Unpacking Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster RiskManagement: Searching for the Links and the Differences: A

Conceptual and Epistemological Critique and Proposal

Allan Lavell

General Secretariat of FLACSO and the Network for theSocial Study of Disaster Prevention in Latin America-LA

RED.

(Document prepared in the context of the IUCN-FLACSOproject on CCA and DRR, 2010. The conclusions and arguments

can be attributed to the author alone and in no waynecessarily reflect the ideas and position of IUCN orFLACSO. Ideas and text may be quoted or used where

recognition is made of the source)

3rd May, 2011.

1. Introduction

Our starting point for this discussion is the hypothesisthat disaster risk management-DRM-, and, in particular,local disaster risk management-L-DRM-, with their proven,if still under utilized, conceptual and practicalcontributions to the reduction and prevention of disasterrisk, offer the soundest source of inspiration andguidelines for so-called climate change “adaptation” CCA(while we seriously question the use of the term“adaptation” when dealing with human system responses, muchpreferring the notion of “adjustment”, we will continue touse this term throughout the document given its “symbolic”and commonly understood usage). At the same time, we alsofully accept that not all that is considered under DRM isrelevant to CCA and all that CCA must deal with, asdepicted in the ongoing debate on the topic, is relevantto, or could be supported by DRM.

DRM, in the context of climatic and other types of hazard,has a long and often fruitful history, rich in notions and

experience, success and failure. In the present paper wewill propose and argue that a good part of this experienceand the instruments and methods that have been developed topromote and guide disaster risk reduction and prevision orprevention can significantly inform the strategies andpractice of climate change “adaptation”. Such a statementassumes that the climate-society relationship isa continuum, that the future is constructed on the basis ofthe present, in iterative and sequenced ways, thatexperience with the past is a logical entry point forprospective or proactive types of intervention, and thatmanaging climate or weather “extremes” can only beadequately achieved when this is done in the framework ofthe every day life, chronic risk and climate norms andaverages that communities and society in general experienceon a regular basis in different localities or regions(Hewitt,1983; Sen, ). Chronic risk refers to conditionsrelating to those ongoing human and economic developmentdeficits that characterize large numbers of people in theworld today, principally the poor, such as the lack ofemployment and incomes, inadequate health and sanitaryconditions, social and domestic violence; etc.

Our central aim here is to show where and why the twosupposedly different topics converge or diverge and alsodispute certain ideas as to differences between them. And,suggest the organizational and institutional frameworksneeded to deal with them in a coordinated and holisticmanner.

In order to achieve our central aim, we first propose andargue an extensive series of contextual and conceptualquestions which, at the same time that they question anumber of commonly held positions on the subject of“adaptation”, also offer a perspective for establishingreal and potential relations between disaster riskmanagement and adaptation, serving as a possible guide oroutline for revealing the most appropriate type of actionthat should be taken in the future. This is achieved by“unpacking” the question of “adaptation”, as discussed todate, attempting to identify its different components andchallenges and thus be in a position to relate these to the

DRM problematic and its different types of concern. Thisallows us to overcome the problem of dealing withaggregated and at times highly complex and diverse notionssuch as “adaptation” and DRM. Here we are assuming thatboth CCA and DRM are not monolithic topics but, rather,diverse in their aims, approaches and content.

Our document represents a flow of ideas that diverts fromthe central theme every now and again to deal withsubstantial conceptual and semantic aspects. This nonfocused approach is deliberate as the paper is a type of“flow of conscience” on the topic, many of the ideas beingthe result of writing the paper as such. We ask the readerto bear with the distractions and to not forget it’scentral goal!

Our document is structured in the following way.

A first section discusses what is DRM, how it has evolved,what are its principle components and approaches and thedefinition, relevance and deficiencies of the debate onenvironmental “extremes”. This is followed by a secondsection on climate change related aspects, including thevery notion of “adaptation” and its perceived failings;problems of definition; the themes of mitigation andadaptation, their significance and relations when seen froma development perspective; the question as to what are weadapting to-climate averages, climate extremes, sea levelrise, lost polar and glacial ice-; and the debate aroundclimate extremes seen in the light of more recurrentsmall, medium and even large scale, if not “extreme”events. A third section is dedicated to bringing togetherthe strands and components revealed in former sections,proposing a concrete framework or notion as regards the CCAand DRM topics and their merging. A penultimate sectiontakes a look at the work of Gordon White and suggests thathis notion of human adjustment is more adequate than theindiscriminate use of the notion of adaptation nowprevalent in conceptualizing and dealing with humanchange. A final section provides a synthesis of the mainpoints of our argument and some principle conclusions.

2. Disaster Risk Management: Definition and PreliminaryDebates on Scope.

2.1. Disaster Risk Management: A Basic Definition (see Lavell,2005 and 2009, for greater details and specifications of the use of this term inthe Latin American context).

The concept, process and practice of disaster riskmanagement, as discussed and increasingly accepted today,are relatively new, though based on a continuous flow ofideas and discussions and changing institutional goals andframeworks that go back nearly a century. In Latin America,they comprise a particular position or argument on thesubject of risk and disaster deriving from debates anddiscussions during the last 20 years, and during the last12 in particular, following Hurricane Mitch and itsdevastating effects in Central America.

From earlier positions where disaster itself (typified bysignificant economic and social loss, damage anddisruption) and its “management” or “administration”dominated both concept and practice, there has been anevolution in paradigms such that a more widespread concernnow predominates as regards disaster risk – the latentprobability of future loss and damage associated with theoccurrence of damaging physical events, the exposure ofsocial elements to their impacts and the presence ofdiverse causes and manifestations of so-called social orhuman vulnerability-that is to say, the predisposition of asocial element to suffer loss or damage.  With this changein position or paradigm, the options for socialintervention have been increasingly recognized, and greatlyextended and fortified and new arguments and options forthe prevention and mitigation of “primary” or “structural”risk factors now exist (see Wisner et al, 2004 for athorough analysis of such aspects).

This postulation or positioning does not negate the need toimprove preparedness and response to disasters, but,rather, locates the disaster problematic in a context ofgreater out-reach and significance, whereby risk is seen asa process and reality under continuous change and

transformation, assuming different levels and “forms” overtime, of which disaster is but one-an actualized versionwhere latency is transformed into palpable reality.Moreover, the shift of paradigm has been accompanied by afundamental recognition that risk, and consequentlydisaster, is the product, to a great extent, of processesof “social construction”, determined by and deriving ingood part from existing and historical modes of social andeconomic “development”. This means that the understandingand management of disaster risk cannot be achieved withoutthe establishment of a close and binding, integral andholistic relationship with sector and territorial, socialand environmental processes and development planning. Onecritical aspect of this view is the importance that must begiven to the reduction and control of t so-called “riskdrivers” such as environmental degradation, lack of landuse planning and territorial organization, insecurelivelihoods and lack of governance. When we introduce theseaspects into a consideration of DRM concept and practice wegreatly expand the considerations informed by visions ofdisaster management and disaster response whichconcentrated on early warning mechanisms and the logisticsof humanitarian response along with priority considerationto structural engineering type disaster preventionmechanisms..

When considering the distance that at times exists betweenCCA and DRM theorists and practitioners one suspects thatpart of this derives from a false or incorrectunderstanding of what DRM is all about today. Here it isapparent that many in the CCA field still see DRM as beingabout reactive responses to predicted or existing disasterand do not consider the more recent developments andcontributions of DRM in the fields of disaster riskreduction and prevention using development based strategiesand instruments. As we will appreciate later, when dealingwith development based reduction and proactive stances, thecloseness of the two fields is more apparent boththematically and strategically and instrumentally.

In essence, when dealing with the causes and conditions ofthe stress associated with climate anomalies and weather“extremes” (hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, intensiveflooding etc.) and linked hydro-meteorological processes(landslides, removal in mass, etc.), disaster riskmanagement, considered as a social process, includes (thisis equally applicable to non climatic hazards):

the understanding of risk, its component factors andcausal processes

the building of consciousness as regards existing andpossible future conditions of risk and risk factorsand their role in restricting development options atthe national and local levels,

the identification, elaboration, promotion andimplementation of policies, strategies, instrumentsand actions that permit society to face up to oranticipate such extremes and anomalies as well asthe accumulative effects of many non extreme events.

The achievement of these aims and goals takes place in theframework and context of societal “normalcy” and “routine”,and one seeks for loss and damage, associated with climaticextremes and climate variability in general, to be kept toa minimum over determined periods of time (short, mediumand long) and in accord with existing social, economic,cultural and political conditions and strictures.

Prior to pursuing our central argument further, it isimportant to digress a while with reference to two basicassociated matters that are of great importance for the DRMand CCA themes in general and which derive from conceptsused in the former paragraph.

Firstly, when speaking of “climatic variability” we arereferring to the range of differentiated conditions ofclimate that disobey the norms or averages of the primaryclimate factors (wind speeds, temperature, rainfall,transpiration etc.). While the norms or averages serve ingood part to define the climate type as such and thecategory we assign it (temperate mid-latitude; tropical-humid; tropical-dry, Mediterranean etc.), there are facets

of the climate that disobey the norm, in extreme or not soextreme form, as is the case with hurricanes, extreme andprolonged rainfall, tornadoes, drought etc. These eventsare part of the “normal” climate but they disobey the normsas such.  When climate, seen as a series of norms oraverages changes, one can also expect that the types,regularity and characteristics of the anomalies or extremeswill also change. This is of fundamental importance for thesubject of Climate Change, as we will examine later.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change- IPCC-official definition of climate variability refers tovariations in the mean state and other statistics (such asstandard deviations, statistics of extremes, etc.) of theclimate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that ofindividual weather events. Variability may be due tonatural internal processes within the climate system (internalvariability), or to variations in natural or anthropogenicexternal forcing (external variability).

Secondly, when referring to “climatic, weather or hydro-meteorological extremes” one is normally referring toconditions or occasions of climate or hydrology that in aphysical sense, exceed or disobey the norm and are locatedon the limits of the associated, measured scales ofintensity and energy discharge. Thus, with hurricanes, forexample, the extremes are established to date by theexistence of category 5 storms with sustained wind speedsof over 280 kilometers per hour (the minimum is hurricaneslevel 1 with sustained winds of 117 kilometers per hour).When dealing with seismic “extremes” these are establishedby the limit of the Richter scale, and ranges around 9.5-10on this scale.

The IPCC definition of weather extremes is “an event thatis rare within its statistical reference distribution at aparticular place. Definitions of ‘rare’ vary, but anextreme weather event would normally be as rare as or rarerthan the 10th or 90th percentile. By definition, thecharacteristics of what is called ‘extreme weather’ mayvary from place to place”.

Nevertheless, we must recognize that the use of the notionof climate or weather “extremes” (or seismic, volcanicextremes etc.) is somewhat imprecise and lax and it isfrequently used in the disaster and adaptation literatureand debate more to refer to events that can causeconsiderable damage than to real physical “extremes”. Hereit is not difficult to appreciate that physical “extremes”are not the only ones that present a potential hazard forsociety. Hurricanes of level 2 or 3, that are not in anyexact sense “extreme” events (in fact they are nearer tobeing normal than extreme especially in the hurricaneseason), also lead many times to extensive damage and loss.In this sense in the present paper it must be recognizedthat in using such a notion we are not limiting ourselvesto a consideration of the true extremes of climate ( the 90and 10 above and below percentiles) but rather to a rangeof physical manifestations that fall outside the norm andwhich may present some degree of hazard for society, ifexposure and vulnerability levels are sufficiently high.

Having established the physical definition and parametersof “extreme events”, we must, thus, also recognize thatwhen dealing with the subject of disaster risk managementand adaptation in an integral way, going beyond the frameof the physical world, that it is not only the physicalproperties of events that determines their level of“extremeness”.  Rather, our interest must be positioned interms of “events of high or extreme social impact” or moresimply “harmful events”. With this we accept that it is notonly the level of discharged energy that explains loss anddamage, but rather, the levels of exposure andvulnerability of the affected society, combined with thelevel of that energy (see Hewitt, 1983, for a forcefulcritique of what he calls “physicalist” arguments thatsuggest the unilateral importance of the physical energy inexplaining damage to a “neutral” and “innocent” society).

For disaster risk management and “adaptation” it is offundamental importance to recognize that a physical event,with lower discharge of energy can lead to more damage andloss than one with greater energy levels, if the associatedconditions of exposure and vulnerability are higher in the

first than in the second case. And, in order to achievedisaster risk management goals, it is also very important(as we will examine later) to recognize that the sequencedrecurrence and impact of a series of small or medium scaleevents, affecting poor and vulnerable communities, can havea greater accumulated effect than the impact of a singlelarge scale event which recurs at time intervals of decadesor even centuries (see ISDR, 2009, for a recent discussionof the related concepts of “intensive” and “extensive”risk).

