rights has revived a
sense of local empowerment which, in some cases, has led to the teaching of
12 • This Must Be the Place
46. Correll 2005; and Chapin, Sturm et al. 2005.
47. Krupnik and Jolly 2002; Berkes et al. 2005; and Wenzel 2009.
48. Ford, Smit, and Wandel 2006.
language and culture in the schools and greater involvement of youth in tradi-
tional activities. This resilience varies substantially among communities and of-
ten depends on leadership by local elders.
In addition to the renewal of informal institutions associated with subsis-
tence, sharing, and culture, new institutions have arisen to address new chal-
lenges. For example, subsistence harvest by Inuit communities has been chal-
lenged not only by climate change but also by imposition of regulations such as
hunting regulations that constrain the timing and amount of harvest that a
community is permitted. Co-management arrangements have been devised that
enable communities to work with government agencies to manage local har-
vests.
49
In part out of frustration growing out of disempowerment by national
governments, Inuit people from across North America organized in the Inuit
Circumpolar Conference (ICC) to present their concerns on the international
stage. Indigenous groups are represented on the Arctic Council with the same
status as the national governments of the eight arctic nations. This body has
been constituted to address the environmental challenges facing the Arctic
through activities such as the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
50
The ICC and
groups representing other indigenous peoples have been effective in pushing
their agenda, resulting in improved scientiªc understanding of many of their
sources of concern including climate change and contaminants.
51
The ICC
has also taken its concerns before the United Nations, afªrming the right of the
Inuit to be cold. They claim that greenhouse gas emissions, largely by non-arctic
peoples, are equivalent to genocide because of their catastrophic impacts on the
land, livelihoods, and culture of the Inuit. The ªrst Indigenous Peoples’ Global
Summit on Climate Change, held in 2009, developed a declaration and a set of
demands to address these infringements of their rights. Given the absolute lim-
its to adaptation by traditional societies to the massive changes that are occur-
ring, there are likely to be unique lifeways, inhabited settlements, and cultures
that will be lost unless aggressive action is taken to reduce rates of climate
change.
In summary, the impacts of climate change can alter and are altering pat-
terns of resource use in various regions of the world; some of these changes can
and do disrupt institutions and ecological knowledge that have evolved inde-
pendently of modern economies and science. These changes are apparent in
frontline regions such as the Paciªc islands and the high-latitude North. Cli-
mate change is likely to impose irreversible change on the cultures and environ-
ments of unique and valued places.
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 13
49. Koªnas, Chapin, Burnsilver et al. 2010.
50. Nilsson 2007.
51. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment 2005.
The Policy Challenges of Places at Risk
The preceding discussion has demonstrated that the impacts of climate change
are real and observed, and that the risks of change are signiªcant in particular
places. These impacts pose challenges for: deªning dangerous climate change;
for policy analysis of climate change as a global public good; and for justice and
equity. How does climate policy account for the risks to places and their cul-
tures and environments? The answer appears to be—not at all. There are two
major and related problems. The ªrst is the problem of reconciling perhaps in-
commensurable non-market and non-instrumental aspects of place with the
economic metrics actually used in decision-making about climate change. The
second issue is that of managing the risk of irreversible loss. We deal with each
in turn before examining alternative perspectives on justice that offer means by
which factors relating to place and identity potentially can be included in the
framing of decisions
The ªrst issue that limits global analysis of climate policy is incommensu-
rable values around environmental and social change and progress. Incommen-
surability arises because some of the values that should be considered in climate
change decision-making cannot be compared meaningfully using any common
metric. Nor is it obvious that they can be ranked on a universal ordinal scale of
value. In climate change, objections about such procedures have already been
raised with respect to the problem of valuing human life. In a situation where
there is no possible way to compare two or more entities—either on an ordinal
or a cardinal scale—these entities can be said to be incommensurable.
52
Thus,
standard techniques in welfare economics such as cost-beneªt analysis or con-
tingent valuation, which were developed to compare micro-level decisions and
which require standard metrics of value, are of little use when such metrics are
unavailable. To reduce the problem of impacts on and losses to places and their
cultures and environments into any such decision-making framework is to ªt
philosophically incomparable values into inappropriately technical procedures.