The singular fact that more and more small scale events areleading to more and more accumulated damage and loss ispart of the explanation for increasing disaster losses overthe last four decades, when no significant increase in“extreme” events can be found in the historical record.

Following this argument, we may conclude that the notion of“extreme” events has essentially been introduced by thegeo-science community and with good reason given theirinterest in the physical processes and parameters ofgeophysical phenomenon. For disaster risk management,however, and the subject of adaptation, the more importantparameter relates to the degree of hazard or threatassociated with these events, where the levels of exposureand vulnerability will be key in any explanation, unless weare in fact dealing with the real extremes of nature (9.5-10 R. earthquakes, violent volcanic eruptions, level 5sustained and slow moving hurricanes affecting denselypopulated, poor areas, 40 metre tsunamis, large meteoritesreaching earth, etc.) where it is difficult to see exposedsociety protecting itself no matter how many resources andtechnical options it manages, beyond the option of earlywarning and evacuation. Our capacity de manage risk canonly be defined by our ability as a society to induce orintroduce changes in human behaviour and action when facedwith physical events that many times are beyond humancontrol due to their “naturalness”, or our ability toprevent the construction of new hazard factors oftechnological or socio-natural type. A physical definitionof extreme although useful as a parameter can not

substitute for a concept that serves to reveal and point tothe social factors that condition risk.

Therefore, rather than being dominated by the subject of“extreme events” in a physical sense, we need to recognizethat the central concern comprises “high impact events andcontexts”, where we are obliged to analyze and understandthe social conditioning factors associated with risk andloss. Thus, for the sciences of development or the socialsciences in general an “extreme” event is not one wherethere is the greatest discharge of physical energy, but,rather, one where there is more associated damage and loss.This is, or should be in the center of disaster riskmanagement and climate change adaptation concerns andimplies a consideration of the social, economic, political,historical and cultural conditions that lead to thevulnerability which affects very large numbers of peopleand their livelihoods, principally the poor.

This disenchantment with the prevalent concern for “extremeevents”, and the “physicalist” connotations it transmits,as opposed to the interest and emphasis on the socialconditioning factors of vulnerability and risk, is one ofthe principle reasons why we find the ISDR and IPCCdecision to place emphasis on Managing the Risk of ExtremeEvents and Disasters in their recently agreed on specialstudy of the relations between DRM and CCA, both somewhatinadequate and potentially damaging as such. It returns usto the period in disaster study history when the physicalelements were paramount and society was interpreted asbeing subject to their impacts, without any real choice.The title could transmit to the external observer the ideathat those that promote the study really believe that it isextreme physical events and magnum disasters what links theDRM and CCA communities, whereas in reality it is hazard,vulnerability and risk, and overall development levels thatreally links them. The topic of the titles given to studieson such issues will be considered later when looking atother “inappropriate” and even sensationalist usages, whichtend to distract from the central issues at hand. Ratherthan Extreme Events and Disasters we should maybe be

talking more about extreme exposure, vulnerability, riskand disaster.

2.2. The Fundamental Emphases of Disaster Risk Management.

The “confrontation” of society with risk can occur in twofundamental and complimentary dimensions or directions.

Firstly, with reference to existing or anticipated futurerisk. Existing risk is the product of probable, potentiallyharmful physical events interacting with already existingexposed and vulnerable population, livelihoods andinfrastructure. In the case of intervention in existingrisk, we refer to corrective, compensatory or mitigationbased risk management (see Lavell, 1998, 2005, 2009). Onthe other hand, the prevision and prevention of possiblenew, future, conditions of risk, is the theme of so-calledprospective or proactive risk management (we will return tothese categories later, in more detail).

Secondly, intervention can be conceived with reference tothe phases or “moments” of risk, where risk is seen as acontinuum, in constant movement and flux, transformationand change (see, Lavell, 2005, for a development of therisk continuum argument). Thus, latent risk exists prior tothe impact of any particular physical event and itsactualization as disaster loss, and this risk can bereduced or mitigated ex ante using corrective riskprinciples. New conditions of risk are generated once anevent occurs and these are faced up to with emergency,humanitarian response and rehabilitation measures. And, atthe moment of reconstruction and recovery activities riskconsiderations newly emerge and must be dealt with in orderto guarantee that disaster risk is not reconstructed insociety through faulty rehabilitation and reconstructionpractices. In each one of these phases or “moments” of risk(pre-disaster mitigation and prevention, preparedness,response, rehabilitation and reconstruction) principles ofcorrective or prospective risk management may be applied.

2.3. Weather “Extremes” and Climate Norms and theFormulation of Disaster Risk Management Schemes.

“Extremes” and non routine events of all kinds must beconsidered part of “normal” climate and weather, as we havestated previously. That is to say, they are a constituentpart of its existence, and of fundamental importance in theregulation of energy and climate. Nevertheless, whilst theyare part of that normalcy, they also disobey the “norm” orthe “average” as regards the basic defining factors orparameters of climate- temperature, rainfall, wind speed,solar exposure and intensity, humidity, etc.   Climate isdefined essentially by the averages and norms and not bythe “extremes”, although these are part of the variabilityit exhibits, that characterize it in important ways and arepart of weather seen as a short term temporal expression ofclimate. Thus, for example, although summer thunder stormsand heavy winter snowfall may be experienced in areassubject to a Mediterranean climate, the definition of thistype of climate will be expressed in dictionaries orgeography texts more in terms of warm, wet winters and hot,dry summers, the norms, than by recourse to the prioritynaming of such “extremes”.

When considering the human motivations and parameters forthe location of production, housing, infrastructure,transport, commerce and services, among others, these are,in general, geared up to and influenced by the averages andnorms of climate (and, also, with reference to otherphysical conditioning factors, such as the return periodand scale of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions,geomorphologic processes, natural erosion, tides etc.),which limit, condition or favor secure and sustainablehuman development, and not by the nature and presence of“extremes”. That is to say, societal “development” adjuststo and is influenced by normal conditions, as they providethe milieu that guarantees, over determined periods oftime, conditions of security for production and location,within established and fixed parameters.

Stated another way, the fundamental decisions as to thedirection of the development process are taken in lieu of,

and guided by the existence of resources, whether these benatural, location, economic, cultural or social. Decisionsto be are not based on the existence of the potentiallydangerous physical events which will undoubtedly occur atcertain times in the very same zones, although the presenceof potential hazards undoubtedly dissuades location on manyoccasions (the Panama Canal, for example, was built whereit is because of the supposedly lower seismic risk whencompared to its “competitor”, the Nicaragua-Costa Ricaborder area). Thus, the resources offered by river, lakeand ocean side locations, flood plains, or volcanic slopesexplain the location of population and production but canbe and are transformed into hazardous areas for society atcertain times, when floods, hurricanes or volcaniceruptions occur. This resource-hazard continuum has beendiscussed by different specialists ever since it waspostulated in the early 70’s by Robert Kates and others.

In sum, disaster risk management, considered within thecontext and framework of development planning, operatesunder circumstances where different zones aresimultaneously typified by the existence of resources andhazards for human development. A key or essential aspect ofdisaster risk management (and this is also true of“adaptation”) is to maneuver in this continuum of resourcesand hazards, attempting to guarantee that the damage andloss associated with the occurrence of harmful physicalevents (the “extremes”) does not offset or eliminate theaccumulated benefits that derive from the use of thestrategic resources offered by different areas during therelatively, or absolutely long periods in which they arenot affected by the “extremes”.  

The saving of life is always essential in this formula tosuch a degree that it could also be established that theessence of disaster risk management is to guarantee afavorable social and economic balance between gains andlosses in the medium and long term, always guaranteeing aminimum loss of human lives and life in general. Due tothis, early warning systems are extremely important fordisaster risk management, although such mechanisms areessentially the most conservative way of dealing with the

problem of risk. This is so because they resolve animmediate problem associated with the occurrence ofdamaging events, but do little to change the underlyingfactors that explain risk in the first place and whichprobably guarantee that similar evacuation and livelihoodlosses are once more experienced in the future. Loss oflivelihoods and accumulated small scale investment by thepoor, in particular, will further add to their survivalproblems despite the fact their lives were saved. Whenearly warning systems are built into a process thatguarantees economic and social advancement for the affectedareas, more options for primary risk reduction exist and wemove to a more progressive way of dealing with thechallenges of risk (see Lavell, 2009).

The physical “extremes” tend to be described or classifiedby natural and applied scientists in terms of average“periods of return”. That is to say, we are dealing withthe number of years, on average, between events of adetermined, similar level of intensity or magnitude.  Thus,for example, we may have a hurricane of level 5 on theSaffir-Simpson scale affecting a zone or region every 150years on average, and others of lower intensity withshorter periods of return, affecting the same zones orregions. Equally, this will occur with tornados of levels6, 3 or 2, or differing levels of intense rain andflooding. The period of return is calculated according toavailable historical information as to the temporal andspatial incidence of events of differing magnitudes orintensities, and through scientific calculation, and ittells us that a probability exists every so many years onaverage that an event of determined magnitude will occur.This does not mean of course that such an event could notoccur two days, two months or two years in a row. Thecalculation is statistical and probabilistic.  

Thus, in the disaster risk management field a range ofcontexts of “normality” and “abnormality (everything thatis above or beneath the norm or average is “abnormal”, ifnot extreme) must be recognized.  And, it is in the contextof that variability that disaster risk management works,complementing the individual and collective decisions taken

in the framework of the positive influences and positioningeffects of physical norms and averages and the potentialnegative influences and effects of the “extremes” andanomalies. It is precisely because the extremes and normsform part of a unique integrated natural and social realitythat disaster risk management must be considered anessential and integral component of development planningand not an adjunct to it. We would also argue that this ishow climate change adaption must be seen and be promotedboth substantively and institutionally.

The current situation, whereby DRM and CCA practice aremore likely to be seen as discrete areas of concern anddealt with by discrete types of institution, as opposed tobeing linked directly and subordinately to developmentpractice and institutional promoting structures must beovercome as soon as possible. This problem of thematic andinstitutional separation has been widely discussed in thedisaster risk management field and is now also prevalent asregards the adaptation topic, where environment ministriesand national meteorological offices with their strongphysical undertones dominate, as opposed to developmentbased views of the problem led from development promotioninstitutions.

2.4. Normality and Abnormality and the Decisions onDevelopment and Risk.

With the contrast between normal or average andexceptional, extreme, irregular or abnormal conditions wemay well ask how decisions are taken in society in relationto such contrasting conditions, when the objective is tolocate, produce, construct, circulate or journey underconditions that guarantee maximum levels of social andeconomic output and productivity and the greatest possiblelevels of security and sustainability.   How is the riskassociated with “extremes” or “abnormal” conditions managedwithin a framework where we seek to have optimal social andeconomic yields, governed by normal, average conditions?

The most common tool or concept used in disaster riskmanagement in order to rationalize the balance and

relations between norms and extremes is the notion of“acceptable risk” (this may be used formally andsystematically or informally and implicitly) employed inreaching decisions on intervention that search to: reduce preexisting levels of risk to acceptable levels,

taking into account existing social, economic, cultural,political and historical conditions, and the realoptions that exist (corrective disaster risk management)

promote the  incorporation of measures that guarantee  asuitable level of security and sustainability for newinvestments and development projects undertaken bygovernment, private sector and civil society in general(prospective or proactive disaster risk management).

Such a notion is normally accompanied by economic cost-benefit type analysis where we are dealing with formalsector investments. In the case of marginal or excludedsocial groups, the poor or destitute, the notion ofacceptable risk is in good measure outweighed or eliminatedas an option and replaced by considerations of “acceptedrisk” where the need to guarantee daily survival and incomeopportunities, and the lack of resources that permitdecisions on “acceptable” risk, amongst others, willdetermine that many locate in hazardous areas despite theirknowledge of such circumstances. Dealing with every day,chronic risk, will deny most options for dealing directlyand insistently with disaster risk. And, consequently,dealing with disaster risk (and adaptation) for thesepopulations requires the total integration of such concernsinto poverty reduction and general development processesand strategic formulations.

Thus, although it is the daily, monthly and seasonal normsof climate, and other physical variables, that essentiallydetermine the location of human beings and production andthe type of production and infrastructure required, the“abnormal” conditions - the “extremes”- will many times betaken into account in order to calculate adequate oracceptable levels of security and sustainability, and themeasures required to guarantee these. In the case of thelevels of protection that the relevant agencies andinstitutions of society determine  necessary in the case

of nuclear energy facilities, for example, the period ofreturn of earthquakes against which protection must beassured may well be placed at the 10000 year level;whereas, for a house, with a depreciation period fixed inthe decades, the period of return of events may possibly becalculated around 50 years, unless they are houses ofincalculable historical value when the period of returncould be fixed in the hundreds of years or to eternity.