In welfare-economic terms, the lack of appropriate compensation means
that any decision taken on the basis of winners and losers implies that “some
individuals have the right to cause [uncompensated] damage to others.”
53
If this
is not an acceptable position and the loss of place cannot be compensated, then
decision-making must proceed on the basis of rights, precaution, or other prin-
ciples. Hence, we argue that decisions on global climate policy must be made
according to a formal conception of justice rather than merely an equitable dis-
tribution of burdens.
In neo-classical welfare economic analysis, the risk of irreversible loss has
often been handled through adjustments to the discount rate or imposing sus-
tainability rules onto standard economic analysis.
54
In the analytics of strong
14 • This Must Be the Place
52. O’Neill 1993.
53. Azar 2000.
54. Perrings and Brock 2009.
sustainability, such as outlined in ecological economics, anything that is be-
yond price should not enter the calculus of trade-offs and should be protected at
all costs. In ecological economics these assets are sometimes referred to as criti-
cal natural capital. But the history of economic development shows that preser-
vation of critical natural capital is not a guiding principle. Neo-classical welfare
economists have pointed out that that nothing has true inªnite value; there are
always trade-offs, and hence implicit values. The reality of the current global in-
action on climate change is, in effect, that neither non-market values associated
with changes in places nor the issue of their irreversible loss is incorporated ex-
plicitly into climate policies.
55
In effect, decisions are taken that affect places as
if their value were zero rather than inªnite.
The ability of economics in general to deal adequately with non-market
and other issues of value in the context of climate change has been brought into
sharp focus by the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the most
comprehensive and explicit analysis of the global economics in this area.
56
Stern
addresses the limit to such analysis caused by non-market valuation through es-
timating a global damage function in terms of the equivalent loss of GDP and
attempts to incorporate non-market impacts on human mortality and on loss of
some environmental values into the report’s underlying model. The review also
incorporates irreversible catastrophic losses, such as sea level rise from loss of
Greenland ice sheet, as expected values and weights them with low discount
rates. Ultimately, Stern concludes that “We have conceptual, ethical and practi-
cal reservations about how non-market impacts should be included, though
there is no doubt they are important.”
57
Neumayer, Sterner and Persson, and
Weitzman variously argue that non-market issues and the risk of catastrophic
change could and should be brought into the equation.
58
Baer provides a cri-
tique of the incorporation of non-market impacts and risks of catastrophic
change, concluding that “Stern is wrong that cost beneªt analysis should deter-
mine whether we try to stay below a 2°C threshold [i.e. meet a stringent global
target for climate change].”
59
The issue of irreversible loss of places or their components also raises
the issue of responsibility. One of the basic principles of almost every system of
law is that loss that is brought about by others, whether intentionally or in-
advertently, should in some sense be compensated. Baer argues that future ad-
aptation to climate change by the most vulnerable countries should be funded
through a compensation mechanism paid by the polluters who have caused
climate-related losses.
60
But the nature of compensation in the context of irre-
versible loss will always remain contested. It is indeed highly questionable that
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 15
55. Toman 2006.
56. Stern 2007.
57. Stern 2007, 187.
58. Neumayer 2007; Sterner and Persson 2008; and Weitzman 2009.
59. Baer 2007, 2.
60. Baer 2006.
compensation exists as a general principle of international law, and even if
it were, mechanisms of enforcement will be inadequate in the face of liable
countries’ assertion of their sovereign rights. Instead, international law works
through establishing legitimate norms generated by multilateral dialogue in
which moral arguments are important, but nothing is sacrosanct.
The second problem for climate policy is accounting for places at risk.
Economic losses may be calculated, but ecological, cultural, and psychological
losses are effectively not amenable to monetary valuation. This is a statement
about both the practical difªcultly of accounting for loss and the moral prob-
lem of whether such losses are in any sense commensurate with monetary
values. The loss of a place and its psychosocial and cultural elements (the loss
of a “world”) can arguably never be compensated with money. The difªcul-
ties of sufªcient compensation for loss of land and the cultural and economic
impacts that ensue are evident in ongoing tensions over land rights and self-
determination in post-colonial countries such as Australia and New Zealand.