That is to say, the level of protection sought will be afunction of the type of good or production, its strategicimportance for society, the risk associated with a failingin its operations, financial availability, and otherobjective and subjective criteria. The significance ofacceptable and accepted risk for the “adaptation” challengeshould not be underestimated.

In the end, the art of climate disaster risk management, aswith all disaster risk management, is the ability to handlenormalcy in the context of the extremes or deviations thatdefine climate variability. Here we should remember thatthe normalcy or routine of social and economic developmentand its effects on different social groups is, in additionto being what is interrupted or damaged with disasters,also, and apparently in contradictory fashion, the sourceof the very risk that is finally actualized in disaster.That is to say, at the same time as disasters interrupt“development” that same “development” is also many timesthe source of the risk that is possibly later transformedinto disaster (see, Lavell, 1999). Such are the dialecticsof reality and risk.

In sum, the management of climate disaster risk works inthe context of “the extreme” or abnormal characteristicsof climate and their relative degrees of hazard, applyingformal or informal considerations as to acceptable levelsof risk or, in the case of the vast population that havefew options of choosing or “adapting”, “accepted” risk.

3. Adaptation to Climate Change.

3.1. Climate Change

Climate Change, according to the Inter Governmental Panelon Climate Change- IPCC- refers to any change in climate overtime, whether due to natural variability or as a result ofhuman activity (this can include the emission of greenhouse gases, the urban heat island effect and rural landuse changes and deforestation). This usage differs fromthat in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC), which defines ‘climate change’ as: ‘a change ofclimate which is attributed directly or indirectly to humanactivity that alters the composition of the globalatmosphere and which is in addition to natural climatevariability observed over comparable time periods’.

In view of the fact that our interest here is fundamentallycentred on the “adaptation” side of the Climate Changeequation and not on the physical process of such change, wewill adopt here, as a point of departure, the morecomprehensive definition offered by the IPCC, whichincludes both natural and human factors. This of coursedoes not exempt us from recognizing the importance that therates and characteristics of change, the incognitos as faras its rhythm over the next years and decades, theterritoriality of its impacts or effects, among othercontextual factors, have as regards decisions on“adaptation”. These aspects will influence decisions ondisaster risk management and “adaptation” in a fundamentalway.   Thus, for example, to the extent negotiations on thereduction of the rates of emission of gases are successfulor not at the next Climate summit in Mexico, this willinfluence the rates and nature of climate change and,consequently, the degree and type of disaster riskmanagement and “adaptation” required. Moreover, as we willcomment further on in this paper, the type of disaster riskmanagement or adaptation goals pursued and achieved mayvery well have significant impacts on the problem ofclimate change as such.

However, as far as human response to change goes,understanding the process is not so important, inasmuch asit does not matter if the change is “natural” or humanly

induced, given that reactions and answers to it arefundamental in terms of adjusted agricultural or industrialproduction, commerce and services, use of naturalresources, technologies of production, styles and rates ofenergy consumption, and as regards the construction and useof housing and infrastructure. 

Moreover, in spite of our certainty that human activitycontributes in a significant manner to the change, there isno scientific way at this moment to calculate what part ofthe change relates to human activity, as opposed to nature,nor as to the synergies between both types of influence(deductively and hypothetically we can derive some answerto this question, but not scientifically, in the sense ofthe use of controlled experiment).

In limiting our interest and definition of the problem inthis way, this does not mean we do not recognize thefundamental difference between change induced by humanintervention as opposed to natural causes, in the sensethat the first is subject to remedial human interventionand is thus theoreticallycontrollable, and the second isnot. In the first case the physical events are of a socio-natural type and in the second completely natural (seeLavell, 2004, 1996) for a discussion of these types ofevent and hazard).

3.2 The Mitigation of Climate Change

The first pillar of action against Climate Change is socalled “mitigation” which according to the Convention, theIPCC and other authorized sources is defined in terms ofthe reduction and control of the emissions of green housegases, such as carbon dioxide and methane and the provisionfor so-called carbon “sinks”.  This definition of“mitigation” is that which is commonly accepted and usedamongst climate scientists and many others from the naturaland basic sciences. It is part of the terminologyestablished by IPCC and the Convention and their associatedscientific communities.

“Mitigation” is therefore defined with reference to thephysical processes by which new climatic conditions areconstructed, and not, as is the case with disaster riskmanagement, with reference to the reduction of any of thewide range of conditions that explain existing risk-hazards, exposure and vulnerability. With this difference in usage and interpretation, we mayidentify a first potential problem of “communication”between the DRM and climate change communities orspecialists, a problem now well discussed between these twosupposedly existing and “distinct” communities.

We say “potential” because the real significance of thedifference very much rests on how the overall problem isestablished or constructed and the extent to which there isagreement as to the basic processes and the concepts thathelp us to understand this. That is to say, differences inthe definition of particular words, is not as problematicas differences in the understanding of the concepts andprocesses involved in the construction and study of theproblem. If concepts and processes are commonlyunderstood, we can bare with differences of definition ofparticular words, although common usages would certainlyfacilitate communication without equivocation.

Furthermore, we should also be very wary of dividing theworld into two supposedly opposing or different“communities” with the implicit suggestion that there istotal agreement and consensus within, and significantdifferences between them. This is simply not true and it isvery likely that each of these supposed “communities” arein fact various communities with significant differenceswithin themselves on many major issues, includingterminology, concepts and process (we have already examinedthe “extreme event” notion and we will examine a few otherdiffering uses in the DRM theme later on). At the sametime, a much smaller “integrated” community clearly exists,that does not ascribe its preferences or allegiance to oneor other of the topic-defined communities mentioned above,but rather comes at the problem from an integraldevelopment based angle and the communalities that exist as

regards climate and society. The present author ascribes tothis idea and practice, although coming out of the DRM anddevelopment school of thought.

So, the problem of definition and usage is far more complexthan at first suggested and this may only be resolved byreaching common agreements at least on the basic conceptsand the common processes involved. 

The explanation of the difference in the use of the term“mitigation” between the DRM and Climate Change areas maybe explained, we suppose, by the fact that CCA wasdominated for a long time by adepts of the climate andatmospheric sciences or related professions, with theirpreoccupation for the process of change in climate as such,and not so much for the need to reduce the human impacts,loss and damage, associated with this. Thus, the primaryappropriation of terminologies occurred at a time prior tothe significant presence of social science, development ordisaster risk management specialists in the subject.  Withthis, the subject of exposure and vulnerability and riskwere not taken into account to any extent, and there was noreal problem, in principle, in adopting the notion of“mitigation” to refer solely to the physical side of theequation, to the control or reduction of the physicalfactors that contribute to change.  

When the need for the promotion or facilitation of humanadjustment to the change was finally given more credenceand the need to find mechanisms to support this fullyrecognized, the notion of “adaptation” is borne as acomplement to the “mitigation” of climate change per se.By then, the mitigation concept had already beenmonopolized by the physical side of the equation such thatit could not be used in a wider social sense to include themitigation of the conditions and factors of risk ingeneral, including exposure and vulnerability, as is thecase with the DRM area. The term adaptation was introducedto “fill the gap” and refer essentially to what DRMspecialists call mitigation, risk reduction and control ormore simply, “development”. The notion and definition of“adaptation” will be critically examined in our next and

following sections. Of course if the weight of custom wasnot so great we could all agree to talk of mitigation ofgreen house gases on the one hand and mitigation ofdisaster risk and risk factors on the other. Mitigation asa substantive can be accompanied with a complimentaryadjective that gives it different precise significance.But, that does not seem to have been accepted as possibleor as an option so we must continue to search forsubstitutes when dealing with wider exceptions for the useof the word “mitigation”. Social stubbornness it may becalled!

The problem of the different interpretationsand definitions given to the same word, notion or concepthas been prevalent (and, at the same time, a reflection ofevolution and advance in the topic) during the relativelylong history of the DRM field. This has related to thetransitions that have occurred within this theme, from theearly dominance of humanitarian response and structuralengineering based disaster prevention paradigms and thedominant presence of the physical, engineering and medicalsciences, through to a greater presence of the socialsciences, visions of the social construction of risk andwider interpretations of what disaster risk reductionsignifies in development terms (see Lavell, 2005, for adetailing of these transitions and movements).  

We have already examined the notion of “extreme” eventswhen seen from the perspective of the earth sciences andfrom the perspective of the social and developmentsciences, and this constitutes but only one of the manyterms where differences in approach and definition may befound.

Let us now briefly examine some of these differences inorder to help substantiate the idea that concepts are fluidand as knowledge areas are developed and advanced we mustexpect changes and transformations that are not alwaysunanimously agreed on but which do in fact represent andreflect the type of debates and advances achieved. In thesame way this has happened in the DRM and disaster responsefields over the last 50 years, we may expect and hope it

would also happen in the climate change field in thefuture.

With the very notion of “risk” employed in disaster riskstudies and practice, there have been significant changesand modifications in its use over the last 40 years, allassociated with the increased involvement of socialsciences in its definition and study. Thus, while the earthand engineering sciences dominated the subject of disaster,risk was used (and continues to be used by many) to definethe “probability of the occurrence of a harmful physicalevent” or the “probability of the occurrence of a hazard”.This follows common usage in the sense we still say “thereis a risk it will rain today”. Nowadays, however, the morecommon definition of this term in the DRM field refers tothe “probability of future damage and loss in society” as aresult of the occurrence of physical events underconditions of human exposure and vulnerability; or to “thecombination of the probability of an event and its negativeconsequences” (ISDR, 2009). That is to say, the definitionhas lost its essentially physical and probabilisticconnotation and has assumed a more openly social content.The physical event is part of the equation of risk but itdoes not define or determine it as such nowadays. Here itis interesting to note that the notions of hazard, exposureand risk are not considered in any central way in climatechange glossaries.

Another example occurs with the idea of “hazard” which,when the earth sciences dominated,  and even today amongstmany, reference is made to the physical detonating eventof disaster itself, or, for some, all “extreme” and evennon extreme physical events. The present ISDR definition ofhazard mirrors this “physicalist” approach in defininghazard as “a dangerous phenomenon, substance, humanactivity or condition that may cause loss of life, injuryor other health impacts, property damage, loss oflivelihoods and services and economic disruption orenvironmental damage”. The climate change glossaries donot even consider the idea of hazard or risk.

With the increase in the contributions of the socialsciences (including psychology and behavioral sciences),hazard has increasingly come to be seen as the latentdanger associated with a physical event which, in itself,is determined in good part by existing levels of exposureand vulnerability. That is to say, hazard is not thephysical event as such, but rather the absolute or relativedanger it represents (here one talks of different hazardlevels- high, low, medium, for example— and these of coursevary according to vulnerability and exposure levels and notjust the physical qualities of the event itself). Accordingto this school of thought, once the physical event occursit ceases to be a “hazard” or “threat” as such and itbecomes a real harmful phenomenon.

.

The importance of this distinction relates to the fact thatthe latency of hazard, and risk as such, allows us topredict or anticipate it and intervene ex ante. Moreover,if hazard is the event as such we then have to find anotherterm for the latent threat associated with future probableevents because it is only with the identification of thisthat ex ante intervention can be considered. That is tosay, if the events and their impacts can not beanticipated, there is no latent component to them and therewould thus be no way of anticipating them throughprevention mechanisms. But we know that is not true andhazard, seen as one factor of risk, (which is itselfclearly latent), and as depicted in the formula R=H.V, mustalso be latent. If not it should not appear in a formulafor risk but rather be in a formula for disaster, which ispalpably real.

The idea that hazard is a quality and quantity, not a thingor event, signifies that all disaster risk managementrelates to limiting the hazardousness of potentiallydamaging physical events by means of their directelimination or deviation as such (building dykes andretention walls against floods and landslides, or avoidingdrought using irrigation systems, for example), or throughthe reduction of the levels of exposure and vulnerability.

Managing hazard thus means managing risk. And, the disasterrisk equation should really read: existing potentialphysical events—exposure to these by society underdetermined and varied levels of vulnerability-- determinedlevels of hazard and risk-determined levels of disasterloss. This is of course is different to the commonly usedformula Risk = Hazard x Vulnerability, at times, some say,divided by capacities, resilience etc..

All in all, the DRM “community” is plagued with differencesas to definition and concept, despite the attempts of theISDR to emit criteria in the form of glossaries andstandardized definitions. Following on from and in additionto the differences within the DRM “community” there areimportant contrasts between them and climate changemainstream thinking, to the extent that in addition todifferences as regards the definition of mitigation, thenotions of impact and vulnerability are also subject toimportant differences in interpretation (see, Birkmann,2009 and Schipper, 2009 for a discussion of some of thesedifferences). And, as we have stated above, the notions ofhazard and risk do not even appear in the IPCC glossary onclimate change related terms.

The term vulnerability in disaster risk management, asopposed to climate change adaptation, originated in the1970s (see Baird et al, 1975; O’Keefe et al, 1976; Wisneret al 1977, quoted in Gaillard, 2010) and can broadly bedefined in terms of the susceptibility of humans, theirlivelihoods, assets and infrastructure to suffer loss anddamage when faced with the impacts of a physical event. Itstresses or highlights the conditions in society which makeit pre-dispose particular groups of people to loss andharm. As Gaillard (2010) points out, despite a broadagreement amongst authors as to the basic definition,significant divergences of approach exist when applying thenotion of vulnerability to analysis. Thus, in its earlierinterpretation the concept referred to the socialrelations, processes and structures that lead people to besusceptible to loss or harm in the face of hazards or foodshortage and examined macro scale structural and societalconstraints. By contrast, engineers and earth scientistsused the term vulnerability in computations of quantitativeindices of potential losses to built structures (so-calledstructural vulnerability).

The fundamental importance of the vulnerability concept tothe disaster risk management and disaster risk communitiesmay be seen in the way it helped reveal social factors inthe explanation of risk, moving away from purely physicalexplanations of loss and damage (see Hewitt 1983 for anearly critique of what he referred to as the “physicalist”interpretation of disaster)The climate change literature tends to differ in its use ofthe notion of vulnerability. The IPCC definition refers to“the degree to which a system is susceptible to and unableto cope with, adverse effects of climate change, includingclimate variability and extremes. Vulnerability is afunction of the character, magnitude and rate of climatechange and variation to which a system is exposed, itssensitivity and its adaptive capacity”. Rather thanproviding an explanatory and predictive notion, thisdefinition sees vulnerability as an outcome of climatechange factors operating in a particular setting, and“exposure”, rather than conditioning the existence ofvulnerability, is considered part of its cause. Someauthors have criticized this definition as leading to anemphasis on physical events as opposed to social factors inunderstanding vulnerability and risk (Kelman and Gaillard,2008; Gaillard, 2010).

One way or another, as has occurred with the term (bothinadequate and ideologically constructed) “naturaldisaster”, terms tend to become fixed and inflexible (theymake people feel comfortable and secure) and thuspermanent, in spite of their limitations, and clearevidence as to their inappropriate nature.  Due to this, tothe still prevailing dominance of disciplinary visions asregards risk and disaster, and due to the very low level ofcritical analysis associated with the subject that manytimes exists, we do not believe that there will be majoragreement in these uses until there is a more wideracceptance that the subject is multi and interdisciplinaryby nature and that there is the need to construct a commonconceptual framework to link the differing disciplinaryapproaches and perspectives.

At present, despite calls for interdisciplinary andmultidisciplinary work and approaches the disaster riskfield is still essentially dominated by mono disciplinarycontributions and visions, where important differences ininterpretation of basic concepts still exists. A movetowards more integrated research and action will require aburning of ego, a sacrificing of disciplinary views in

favor of more holistic and integral approaches, with morecommon conceptual frameworks. The advantages will far outweigh the disadvantages and those we should work forprincipally, the poor and vulnerable, will receive agreater kick back from our efforts which many timesnowadays get archived away with no impact due to theirpartial approaches and conclusions.

Of course, this same argument also relates to the climatechange adaptation “community” in itself and in therelations with the disaster risk management field which,until they are brought together and linked more closely inconceptual and practical terms, will continue to use termsand concepts in different ways and waste time onunnecessary duplication of efforts and practice. Moreover,unless such a move is made we will probably have to livewith the idea that there really are two “communities” andtwo topics and that these need to find common ground,instead of realizing they are the common ground and it isnot so much a matter of integrating different themes butrather discovering that in essence it is the same theme, ingood part. Deductive as opposed to inductive, holistic asopposed to discrete ways of thinking are needed if we areto overcome the conceptual and definitional debate anddifferences that exist, and with this more rapidly findsuccess in dealing with climate related risk. The commonelements between the two are clearly “development”,“exposure” and “vulnerability” and how these play out undervarying physical conditions, under constant change.

Returning to the subject of mitigation, the principleconcern of this section, when we relate this, and it’srelative levels of success or failure, to the subject ofadaptation (the human response and adjustments to climatechange) it is obvious that adaptation in its real forms andlevels will be conditioned by the levels of success andfailure with the reduction of the process and course ofclimate change. That is to say, although “mitigation” and“adaptation” are seen to be two differentiated strategies,they are, in strategic and policy terms, interdependent toa great extent. Society must “adapt” according to therhythms and expressions of climate change in the territory.

Simultaneously, this rate of change is influenced by thetype of “adaptation” employed, particularly when this isbased on the transformation of the forms of occupation anduse of land, changes in the forms of energy consumption andof urban development. 

That is to say, the problem of climate, “adaptation” or“mitigation”, is essentially a development problem andrelates to the modes this assumes. Unlike the historical,“normal” , “uncontaminated” climate, where natural factorsdominated causally and were the basis for its patterns andmanifestations  over time (of course there have always beenhuman influences on the climate-the impact of cities,changes in land use etc.,), the understanding of climateunder conditions of decisive human interference nowrequires “a humanized” climatology. Here, the real primaryexplanation of climate change does not rest so much withthe gases themselves, their physical properties, butrather with the development models and human practices thatlead to their over production. That is to say, without afundamental change in the patterns of development or in thetechnologies and patterns of use of the resources thatsustain them, there is no real option for reductions orcontrols over the levels of emission of green-house gases.Climate science must become an ally and weapon of thedevelopment sciences, and not an end unto itself, as hasbeen the case on many occasions in the past. The essence ofmitigation is the ability to imagine and implement anotherdevelopment model. If it is seen to be related to themodification and “improvement” of existing models and theirparameters, then little will be achieved and recourse willhave to be made more and more to the so called “adaptation”processes, processes that many in the south see as“resignation” and capitulation, when faced with processesand decisions taken by others from advanced “northern”society.

Thus, as with coping and resilience, adaptation tends to beseen in the “south” more and more as a term deriving fromNorthern imposed neocolonialist and neo-economicimperialist roots—get on with things as best you can,survive under our conditions and conditioning contexts, as

opposed to changing conditions such that so many peopledon’t have to “cope”, be “resilient” to crisis or adapt tothe product of someone else’s world view.

Let us now examine the “adaptation” notion and paradigmmore closely.

3.3 “Adaptation” to Climate Change: a Critical andConstructive Examination of the Concept, its Content andits Relevance in the Framework of Disaster Risk Management

The second pillar of action when faced with climate changeis so-called “adaptation”. According to the UNFCCC, IPCCand the ISDR this refers, to the “adjustment in natural orhuman systems in response to actual or expected climaticstimuli or their effects, which moderate harm or exploitsbeneficial opportunities”. A distinction is made in theofficial literature between: Anticipatory adaptation –Adaptation that takes place before impacts of climate changeare observed and also referred to as proactive adaptation.Autonomous adaptation – Adaptation that does not constitutea conscious response to climatic stimuli but is triggeredby ecological changes in natural systems and by market orwelfare changes in human systems and also referred to asspontaneous adaptation. Planned adaptation – Adaptationthat is the result of a deliberate policy decision, basedon an awareness that conditions have changed or are aboutto change and that action is required to return to,maintain, or achieve a desired state. Obviouslyanticipatory and planned adaptation can be the same wherechanges are introduced in anticipation of future change inclimate. This demonstrates that the classification systemused may be flawed because it mixes types of criteria forclassification—temporal, process-wise and policy dictated.As we will see further on in our document other notionsalso exist such as the idea of serendipidous adaptationproposed by the World Resources Institute study on“Weathering the Storm”.

With this overall definition of adaptation, as we haveinsinuated in the previous section, there is a set ofconceptual and practical problems that we need to reveal

once and for all, thus making the delimitation of ourfundamental problem easier and also facilitating theestablishment of the limits of the problem and itsdefinition.   Adaptation needs to be “unpacked”,disaggregated and clarified, allowing us to distinguish itsdifferent and differentiated components as these aredescribed and discussed nowadays in mainstream, grey andinformal literature. With this we can then hope to projecthow these may be taken up on in development and disasterrisk management frameworks.

Let us examine some of the essential aspects of what we seeto be a clear case of conceptual indefinition and misuseand forgetfulness of the historical significance andprevious scientific use of the term.

Firstly, the use of “adaptation” to refer to both human andnatural systems, introduces a confusion of levels andprocesses in referring to two very different, if relatedsystems. This is particularly notorious as reference ismade to the “systems” themselves and not to the componentparts of these-humans, animals, plants etc- which do all infact “adapt” over time following similar processes andimpulses according to modified Darwinian principles.

We cannot, nor should we assume that the process by whichnatural systems (those relations and interrelations, flowsof energy, between the non human living world, and betweenthis and its natural inert environment) react and changewhen faced with Climate Change in a similar or comparablefashion to human systems, interpreted as the sum of thesocial relations of production, consumption and circulationbased on human enterprise and the resources offered by theinert natural world (IPCC defines a human system as “anysystem in which human organizations play a major role.Often, but not always, the term is synonymous with‘society’ or ‘social system’ e.g., agricultural system,political system, technological system, economic system”).Given the very basic differences in these two processesthere is no real justification for placing them under thesame conceptual or practical umbrella.

This merging of basically dissimilar things has becomeincreasingly common as we search to justify the notion of asingle natural system and the equality of rights betweennature and humanity. Due to this we have got to a pointwhere we indiscriminately use the same notions forcompletely different contexts-vulnerability, loss, impacts,hazards, risk etc and now, adaptation. Thus, in the sameway as we talk of adaptation of natural and social systems,we also talk of impacts on natural ecosystems and humansystems, vulnerability of both, risk to both and hazardswithout really realizing we are mixing apples and pears,bananas and grapes and using the same terms for verydifferent things, contexts and notions. The use of a single concept or notion, “adaptation”, tocover both adjustments in the human and the natural worldsonly creates confusion and generates a lack of specificityand conceptual exactitude and, consequently, createsdifficulties in understanding the options for practice andchange ( here we avoid the obvious fact that nowadaysentirely natural systems hardly exist due to direct orindirect human intervention, in addition to the fact thathuman systems, in estrictus sensus, are themselves part ofnature and “natural” systems).

In the case of the “adaptation” of natural systems this isalways “spontaneous”, “autonomous” or “independent”, nondeliberate, non-imagined nor facilitated by thoughtprocesses (unless human beings take part in changing thedirection of the natural processes) whereas, in the case of“human systems” these operate and change mainly under theinfluence of factors of conscience, power, deliberation,planning and decision. The notion of “spontaneous” or“autonomous” change in human systems is used somewhatdifferently in the climate change literature to describethose changes inspired or impelled through individual andcollective civil society and private sector initiativeswith no intentionality as regards climate change, asopposed to planned change, consciously promoted through thedevelopment of strategies and policies, instruments andactions inspired in the public sphere of government.

Obviously no planned or anticipatory adaptation can takeplace in natural systems and the terms are only valid if weassume humans can plan natural system adaptation (later onwe examine the idea of anticipatory adaptation in naturalsystems). Such an idea is of course completely contrary tothe very idea of adaptation.

Secondly, when analyzing simultaneously the range ofcontexts, actions, responses, reactions, “solutions” thatare openly included under the notion of “adaptation”, wecan appreciate that the term lacks specificity to such adegree that its scientific, practical, pragmatic andheuristic value, as well as its epistemic character isdiluted or distorted completely (it has been suggested thatthe same has happened with the “vulnerability” conceptwhich has come to be used like a black box to refer tomanifold different things and contexts and which has led toan effort on the part of some researchers to define theconcept in a more specific and unequivocal form ( seeCannon, 2008; Wisner et al, 2004, Lavell, 2004).

According to the literature available on the theme andongoing discussions on the issue, “adaptation” applies oris in response to all of the following diverse anddisparate circumstances or challenges (the only thing thatreally unites them is that all relate in some way oranother to increased global temperatures and climate changewhich, in itself, is not sufficient reason to justify theuse of the same term to comprehend all):

natural and human systems; changes in productive systems, location,

construction schemes, environmental adjustments,educational, normative and legal action;  

response to increases in disease vectors and newproblems of health.

changes in the availability of water and energysources, responses to the loss of glacial and polarice and to increases in sea levels;

change in climate norms and averages and, at the sametime, climate “extremes” or anomalies.

changes already experienced in climate, and futurepredicted or unknown change.

“forced” internal and international migration underconditions of climate stress.

prevention and reduction of risk as well aspreparedness and response to disasters.  