In neo-classical welfare economics, the loss of natural system integrity is
important only for its impacts on human welfare. These impacts are measured
through reduced resource production, loss of future options, the creation of hy-
pothetical markets to reveal some monetary value, a decline in related market
value (for example using hedonic pricing), and other measures of loss of wel-
fare. Such impacts on human welfare are often termed use and non-use values
of the environment. Much of environmental economics within the welfare par-
adigm argues that real or hypothetical monetary metrics are important and that
such “better” and standardized forms of valuation will result in “better” deci-
sion-making, with prices internalized to decisions. But the assumption that
better values lead to more rational decisions is based on the idea that prices and
values are independent and emerge autonomously.
61
The reality is that real de-
mand and hence the economic value of resources is constructed through the
rules and institutions that delineate rights to use or not use those resources.
62
Hence, prices and economic values are in general a poor guide for deci-
sion-making concerning irreversible loss of natural systems or cultural assets,
particularly in the context of climate change.
63
They cannot accurately capture
the things that most matter about places. They may be able to price the replace-
ment cost of damaged houses, but not the loss of “home”; they may be able to
price the cost of replacing a destroyed museum, but not the loss of the heritage
items it contained; they may be able to price the cost of relocating island popu-
lations, but not damage to the traditions of the cultures they sustain. In 2004,
Cyclone Heta destroyed Niue’s national museum and its contents. The building
will be replaced, but the collection of lost and irreplaceable artifacts is a sig-
niªcant loss to Niueans’ cultural heritage.
16 • This Must Be the Place
61. See Vatn and Bromley 1994
62. See Vatn 2005.
63. Sterner and Persson 2008.
Justice Perspectives
If standard, instrumental means of assessing climate change fail to account for
place, identity, and loss, are there alternatives? Schneider and colleagues have
proposed ªve irreducible metrics for assessing climate change: market costs, hu-
man lives lost, distributional effects, changes to quality of life, and people dis-
placed.
64
These metrics could be used to assess losses across the human and nat-
ural systems affected by climate change, but suggest that outcomes can still be
measured independently and in isolation. Nor do such metrics resolve the issue
of what level of loss is acceptable or fair. Consequentialist theories of justice fo-
cus on the outcome of actions—who wins and who loses—and utilitarian ver-
sions of this approach suggest a supreme good to which all other goods are re-
ducible. Justice, in this framework, is therefore a matter of fair distribution of
this good. Deontological theories of justice, in contrast, suggest that justice is
about the application of rules and rights. Some theories suggest that justice is
not necessarily universal, but rather that it is complex, dependent on context,
and a product of the relationship between irreducible elements such as health
and material well-being (applying principles such as desert and need).
65
Applications of these theories in the area of climate change have primarily
focused on present responsibility for action to reduce greenhouse gas emis-
sions.
66
For climate change impacts, the issues of incommensurability and irre-
versibility outlined previously suggest that cultures can never be compensated
satisfactorily for the loss of their physical bases. Caney makes the case that this
set of equity issues around climate change can be framed as the right “not to
suffer from dangerous climate change.”
67
He argues that climate change impacts
jeopardize fundamental interests of individuals in their life and livelihoods
(such as impacts on disease burden, malnutrition, and food security): rights to
life, health, and subsistence as a minimum set. He also discusses a right “not to
be forcibly evicted”
68
as a potential additional undeniable right. These funda-
mental interests are sufªciently signiªcant and universal to warrant obligations
on others, even without recourse to the polluter pays principle. As Caney points
out, the strong case for rights in this area is ampliªed if consideration is given
both to persons (such as in the future) who are not currently represented and to
the interests of the natural world.