That is to say, “adaptation” purports to include such awide array of changes and responses that it is basicallyused as substitute for the notion of “human and economicchange and development”, or societal change in general, andtends to replace the very notion of sustainabledevelopment.  It is constructed as a notion thatmonopolizes the idea of development, instead of being afacilitator of this. It is everything and it is nothing. Itis complete in-definition and complete definition. It isthe taking refuge in an idea and concept in order to avoidthe need to spin finer and adjust concepts, contexts andscenarios in a more precise and exact manner.

The convenience of being “simple” and “comprehensive” islost as imprecision and vagueness leads to conceptualanarchy. Moreover, it disobeys the widely acceptedhistorical and scientific usage of the same term (Darwin,Russell and others would probably turn in their graves ifthey could see the imprecision given to a term they usedwith such accurate and unequivocal precision).

Thirdly, the idea of an “adjustment in… natural systems inresponse to (actual) or expected climatic stimuli or theireffects…” is spurious and inoperable in concept andreality.

No natural system adjusts to anticipated or expectedclimatic stimuli or effects, because “anticipation” is onlya characteristic of thinking beings (in the cerebralsense), but not of natural systems and their individualcomponents-animals, plants and other such elements. Whenhave we ever seen a forest, a family of insects or foxes, aparticular piece of land, an ecosystem modify its behavior,functions and relations in an evolving manner inanticipation of future climate change and overall changedenvironmental circumstances?   Animal and plant behaviorthat is used to predict such things as future weather or

climate, earthquakes etc has been observed andsystematized, but this is not what we are talking abouthere.

Fourthly, with the adjustment to present, already fealt andobserved change, this is based on real stimulus andcircumstances, is rational and observable, based on themeasurement of, and sensitivity to new existingcircumstances and can be measured, monitored andsystematized. The measurement of the success andappropriateness of such adjustments can be evaluated expost. One major problem in responding to actual changerelates to the problem of knowing when “actual” change isin fact permanent and requires more than on going temporarycoping strategies. If a region suffers drought 3, 4, 5 or 6years in a row should it be assumed this is permanentchange and that the region is now an arid one, or will“normal” conditions return after a certain time demanding areturn to former production and living practices?

Thus, in adjusting to actual, experienced change in theclimate this must consider and incorporate measures andplans for dealing with continuing future change, given wewill have to wait a long time until we can be sure thatchange has stabilized.  In some recent literature (seeCristoplos et al, 2008; Birkmann et al, 2009) it issuggested that reaction to extremes or anomalies ofclimate within the framework of a regular “stable” climateis what is known as “coping”; while adaptation meanssomething undertaken in a medium to long term context, whenfaced with ongoing, permanent change. The need to implementadjustments when faced with actual existing change andsimultaneously consider that there will be further changein the future has not been faced up to or resolved in anyof the cases of intervention we know of and this representsa real challenge for communities and promoters of projects-how to adjust to actual felt change leaving open optionsand means to deal with future, unknown, but predictable,modifications in climate?

Let us recognize, then, that the change or adjustment inhuman behavior and practice when faced with actual or real

change will be the result of individual or collective civilsociety or private sector actions, where knowledge,finance, instruments, imagination, and intelligence areavailable. It can take advantage of government stimulishould these exist in an attempt to push, persuade andsupport non State actors.

From a lexical and theoretical perspective, the actionsintroduced when faced with actual existing change may becomprehended under the terminology increasingly used inDRM- “corrective”, “compensatory” or “mitigation based”management. That is to say, changes that are introducedwhen faced with existing conditions of stress or risk andthat may occur spontaneously or be inspired and stimulatedby government policies and instruments which norm orsupport civil society or the private sector and whichsearch to reduce existing levels of risk and environmentalmal-adjustment. To this terminology and idea we will returnlater.

When we move our attention to expected future change andhuman reactions to this, the option of ex ante adjustmentcertainly exists, but not without us first solving andrationalizing important challenges that go way beyond thoseinvolved when dealing with real, actual change.

This constitutes a completely different human responsecontext, to such a degree that calling both this and theadjustment to existing, actual change, “adaptation” isextremely venturous since the processes and theconditioning factors are very dissimilar. While nobodydenies the need to pay significant attention to thisprocess and to devise concrete policies, strategies andapproaches, the challenge it signifies is far more complexthan that associated with adjustment to real, presentchange.

What we are faced with is prevision and speculativereaction, searching to maintain flexibility and openoptions under the lowest conditions of uncertaintypossible, but not necessarily adequate adjustment, and muchless so, adaptation. We are “playing” with risk and the

notion of “hedging” prevalent in investment fund criteriais equally applicable with regard to anticipating futureclimate change and needed anticipated reactions.

In order to be able to adjust or instigate change ex ante,individuals, collectivities, private sector and otherexpressions of civil and political society require accessto trustworthy information on projected changes in climateand society during established periods of future time, andat adequate social and territorial scales. Here, whenconsidering future climate scenarios and the changes in theparameters of climate, their possible rates of change,temporality and territoriality we still face high levels ofuncertainty. The recent discovery that the scenarios forloss of Arctic ice were severely underestimated or that theHadley Centre has provided arguments on the rates oftemperature change this century completely different to theIPCC 4th report are but two palpable expressions ofuncertainty and the absence of thoroughly adequate measuresfor projecting change.

Moreover, the problem of climate change is still dominatedby visions from the physical sciences and predominantlyseen as a physical, but not necessarily or many timesexplicitly, a development problem (see, for example, howthe subject of climate change is located, in a majority ofcountries, in the Ministries or Secretariats of Environmentor in meteorological institutions and not in those relatingto planning, territorial development or economy). In thisway the situation mirrors the physical bias given todisaster studies and interventions for many decades, untilthe true social nature and significance of the topic, seenthrough the ideas of risk and risk construction, becameapparent.

Scenarios of fundamental economic and social change insociety over different time periods (population growth anddensity, development styles, consumption and productionpatterns, inequality in income distribution, territorialdivision of production and consumption between north andsouth, etc.) are not measured or modeled sufficiently, tosuch an extent that it is illusory to think of designing

“adaptation” strategies for the future with any acceptablelevel of projected accuracy or certainty. 

It is worrisome to think that amongst certain sectorsadaptation is seen to be the additional cost required to“protect” development as it is conceived nowadays, and toadjust it to the demands of climate change, instead ofconsidering “adaptation” an intrinsic component of a newmodel of development with alternative patterns ofconsumption, production, social and territorial division oflabour and distribution of income.  Adaptation should bemore about changing development models than adjustingexisting ones to changing climate. This does not mean ofcourse that many elements of what exists should not carryon under greater climate security, but it does mean thatfine tuning existing models will not to the job.

It is also worrying to think that under the status quoadaptation argument one could witness a fundamental changein the patterns and technology of energy production, landuse and urban development, natural resource use etc., thatserve to reduce carbon gas discharges, but simultaneously,take place with an increase, or little or no change in theincidence of poverty and the inequitable distribution ofincome. That is, reduction of the rate of climatic changeand increased “adaptation” without the resolution of thefundamental problems of poverty and development. Change tomaintain the status quo.

The absence of trustworthy scenarios of societal behaviorand future development signifies a basic lack ofinformation on the possible development of risk in societyand it reduces us once more to a model of risk, knowledgeand analysis, based essentially on “knowledge” of climate-the physical event side of the three pronged equation ofhazard, exposure and vulnerability. With this no realoption exists to understand the type and real degree ofrisk in the future associated with changing climateaverages and extremes, its social impacts, temporality andterritoriality.  

The information required to project and plan in anticipatedfashion is simply not available to the public or to thepolitician. Scenarios, anticipations, projections etc. havean obvious value, but, to the extent society does not trustor doubts them, due to their level of scientificspeculation or in-definition, little action will be takenby one or another part. People in general, and politiciansin particular, expect scientists to give hard fact and notspeculation, within given and acceptable levels ofuncertainty, and, in general, they react to actual and realthings and not to speculative and projective thinking (themajority of people are still adverse to risk).

This is the greatest challenge when faced with climatechange. The problem is not to confirm and detail howclimate has changed to date, but rather to provide accurateand adequate scale information on change in the future.This is just not possible to the level required to promoteanticipated action as part of a “planned adaptationstrategy”.  

Uncertainty as regards the future, combined with the valueto be ascribed to lessons and experiences of the immediatepast and the immediate present, in relationship to normalclimate and its variability, is the basis of the hypothesisthat the future is constructed on the present and thecourse of human adjustment to new climate stimuli andeffects rests on us constructing on present experiences,in iterative and continuous form, and not by jumpingquinquenniums or decades in the search to define concreteaction (see Centre for Research on the Economics of ClimateChange, September 2009, for a pragmatic response andstrategy built around the idea of starting with today).

This does not deny the option and need to thinkstrategically, policy-wise, opening channels for the flowof information, the lowering of uncertainty, themaintenance of flexibility and the discussion ofalternatives.

Nevertheless, the change will occur gradually and it willbe based on today’s experiences, where accumulated

knowledge with disaster risk management and risk managementin general can offer much, conceptually and practically.And, amongst the more certain things we have discovered isthe fact that disaster risk reduction is almost impossiblewithout, amongst other very important considerations,overall, general decreases in poverty and vulnerabilitylevels, improved land use and territorial organization,decreased environmental degradation and over exploitationof resources and improved governance in general. It is notdifficult to assume that this will also be the case with“adaptation” (see ISDR, 2009).

In order to further specify the nature and content of therelations between disaster risk management and adaptationto climate change and their points of convergence ordivergence, it is necessary, finally, to respond to thequestion “To what do we adapt” or rather “to what changesin climate do we adjust”. In answering this question wewill provide new or confirm old doubts as to the use of thenotion “adaptation” in the context of human adjustments tothe effects and impacts of climate change.

3.4 Adaptation or Adjustment to what?

Climate Change has been characterized by changes in twotypes of fundamental parameters-averages or norms and“extremes”- accompanied and explained at times byalterations in other contexts and environments (loss ofpolar and glacier ice and increase in sea levels, forexample). Simultaneously these two types of variableinterrelate in certain contexts, one helping explain theother.

The fundamental parameters relate, firstly, to changes inthe averages, norms or mediums of those factors that typify“climate” and which will mean new patterns of climate andclimate variability in the future (rainfall, temperature,wind etc.). And secondly, the projected increase in thenumber, intensity, scale or recurrence of so-called“extreme” events or climate or weather anomalies.

The notion of “adaptation”, as it appears in official andpopular definitions, relates to anyone of the fourvariables or contexts mentioned above- changing norms oraverages, changing extremes, increases in sea levels andloss of polar and glacial ice- and the particular socialand economic circumstances they help incite.  

Each of these contexts, although in many ways related, isvery different. This, as we have commented previously, putsthe adaptation concept under stress due to its overlyencompassing nature when faced with social change andadjustment. 

In the “discourse” on Climate Change it is very probablethat the public in general pays more attention to  theweather “extremes”, to the loss of  polar and glacier iceand to increases in sea levels than to  the changes inclimate norms and averages. They also probably see these asbeing more significant, despite the fact that changingaverages can be seen to be the essence of climate changeand will demand important changes in production processes,the spatial incidence of different animal and plantspecies, use of technologies, location of people,production and infrastructure, health related demands etc.Moreover, small changes in averages in conditions wherepopulation is on the brink of livelihood loss andpermanently under environmental stress will mean a rapidconversion of chronic, every day risk into disaster risk-where communities that rely on 200mm of rain a year findthat reduced to 150 or 100 and they don’t have access toirrigation, rapid onset disaster will replace creeping,chronic disaster. And, this could affect hundreds ofmillions in developing countries to such an extent thatextreme events will not even be a worry simply becausepeople will have been worn down by small changes inaverages or the incidence of small scale events that obligemigration and relocation.

Historical climate types and patterns have not essentiallybeen defined in terms of the extremes but rather in termsof the climate norms and averages, as we have pointed outpreviously. But, with climate change we seem to be changing

the balance and assigning far more importance to theanomalies and extremes in defining climate. To the extentsuch features increase and increasingly weigh the average,maybe, if we interpret the popular notion of climate changeas being all about new extremes, we will need to startdefining climates in terms of the presence or absence ofdominant extremes, now converted into averages!! Insteadof talking on weather reports of “warm, cloudy and humidconditions with intermittent storms” maybe we will get to“heavy rainfall, thunderstorms and high winds, interspersedwith short periods of sunshine and clear skies” (here weare using tongue in cheek comment to highlight theabsurdity of some forms of expression as regards climatechange) .

The contexts or problems associated with the “extremes”,polar and glacier ice and rising sea levels are clearlymore “sexy” and this guarantees their elevation to apreponderant position amongst the public in general (and inthe mind of politicians). Their promotion is not exemptfrom “sensationalist” approaches, fomented by some sectorsof the press and some “experts” in the subject.  Even, ifwe take such a well done and serious recent study as thatof the World Resources Institute (2007) on the types ofapproach and strategies developed when faced with climatechange, a great part of its content is on “extreme” oranomalous threats, and the title-“Weathering the Storm”, -invokes the idea of catastrophe and extremes, rather thanchanging averages and norms. This “fascination” with thephysical extremes also mirrors the title of the IPCC andISDR special study now under way, and commented previously,“Managing the Risk of Climate Extremes and Disasters forAdvancing Climate Change Adaptation”.

With these preliminary reflections in mind, then, we openup a debate in order to be able to provide an answer to ouroriginal question: “to what does one adapt?”, “to what doesone adjust” and in doing this we hope to advance in ourdefinition of the relations, compatibilities and thedifferences between disaster risk management and“adaptation”. Let us now take each of the different

contexts we have specified and examine the implications asregards the relations CCA and DRM.

a. Melting Ice and Rising Sea Levels.

The loss of polar ice and the thawing of the northerntundra influence climate per se and are products themselvesof rising global and regional temperatures. They, alongwith thermal expansion, also influence sea levels, theopening of marine communication channels in the farnorth and new opportunities for agricultural production inareas of previous climate extremes.

The loss of glacier ice affects local climate and regularaccess to summer and spring water sources, from the annualthawing of winter ice.  Changes in sea levels have impactsin terms of location, loss of land, salinity of soils etc.,and, in some cases, the future loss of small island States.In fact it is with sea level rise and the greater levels ofcertainty as to such a phenomenon, when compared toprojections of local climate changes, that anticipatoryaction is far easier to plan and justify, whether it be inLondon or Holland with fears of sea incursions, or withPacific islands and the need to emigrate. Moreover, onlysmall changes in sea levels can be devastating if you arean island or in an estuarine area with little land abovemean sea level, such that adjustment needs are highlysensitive to small changes.

The need for adjustment to these situations is clear andmore or less obvious. Some situations will represent newopportunities, others, impossible conditions, that willrequire new systems of location, production, land and waterusage etc. There is no real complication with thesephenomena when one talks about the challenges they present,despite their newness as experiences for human society.With but a few exceptions, they are conditions or contextswith which human society has not had to deal in recenttimes and, in general, few if any “modern” experiences ofrisk management when faced with such contexts areavailable. Exceptions do exist, however, related to recent

changes and impacts with the adjustment to the loss ofwater sources due to accelerated processes of glacier lossin the Andes; or adjustments to sea level changes in thePacific, with the need to migrate to other sites; or theproblems faced by animal communities, such as polar bears,with the loss of polar ice, or communities of birds whichdisappear from their typical habitats, to be occupied byothers, already more adapted to the new conditions.Moreover, the challenge of resettlement has been dealt withby DRM on many occasions under conditions where communitiesor even towns and cities have been destroyed by landslidesand earthquakes and have required relocation

But, in general, the most dramatic and generalized changesare predicted for the future and there is no accurateexperience with them coming from the recent past.

That is to say, from the perspective of disaster riskmanagement there are contributions that could illuminatethe needed adjustment and options in terms ofmethodological approaches, and measures can be gleaned fromsuch work (for example, the need to relate risk adjustmentto the local development process, concentrating especiallyon processes that reduce vulnerability and risk ingeneral; to stimulate real, local participation in theidentification of problems and in the identification ofpossible solutions; to stimulate self consciousness andknowledge of problems; to link local interventions to thewider regional and national contexts and actors etc.). Tothis we will return later.

b. Changes in Climate Factor Averages and Norms.

From our perspective, the essence of climate change is tobe found in changing averages and norms. This is so notonly because it is with reference to these changes thatmajor societal adjustments must be achieved, but alsobecause it is the changes in averages that will be amongstthe direct causes of the new climate variation and extremesthat occur. Climate is described and typified by the

averages although the extremes are obviously part of thedefinition. As we have pointed out previously, we are morelikely to describe a Mediterranean climate as having warm,wet winters and hot, dry summers than to say it can bedescribed in terms of sporadic thunder storms, windextremes, snow storms and heat waves.

That is to say, changes in the average rainfall ofdifferent places and regions, in the average solarintensity, in diurnal, seasonal and annual temperatureaverages; in transpiration rates, are the essence of thechange. With these changes, changes in the climatic regimesof different zones, in the incidence of climatic drought,in the incidence of humid zones and, in wind speed andconstancy levels will supposedly occur. And, these changeswill mean, on many occasions, increases in the levels ofclimatic stress for natural animal and plant populationsand for humans, including loss of water resources, increasein disease vectors, greater prevalence of drought, reducedproductivity of agricultural products etc.

But, on other occasions, new opportunities for humandevelopment will be opened up by changing averages: accessto solar, wind and other previously non-existing powersources; new water resources in barren or previously semi-dry zones; the creation of new development conditions forthe promotion of new products and production; and increasesin the access to water for consumption and agriculturalproduction. All these and more situations will be amongstthe new conditions to which human populations and naturalsystems will possibly have to “adapt” or adjust. And allrelate to changes in norms and averages, not extremes.

As we understand the problem, if it is possible to speak of“adaptation” this is with reference to changes in averagesand norms, which essentially means adjustment andtransformation in situ. This is sustained by the argumentthat it is the norms and averages which essentiallydetermine new modalities of production, use of energy,location etc. Although extremes have to be taken intoaccount, under no circumstances does a consideration ofextremes lead to decisions as to what and where to produce

and locate. Rather, the impact is in terms of whatdefinitely not to produce or where not to locate. And itis in “adapting” and responding to ongoing changes and inconstantly reducing vulnerability that conditions will beestablished for better dealing with, coping with or gettingby the moments when extremes occur. That is to say,adapting to the ongoing normal conditions is the best wayof dealing with future and uncertain extremes

To the extent that changes in the parameters and averagesbecome so dramatic or unmanageable that they requiremigration and relocation of human populations in search ofnew experiences and livelihood options, we do not believein estrictus sensus that this mechanism can be compared toadjustment in situ and it should not be considered in thesame terms.  One way or another, both mechanisms, in situand extra situ, are reactions to the change, but they areso different one from the other that they deserve to bedealt with in differentiated form, and to be classified andconceptualized differently. Migration should be considereda non adaptation, at times, coping mechanism (that can turninto a sustainable life option with time), as opposed to atype of adaptation. It represents the singular inability toadapt to changed in situ conditions.

Without doubt, disaster risk management as it has beenconceptualized in the recent past has not been directlyconcerned with the promotion of development, agriculturalproduction, water usage and control, industrial developmentor human location, in the context of climate averages. Thisis fundamentally a central goal of sector and territorialdevelopment planning, or the market mechanism, although, aswe have manifested previously, those norms are in fact thedatum point for actions associated with disaster riskmanagement and the calculation of acceptable risk. That isto say, while averages explain production and locationpatterns, in general, disaster risk management helps tomaintain adequate levels of sustainability and securitywhen faced with the probability of the occurrence of“extremes”.

The way adaptation and disaster risk management fit intothe development equation varies, as the first should, inprinciple, be dealing with changing averages and the otherwith changing “extremes. What is not in doubt here is thatboth problems are part of the development planningequation, or should be so, and that it is in the link todevelopment planning processes that climate change work anddisaster risk reduction will find a common and compatibleworking relationship, probably merging into one integratedpractice on many fronts.

Historically, transformations, adjustments or changes insociety when faced with gradual or even more acceleratednatural change in climate variables and extremes hasoccurred in spontaneous form, and these cases constitutepart of the “normal” change in human and productivesystems. Examples abound in history, from the changes inoccupation patterns and production in the pre-desert anddesert Sahel 12 thousand years ago, through the eliminationof opportunities for agricultural production in Greenlandin the 14th and 15th centuries and the elimination of thewidespread production of grape and wine in England in the15th and 16th centuries.

Greater and more rapid change in climate variables areexpected in the future than have been experience in thepast under natural change conditions, but in essence theproblem of change is the same as that sufferedhistorically, although the conditions under which it willoccur and the speed of change are far different,  with farlarger contingents of poor, non resilient population, witha lack of important economic resources and options formigration,  and the presence of protectionist nationalstates. These factors qualitatively change the situationand the challenge although the basic problem is the same. 

Despite the fact that disaster risk management has notcontributed overly to the definition of strategies andapproaches to “normal” development under the influence ofclimate or other physical averages, we must always rememberthat such management can only be effectively undertakenwhen it operates in the context of the normalcy of climate

and recognizes that normal conditions and every day,chronic, risk are part of the formula in getting todecisions as to how best to reduce losses and damageassociated with the “extremes”. One way or another, DRM, oractions that take up on its principles, when faced with thenew climate and its intrinsic variability, will be operantwithin the framework of climate “normalcy” and must beassociated with, and take it much into account.

Having established this basic principle, we will nowconsider in more detail the subject of the extremes andwhat they mean in terms of the debate on “adaptation”,adjustment and risk management.    

c. Extremes, Anomalies and Climate Variability.

As we have expressed insistently, Climate Change has beentypified not only in terms of changing averages and normsbut probably more so in terms of increases in intensities,frequencies and impacts of climate “extremes” and“anomalies”.

These “anomalies”, “variations”, “extremes” will comprisepart of the new climate, in a similar manner to climate inthe past which has always suffered weather extremes. Thevariations will include aspects related to hurricanes,intense precipitation and gales, floods, drought, tornadosand land-slides.

Faced with this bi modal expression of climate (theaverages and the extremes) a series of basic questions maybe raised with fundamental repercussions in terms of theways we conceive intervention and risk management, ingeneral.

Can the ways of dealing with the “extremes” be considered apart of adaptation in the same way as dealing with thechanging averages, such that climate related disaster riskmanagement simply disappears as a theme being substitutedby adaptation theory and practice, even though a good partof this is based on learning and experience from the DRMfield? Will we construct an integrated, holistic approach

to climate related problems in the future and simplydevelop a field of Climate Related Risk and DevelopmentManagement that takes under its wings needed adjustments toaverages and reduction of risk associated with extremes?

Or, will climate change adaptation and disaster riskmanagement continue to be considered two differentspecialized areas of activity, with clear butdifferentiated roles and relations?

The way these questions are resolved will clearly influencethe ways in which we develop our practice in the future,the institutional set ups established to promote them, and,in general the relations we establish between differentfacets of the self same reality.  On this, we return inmore detail later.

d. Do we “adapt” to changing extremes in the same waythat we “adapt” to changing averages?

Whilst recognizing the differences between the changesrequired when faced with changing averages and changingextremes, and also recognizing that these two contextscannot be treated separately, but rather as a coordinatedwhole, it is important from the outset to establish andreiterate that from our perspective, one simply does not“adapt” to extremes, only to norms and averages of climateand total local, regional or national socio-economic andenvironmental conditions seen over time.  Part of that“adaptation” to changing norms and averages attempts toface up to extremes and minimize their impacts in theframework of a development model based essentially on theinfluence of environmental averages, not extremes The uncertain, sporadic, recurrent but irregular nature ofthe “extremes” means that it is impossible to imagine acontext in which permanent productive and living practicescould be construed, although extremes clearly influence thedecisions on the levels of overall security sought, as wehave established previously in this document. In addition,beyond the impossibility of “adapting” to irregularpredictable or unpredicatable extremes, a significant

number of exceptional or unique (i.e. not experiencedbefore), as opposed to extreme events, have occurredrecently and can be expected to occur in the future( consider the Santa Catarina hurricane in Brazil and thewind storm in Montevideo, for example). There is no realway of predicting the occurrence of such anomalies and thusadapting ex ante to their appearance. Extremes must bebuilt into the adaptation formula jointly with averages andnorms and not as something special and apart. Socommunities adapt over the long term to the totalconditions of a zone where averages, extremes, small scaleevents and social conditions have a total expression andmust be considered and adapted to jointly in integral andholistic fashion.

Society when faced with climate or other extremes has alimited number of options open to it, including preparingand responding to them, emergent behavior, living withthem, increasing resilience and reducing vulnerability tothem, taking refuge or fleeing them, but these actions aretaken within the framework established by the adjustment oradaptation to changes in the climate averages and norms inaffected areas. The response to extremes is part of theoverall response of society framed within a model of changebasically inspired by the need to adapt and changeaccording to new climate averages. That is to say, the wayswe respond to the extremes is an addendum to so-calledadaptation, an adjustment, but not adaptation as such.

Reactions or responses, strategies and methods of dealingwith the “extremes” are, simply, what we have consideredhistorically to be the objective of the practice ofdisaster risk management. With increases in frequencies andintensities, the situation will not essentially differ fromthe past, when extremes have been dealt with as part ofrisk management practice formulated in the framework ofdevelopment decisions taken under the influence of climateand other physical averages and norms.