International treaties deªne more formal benchmarks of climate justice
based on rights. For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states
that “everyone has the right to a nationality” (Article 15.1), and that “no one
shall be arbitrarily deprived of his [sic] property” (Article 17.2). The United Na-
tions Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “in no case may a people
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 17
64. Schneider, Kuntz-Duriseti, and Azar 2000.
65. Adger et al. 2006.
66. Page 2006.
67. Caney 2008, 537.
68. Caney 2010, 83.
be deprived of its own means of subsistence” (Article 1.2). In the case of the ef-
fects of climate change on atoll and Arctic countries, these basic rights are at
risk, reinforcing the danger that climate change poses to these countries and cul-
tures. For international decision-making on climate change, consideration of
just actions should seek to incorporate these existing laws and norms.
At the international scale, difªculties concerning the meaning and practice
of justice are at their most complex. The constituencies include at least all states,
if not all people, and the problem requires some standardization across diverse
issues. The meaning, let alone practice, of international justice therefore remain
elusive.
69
The international system, built on the sovereign rights of states, fre-
quently struggles to reconcile sovereign rights with human rights, and at present
the rights of states are largely upheld at the frequent expense of the rights of par-
ticular groups, including indigenous peoples. For example, the Inuit people of
the Arctic are already experiencing the impacts of climate change. These impacts
are, in effect, breaching the rights of individuals, groups, and nations to an envi-
ronment safe from anthropogenic harm. Inuit residents are already making this
claim of harm. In 2005, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference sought to invoke the
1948 American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man against the United
States to make this case.
70
They claim that native peoples of North America and
Eurasia are bearing the brunt of climate change. The case being brought by the
indigenous communities raises fundamental issues of the rights of cultural
groups, particularly the oppressed and marginalized, compared to those of na-
tions.
71
The indigenous minorities of northern Europe and the Americas are not
alone in facing climate change impacts that threaten lifestyles and cultures.
The islanders and indigenous peoples of the world may face the necessity
of relocating, given current and projected climate change impacts. To them,
however, this may not constitute a viable adaptation to climate change in any
meaningful sense, as it means leaving behind the places that sustain them and
their cultures. Barnett goes further and argues that if adaptation constrains peo-
ple’s legitimate rights to development, then it cannot be considered to be “suc-
cessful.”
72
There has already been discussion of the possibility that sea-level rise will
make it impossible for human populations to remain on speciªc islands. There
would be enormous economic, cultural, and human costs if large populations
were to abandon their long-established home territories and move to new
places. In the present international order, each country is granted considerable
autonomy in controlling its borders and in setting policies on immigration. It
18 • This Must Be the Place
69. Brown 1997.
70. Sheila Watt-Cloutier (2009, 24–25) suggests that the petition is not confrontational but rather
“a ‘gift’ from Inuit hunters and elders to the world” and “an act of generosity from an ancient
culture deeply tied to the natural environment to...anindustrialized and modern culture that
has largely lost its sense of place and position in the natural world.”
71. Kymlicka and Norman 2000.
72. Barnett 2005.
would be unprecedented if countries began to encourage all their citizens to
emigrate. If islanders were free to migrate, rates of international migration from
island countries threatened with climate change may pass a critical threshold
that constitutes danger for a society.
73
This result may arise through increasing
dependency on remittances or aid rather than domestic production for income,
or through the adverse effects on culture arising from migration.
The examples of Niue and the Cook Islands (where individuals hold
New Zealand passports and are free to migrate to New Zealand) offer some in-
sights into the kinds of cultural and economic problems that arise when large-
scale migration occurs. Resource-dependent communities, especially in island
nations, have used migration as a strategy for sustainable resource use and risk
management for millennia. Historically, patterns of migration are determined
initially by available transport routes and then maintained through social net-
works.
74
Migration in the small-island context has, therefore, contributed to
maintaining a sustainable resource base and social structure. Ultimately, how-
ever, a threshold may be reached that pushes the social system from previously
sustainable rates of international migration into complete abandonment—a sit-
uation that is of great concern to the Government of Niue at present.
75
There has also been discussion of compensation to affected countries in
the form of rights to migrate to polluting countries.