Without doubt, if the prognoses on increases in theparameters of the extreme events are certain, there will bea change in the balance of the decisions and the levels and

needs of intervention.  Thus, for example, if the hurricaneof level 5 no longer recurs every 100 years on average in adetermined place, but every 50 years, or that of 50 yearsnow occurs every 25 years, this obviously would have toaffect the process of decision making on levels ofacceptable risk for society. The same would be the casewith floods, tornados, drought and processes of removal inmass.

If the “extremes” or damaging events, of differentmagnitudes or intensities, become so short in their periodof return that the average is more and more heavilyinfluenced by these and they thus become a more influentialcomponent of the norm than is the case today;  and, ifsociety is incapable of implementing acceptable andsufficient safety measures against this, because theclimate becomes generally too adverse,  there would be nooption except migration and relocation in search of morepropitious conditions (migration in search of newopportunities due to the adverse nature of the existinglocations is not adaptation per se as we have arguedearlier, but, rather, a response to non adaptation insitu). But, if the extremes are not close to the norm,there is no reason why in principle DRM should disappear.Where the norm is so weighed by the extremes clearly newarrangements will be needed. Then, if we consider changingnorms and extremes together in an uncertain future, ourconception of the most appropriate institutional andplanning set up must vary. We will return to this problemlater.

e. But, what “extremes” or adverse events are we talkingabout?

Let us assume that the process of Climate Change will betypified, on the one hand, by an increase in the recurrenceand intensity of “extremes” in zones already suffering suchmanifestations and, on the other hand, by the appearanceof extremes or non routine events in general in zones thathave no real history of such events. Obviously theproblem for adaptation and risk management is different in

the two types of zone, because in the first there ishistorical, cultural, social, and organizational experiencewith such events and in the second there is not. Thisdifference constitutes a fundamental aspect in aconsideration of adjustment mechanisms and an essentialelement in any typology of impact and intervention zones.

According to the discussions on “extremes” and disasters inthe light of climate change, the hurricane, the flood, thedrought etc. of a historical period of return of 150 yearscould be transformed into one of a 75 year return period,the 100 year event into a 50 year event and the 50 yearinto a 25 year event. That is, we assume a shortening inthe period of return of 100% (there is, however, no sciencewhich allows us to speak in certain terms on the possiblenew periods of recurrence). Then, the logic would suggestthat the event of 10 years becomes that of 5 years and theyear flood, the regular flood of small or medium scale,will become the 6 month flood. 

These small and medium, regular and recurrent events, weknow, constantly erode the livelihood opportunities of thepopulation but they are coped with many times throughexisting resilience and recovery mechanisms-social capital,social transfers, including the supports of government andONGs in the form of “humanitarian aid.

Nevertheless, when analyzing the problem of the returnperiods more closely, the statistical relation is notnecessarily regular when dealing with large scale and smallevents. After consulting meteorologists and hydrologists asto this problem, it seems that the relation is not likelyto be linear or constant. Thus, the event of a year couldbecome the event of 3 months and we would have, instead ofone per year, up to 3 or 4 floods, small, but impacting andaccumulatively damaging and erosive of local capacity andinvestment.

What does this mean for the discussion of “adaptation”,management of risk and the relations of these with daily,chronic risk?

If nowadays the small and recurrent events constantly erodethe development options of poor populations at the locallevel, then, the situation in the future would be much moreonerous and the poor in such affected localities really maynot have to seriously think about the larger events becausesimply put, the small and medium scale, recurrent oneswould eliminate any option of adjustment in situ, andmigration would perhaps be the only real option.

Nowadays, the small events are sometimes an opportunity forpeople because government or NGOs give materials, food,housing, as part of their humanitarian response. Moreover,they offer a “training ground” for larger events. But, withmore frequent small scale occurrences, and new occurrencesin zones previously not affected, this is not going tohappen and the hypothesis can be offered that they will beforgotten communities due to the level and amount ofrequired assistance, which will exceed the limits of localand national governments, overwhelmed by the cost ofimpacts in general and response to an increased number oflarger events as well.

A recent study by Tufts University (Walker et al, 2008)estimates that the demand for humanitarian assistance dueto climate change related events could grow between 56 and1600 percent depending on which parameters you introduce inthe prediction model.  Since the cost of humanitarian aidnowadays is in the billions if not tens of billions ofdollars every year, the new cost would be unmanageable ifboth the “extremes” and the small and medium scale eventsincrease notably. The small and medium events will assumeeven greater importance in the future than nowadays and themanagement of the adjustment to climate will have to takethem very much into account, in the poorer zones inparticular.

Of course, if there were significant changes in thedistribution of income, in the reduction of vulnerability,in the capacity to absorb the impacts of regular shortscale events, the situation would change. That is to say,the problem continues to be one of development and not of

climate and a general decrease in vulnerability levels isthe only real manner of getting on top of the problem.

When a larger number of small and medium scale eventsaffecting poor communities occur, and, also, over longerperiods, there are a greater number of large events, thebalance of the development, management, reduction ofpoverty and vulnerability equations would change notably.

The incidence and impact of small events would be suchthat they would almost become part of “the normal”conditions of daily risk, weighing the norm and average ofhuman existence so much that they would stop beingconsidered abnormal and would constitute part of theregularity of life in the communities.

This is, of course, only a hypothesis amongst many possibleas to what could happen and it is as uncertain as ahypothesis as are the climate change models put out bydifferent climate scientists. But, changes there will be,the weight on the averages will change and the demands ondisaster risk and development management will be different.

4. The Convergences and Divergences between Disaster RiskManagement and “Adaptation” to Climate Change.

In this section of our paper and based on our previouslyelaborated arguments and contexts, we will attempt toidentify and outline the relations that may be seen toexist between disaster risk management and so-called“adaptation”.

Firstly, we will identify common and divergent areas ofinterest as established in the literature from the twospecialized areas; secondly, approaches to risk that are incommon to both areas will be highlighted; and thirdly themethodological, strategic and instrumental aspects ofdisaster risk management that are of perceived relevance toCCA will be commented.

4.1. The types of impact and areas of concern seen from theDRM and CCA angles

We have suggested as a working hypothesis that the conceptsand experience of DRM can be taken advantage of inreference to “adaptation” to climate change. At the sametime, the development of our arguments in previous sectionsclearly suggests that the nature of this relationshipdepends on how we see the different aspects of the problem,including the changes required when faced alternativelywith changing averages and extremes; with changing sealevels and loss of polar and glacier ice and the differentcontexts and problems these help generate.

When we approach the problem of relationship from theperspective of the types of problem to be faced and weexamine the types of impact or contexts that disaster riskmanagement has traditionally faced up to these are in manycases essentially the same as those identified for what isdepicted as a good part of the climate change adaptationchallenge. The major difference comes when dealing with thechanges required in function of changing climate factoraverages, as we have pointed out in previous sections,particularly when this is related to reductions inproductivity and sustainability due to increasedtemperature averages.  At the same time, it is clear thatchanging averages place new stresses on society and can infact be considered the source of new risk, even if this isdifferent to the types of disaster risk we are accustomedto deal with. Thus, one way or another, GRD and CCA areboth essentially dealing with types of risk managementunder varying levels of uncertainty.

A recent study by the World Resources Institute-WRI.entitled “Weathering the Storm” identifies the followingimpacts or contexts that must be dealt with by adaptationstrategies (when these coincide with problems dealt withunder DRM practice we put the acronym “DRM” inparenthesis):

Loss of biodiversity.

Coastal, flash and extensive and glacial lake bursttype flooding (DRM.)

Losses in agricultural, livestock, fowl and fishingproductivity (DRM when dealing with events such as ElNiño, heat waves and intense rainfall)

Damage to poor housing (DRM.) Drought and aridity and overall water shortage (DRM) Land degradation (DRM with erosion and sedimentation

of rivers and lakes) Land slides (DRM) Increases in disease vectors (DRM when dealing with

events like El Niño and stagnant flooding situations).

A good number of the themes suggested in the WRI studyrelate directly to climate “extremes” and associatedproblems and thus obviously cross over with DRM topics.

4.2. The types of context and risk to be dealt with by DRMand CCA

Within the DRM and CCA practices the following relevantcontexts can be identified in common:

the need for a general and specific reduction invulnerability as a result of development gains,which implies increases in resilience, capacitiesand opportunities in general, with a direct orindirect influence on the reduction of risk andon the ability to adjust to climate change. Such adevelopment based approach leads to individual andcollective risk reduction and adaptation benefitsthat are not necessarily deliberate or planned for.This corresponds to what is called “serendipidous”adaptation in the document Weathering the Storm(WRI, 2009), autonomous adaptation by the IPCC andthe reduction of every day, chronic risk factors,or simply, “development” in DRM terms.

the need to deliberately reduce existing risks forpopulation, production, infrastructure, livelihoodsetc which in disaster risk management is more andmore known as corrective disaster risk managementand in  the theme of adaptation, “planned

adaptation” or “climate proofing”. In the case ofdisaster risk management we are dealing withadjustments or “corrections” when faced withforeseeable events occurring within calculatedperiods of return and existing measurableconditions of hazard and vulnerability, whereas inthe adaptation theme the “correction” would takeplace due to changes in the physical environmentassociated with already experienced climate changewhich endangers production, livelihoods, locationetc that were originally “adapted” to theirenvironment, but are now under stress due toclimate change. Both types of intervention are“corrective” but in the case of DRM intervention isundertaken due to historical errors in developmentand original failure to take into account disasterrisk factors, and in the case of CCA because theclimate has changed thus endangering existingpractices. The two types of intervention areclearly complimentary and may even operate in thesame contexts. Thus, a hospital located on a floodplain, for example, may need to be intervenedbecause it was originally badly located and alsobecause with climate change the flood risk stresseshave grown commensurately.

Within the concept of corrective management it is alsopossible to include those adjustments required inlocation and production, infrastructure etc. thatderive from changes in  sea level and glacial andpolar loss of ice. These constitute new problems forhumanity, are not in any strict sense climateproblems, but can be remedied, amongst other ways,using experience from DRM. Relocation of populationand production has been a major theme with DRM wheredisasters have required such strategies.

The anticipation of future risk associated withdiverse predictable environmental extremes in thecase of DRM, and with predicted changes in climateaverages and extremes in the case of CCA. Bothtypes of practice can and are subsumed under thenotion of “prospective or proactive” management,

deal with the anticipation of future risk andattempt to build such considerations into planningprinciples and new investment decisions. The majordifference can be seen in that DRM prospectivemanagement has traditionally dealt withpredictable extremes using a stable return periodand acceptable risk calculation and formulae,whereas CCA has no reliable and established way ofestablishing the rate and type of change for whichone must plan, under reasonable conditions ofcertainty.

Humanitarian response to residual risk and theoccurrence of disasters. This has traditionallybeen one of the mainstays of disaster managementand will continue to be of great importance in thefuture as climate change adds new stressors toexisting contexts. With regard to CCA it issomewhat disconcerting to see disaster responsebeing seen as an “adaptation” mechanism, in thesame way as are adjustments to changing averagesand extremes, sea level rise etc. Here we can verysimply manifest that such response will be neededin the future, it will comprehend responses tomany types of stimulus that go beyond climate andits effects and they will essentially still bepart of disaster response mechanisms andinstitutions as has been the case in the past.To consider disaster response an “adaptation”mechanism as opposed to a support to adaptation oras a mechanism that deals with failed “adaptation”is incorrect. Disaster response is the reply toinadequate development and to inadequate or failedadaptation, as is the migration out of affectedareas, unless one erroneously wishes to ascribecausality for migration to the role of thephysical environment in un-enabling developmentthus returning to “physicalist “interpretations ofdisaster and social malaise in general in a typeof modern “geographical determinism”.

4.3. Contributions from DRM for Adaptation to ClimateChange

The contribution of DRM theory and practice to CCA may beconsidered in terms of:

methodological, procedural or contextual aspects ofmanagement  or,  

the management and resolution of particular typesof context and problem.

4.3.1 Methodological contributions and approaches

DRM comprises a body of specific knowledge whichincorporates many years of conceptual and methodologicaldevelopment and design of specific methods (see thePROVENTION Consortium web site for an array of these). Many of these, one may argue, either directly or with thenecessary modification and adjustment, can be applied inother contexts, including adjustments to climate change.

Particular methods and methodologies

As regards particular methods, one may emphasize therelevance of DRM  experience with:   the construction ofrisk scenarios at the local and national levels (takinginto account hazards, exposure and vulnerability) and withvulnerability and capacities analysis as such;environmental and social monitoring and the design of earlywarning systems in a disaster risk management, developmentbased framework; the elaboration of local participatorydiagnoses, considering local natural, economic and socialfactors in the search for common agreement on the nature ofproblems and their solution; the use of acceptable risknotions and evolving return period analysis.