76
The recent example of
New Zealand’s Paciªc Access Category of migrants from Tuvalu in response to
concerns about climate change is instructive. The scheme allows for up to 75
people from Tuvalu to migrate each year. Since it began in July 2002, however,
fewer than half of the available places have been ªlled, suggesting that even in
Tuvalu, where there is widespread concern about climate change, people are not
eager to leave their homelands. This points to the need for policies and mea-
sures that enable people to adapt to climate change in ways that allow them to
continue to lead the kinds of lives they value in the places they call home, rather
than simply to foster migration. As the climate change ofªcer for Kiribati said in
2000, “I think of emigration as being the stage where you know you’re losing
the battle. We’re nowhere near that.”
77
Conclusions
We have argued that non-material impacts, such as those associated with place,
are undervalued in the present geopolitical calculus of response and non-
response to climate change. In line with Hulme, we suggest that both climate-
W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin III, and Heidi Ellemor • 19
73. Bronen 2008.
74. Baylis-Smith et al. 1988.
75. Barnett 2008. The 2003–2008 Niue Integrated Strategic Plan (Niue Ke Monuina—A Prosperous
Niue) identiªes that “The declining population has created difªculties in maintaining adequate
public services but more importantly threatens the existence of Niue’s cultural heritage and sov
-
ereignty.” Government of Niue 2003, i.
76. Byravan and Rajan 2006.
77. Cited in Pearce 2000.
change science and economics have a “globalizing instinct” in their practices,
methods, and discourses that render invisible human-scale patterns and loss.
78
Initial physical impacts and ecological responses of anthropogenic climate
change are already apparent. Yet the growing social awareness of impacts is likely
to come about, we argue, through change experienced in local places and lives.
While the risks of climate change are particularly acute in Paciªc atolls and the
Arctic, the dangers of climate change are no less real for many other places
around the world. The rights of nonstate places, the differences in climate risks
they face, and the resulting cultural ramiªcations are largely ignored within in-
ternational debate and negotiation.
79
The case for a human-rights approach to these issues, while compelling, is
difªcult to implement given realities of the geopolitics of climate change. The
case is a complicated one, since rights soon come up against issues where sacro-
sanct (and even basic) rights are often in conºict. The important issues, there-
fore, are institutions and political processes rather than the assertion of rights.
In the end, it is institutions and laws that create the space and mechanisms by
which values in identity and sense of place can be incorporated into the calculus
of climate change.
We also suggest in this analysis that there are limits to adaptation options
for places and their cultures. For example, there are limits to what money and
engineering skills can do in atolls that lack available land for retreat from sea-
level rise, or in the Arctic where ice and snow cannot be remade. There are limits
to the idea of adaptation, too—changes such as migration may ostensibly be ad-
aptations, but cannot be considered successful if they result in damage to peo-
ple’s traditions, knowledge, social orders, identities, and material cultures.
We argue, therefore, that there is a need for more geographically and cul-
turally nuanced risk appraisals that allow policy-makers to recognize the diverse
array of climate risks to places and cultures as well as to countries and econo-
mies. Such analysis brings its own beneªts. As Hess and colleagues argue, “a fo-
cus on place promotes resilience” because identity and sense of place are central
to community resilience, public health, and well-being more generally.
80
In-
deed, they argue that disturbance of place can contribute to psychological disor-
der in individuals. There is a need for decision-making based on a politics of
principle that takes seriously these alternative risk appraisals, rather than the
shallow politics of national interest. This is, in effect, a call for a new precau-
tionary science of decision-making at the global scale that seeks to promote sus-
tainable adaptation to the inevitable consequences of climate change on diverse
places.
We do not, therefore, offer here speciªc recommendations on how the
global climate regime should or could incorporate place and identity. Inevita-
20 • This Must Be the Place
78. Hulme 2010.
79. Mace 2006.
80. Hess, Malilay, and Parkinson 2008.
bly, adaptation to a changing climate is place- and context-speciªc. Mechanisms
for transfer of funds or technical assistance to developing countries will need
careful assessment if the solution is not to be as bad as the problem. More gen-
erally, communities require processes that give them some locus of control over
their destinies as part of a recognition of identity and place.
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