The advantage of many of these methods is that they havebeen developed in the framework of normal, daily life inlocalities and communities and, therefore, are context

informed and integral in their approach to understandingand intervention.

The parameters of intervention

Probably of equal relative importance to the particularmethods for risk analysis and decision making are theparameters or criteria that have been discussed andelaborated to guide local level risk management inparticular and which can be seen to be totally relevant foradaptation planning and decision making:

The indissoluble nexus that must exist betweeninterventions in favor of risk reduction and controland the goals and methods of sustainable developmentplanning at the sector and territorial levels. Thismust also take the nexuses between disaster risk andevery day, chronic risk closely into consideration.

The indispensable role and function that realparticipation of the population and its organizations,the subjects of risk, plays in the recognition anddimensioning of problems and in decisions on theimplementation of solutions.

The importance of establishing working relationsbetween local, regional and national actors given thesynergic and causal nexuses that exist between thesein the creation and intervention in risk.

4.3.2 In the Resolution of Concrete Actual (correctivemanagement) and Foreseen (prospective management) Problems

a. Corrective Risk Management:

If we assume that contexts already exist where actualclimate change demands societal adjustment in practice andbehavior,  it is clear that mechanisms and opportunitiesnow used and debated in DRM, under the umbrella of so-called “corrective disaster risk management”, are fullycompatible with many “adaptation” needs.  We know from the

outset that climate change can mean a change in averagesand norms and also in the types of internal variation andexpression of extreme events. There will be cases whereclimate stress is not new to communities and others wherethis is relatively or completely new.

The strategies, mechanisms, instruments and particularactions available and proven in the case of correctivedisaster risk management and of direct relevance toadaptation practice are all based on an understanding ofhow risk is constructed in society, and include thefollowing:

Environmental recovery practices (reforestation,sowing of new mangrove swamps, slope stabilizationschemes, etc.) in order to slow the process of socio-natural hazard (where human intervention in naturalecosystems leads to new physical events as opposed tothese being the natural result of natural processes)construction and provide greater natural protection tothe population, its production and infrastructure.

Relocation of population, production andinfrastructure in less hazardous areas.

Retrofitting of physical structures, includinghospitals, schools, life-line systems.

Adjustment of agricultural production practices andlivelihoods to prevailing environmental conditions anddemands.

Mechanisms to protect and to strengthen livelihoods,including micro credit and insurance schemes.

Early warning systems. Physical protection schemes including dykes, terraces,

slope stabilizing schemes etc. Increases in the consciousness and education as

regards risk reduction, local participatory diagnosesand the development of emergency and contingencyplans.

Development of institutional and organizational formsthat strengthen risk governance and promote integratedapproaches to risk reduction in a developmentframework.

Such explicit corrective management mechanisms arebasically conservative in that they attack the symptoms ofrisk but not the causes. They may however be accompanied bymechanisms that attempt to get to the root causes of risk,increasing livelihood opportunities for the population andincreases in their levels of social well being, thusincreasing the opportunities for self and socialprotection. This goes along with the idea that the onlyreal way to promote adaptation for a couple of billions ofpeople is by reducing poverty and vulnerability in generalsuch that options are opened up for more formally rationaldecision making on the future, including location andproduction decisions. Moreover, this is the only way toguarantee that change may be commensurate with thepermanence of change in climate and environment indifferent areas.

The mechanisms described above correspond in good measureto those used in what is called “climate proofing” or“planned adaptation” by adaptation specialists. And, if wetake up on the idea of an adaptation continuum developed inthe WRI study, “Weathering the Storm”, such measures areexamples of Climate Risk Management, where “information onclimate is incorporated in decisions in order to reduce thenegative impacts on resources and livelihoods, taking noteof the fact that many times the effects of climate changecan not easily be distinguished from those hazards thatoccur within the normal range of climate variability“.

b. Prospective or Proactive Management.

With so-called prospective disaster risk management,mechanisms are introduced that allow the planning of futureinvestments and developments that are geared up to dealwith predicted climate or other hazard extremes followingthe principle of acceptable risk, and where return periodshave been calculated according to the stability of theenvironment over relatively long periods of time-that is tosay its averages and variations are more or less stable,allowing adequate levels of certainty in the calculation ofreturn periods for major hazards.

In the case of the adaptation to future climate change, thenotion of prospective management can also be applied giventhat the development of new social and developmentinitiatives today demands a consideration of changingenvironments in the future. Where we are dealing withexisting livelihoods and infrastructure, production andcommerce that will be affected by future change it ispossible to see intervention as being both “corrective”and “prospective”, although in any strict sense changesintroduced in anticipation of future change should beconsidered prospective. With new investment and developmentschemes clearly their adjustment to foreseen futureconditions is proactive management.

It is with the notion of “prospective” or “proactive”management that we see the two topics, disaster riskmanagement and adaptation, flowing irremediably together.Thus, if we accept that climate will change on a continuousbasis in the near and middle terms (until green house gasemissions are stabilized and an equilibrium is reached aregards change), then there will be no “stable” climate,with stable averages and predictable periods of return forextreme events. All will be in constant flux and change asregards climate and the options to apply normal returnperiod analysis and considerations of acceptable risk whenfaced with these will all but disappear unless climatescience can guarantee a predictive model that can adjust tochange and provide accurate forecasts for the future. Thisis not really possible as things are today.

That is to say, the prospective management of disaster riskin the framework of development planning in general, whereclimate norms and averages and extremes are predictableunder determined levels of uncertainty or certainty will nolonger exist and decisions will have to be taken with widerdegrees of flexibility and under greater conditions ofuncertainty. Managing uncertainty will become a far moreimportant consideration than in the past.

With this type of context there is really no point inattempting to distinguish between DRM practice, adaptation

practice and development practice in general, as clearlyall must merge into a single integrated framework andmanagement scheme. As averages and extremes will be inconstant, if slow motion and to a certain extentunpredictable, development planning, whether in civilsociety or in government, will have to take account of bothin attempting to make decisions on future needs, riskmanagement and “adaptation”. There will be no point inseparating out development planning and adaptation practicein dealing with the options according to averages, and DRMdealing with those extremes that could imperil developmentbased on the averages. All will need to be subsumed into asingle integrated planning framework, where changingaverages and changing extremes are both associated with newrisk and that must be planned for in a holistic andintegrated fashion. With this the debate on the relationsbetween DRM and adaptation should disappear because thereshould be only one single topic and practice- “DevelopmentBased Climate Change Management” or “Development BasedClimate Risk Management” or some such title. With this itis clear that such a practice must essentially be locatedinstitutionally in planning, finance and developmentministries and not in environmental, meteorological andemergency commissions.

This will represent a great advantage over today’ssituation where despite constant arguments over the yearsin favor of more integral and holistic development basedschemes for DRM we are still faced with the separationprinciple where development is on one side and disaster anddisaster risk management on the other and one is faced withthe supposed need of integrating disaster risk managementinto development planning (as if they were two differentthings), as opposed to seeing DRM as an essential definingcomponent of this. With climate change on top of us and inconstant movement over at least the next 100 years,according to the experts, there will be no other relevantoption than to deal with this, with climate averages, normsand extremes all under the same umbrella- developmentplanning, climate risk management.

However, this will not of course lead to the disappearanceof DRM as a specific practice because its object of studyand action is not only climate and weather extremes, butalso hazards and vulnerabilities associated with geologyand geomorphology, oceanography, technology and humaninduced hazards in general. All future developmentplanning will of course have to take such factors andcontexts into account.

As regards this aspect, we must realize that environmentand human society are an integrated whole and it isimpossible to separate off parts in inductive fashion andhope to get the best results. Clearly areas affected byclimate change will on many occasions also be affected byother types of natural and humanly induced hazards-earthquakes, tsunamis, non climate related landslides,technological accidents etc. Given this context there willbe no other option than multi hazard management whereclimate change aspects are also dealt with in a developmentframework that includes a consideration of the sum of thepotential and limiting factors. All comes back to the samepoint—planning for climate and environment in general mustbe undertaken from holistic, integral developmentperspectives and not in a compartmentalized fashionreflecting existing institutional feuds and powerstruggles.

As far as strategies or particular types of instrumentavailable for prospective climate risk management, thereare no real significant differences between those discussedand practiced by the DRM community (see ISDR 2009 andLavell, 2009, for example) and those discussed in theadaptation “community” (see WRI, 2007 and IPCC, 2007, forexample). These can be summarized in the following way (wecan appreciate that these basically correspond tocorrective strategies and instruments and only the temporalaspect varies—anticipating instead of correcting):

Environmental management, natural resource andenvironmental services management.

Territorial organization and land use planning. Use of protective infrastructure.

Application of new and traditional technologies andscience.

Strengthening and promotion of sustainablelivelihoods

Financial mechanisms- micro credit, insurance etc. Integral sector and territorial planning Environmental and social monitoring systems and early

warning systems. Education, training, consciousness and participation Mechanisms and processes that increase risk governance

in general.

Examining these options in the light of discussionscarried out on vulnerability and vulnerability reduction byDRM specialists we see that they can all easily be locatedin one of the five categories of vulnerability reductionprocesses proposed by Terry Cannon and his colleagues(Cannon, 2007), that is to say:

Improvements in social living conditions. Livelihood strengthening and increases in resilience. Self-protection. Social protection. Governance factors.

c. Management of Residual Risk

Irrespective of the absolute and relative success ofcorrective and prospective climate related management,there will always be a need to respond to emergencies andcrisis situations associated with climate extremes.  Thelevel of response will be inversely proportional to thesuccess achieved with the integral planning of riskreduction. As a datum point we may reiterate theconclusions of the Tufts University study in 2008 thatshows that according to different scenarios the increase inthe cost of humanitarian response under climate changeconditions could vary between 56% and 1600% over currentlevels during the next few decades.

No matter what the real scenario is, response will still beneeded and this will not distinguish between climate change

adaptation and normal disaster management principles andneeds. The same institutions will be involved as have beeninvolved historically, under different organizationalarrangements maybe. And these responses are simplyhumanitarian responses and not, as adaptation literaturewould like to make out, adaptation strategies! Rather,they are as we have said previously, non adaptationstrategies!

5. A Short Concluding Reflection on the Concepts ofAdaptation and Adjustment.

Throughout this document there is an evident critique ofthe notion of adaptation and its use in the particularcircumstances of climate change and human system responses.The reasons why the term was chosen in the first place havebeen broached somewhat tentatively earlier.

Whilst we have no qualms as to the use of adaptation whendealing with natural systems and change stimulated byactual or real changes in environment, its use as regardshuman systems (not human beings) is openly questioned here.As regards human systems, arguments exist for utilizing asomewhat more adequate and less historically andscientifically committed term.

Moreover, when the defining of “adaptation” requires theuse of another historically committed concept such as“adjustment”, which has its own history, and is widelyrecognized and utilized in environmental studies andgeography in very precise ways, we commit a serious errorand generate an important epistemological andmethodological confusion.  If adaptation is adjustment asthe official definitions suggest (and we don’t believe thisis the case) then why not simply use the latter term andavoid any conceptual, scientific and historical confusion?

In addition, the indiscriminate use of the term adaptationshows the lack of knowledge that exists in general withregard to past and present studies and approaches to humanchange and adjustment to environment undertaken byoutstanding investigators and students of the problem. This

includes the human ecology school of thought coming out ofthe University Chicago in the second decade of the 1900sunder the guidance and inspiration of Professor HarlenBarrows and promoted by Gilbert White and his collaboratorswith reference to physical hazards and human adjustments tothem from the 1930’s onwards.

An option that would allow us to distinguish betweenprocesses relating to natural systems and those relating tohuman systems would be to use the term “adaptation” in thefirst case and “adjustment” in the latter case, as waspostulated by White and his colleagues in the 60s and 70sin their works on human responses to hazards. To adjust(positively) is to comply with new conditions gainingbenefits from associated opportunities and resources, andreducing or controlling the contradictions, hazards andvulnerabilities. The term seems to be more “adapted”, moreflexible and less contradictory in depicting the wide anddifferentiated range of actions and changes that areencompassed nowadays under the notion of “adaptation” toclimate change and which we have discussed previously.

In order to consolidate our proposal for conceptual andterminological unification, we can, thus, suggest the useof the notion of adaptation for natural systems in theiraccommodation to new, but not anticipated environmentalcircumstances; the term “adjustment” in order to describethe changes introduced in human practice when faced withalready existing, actual climate change, and anticipatedchanges. In the first case we are faced with a type ofcorrective climate risk management; and, in the second withprospective, proactive or anticipatory management, bothterms now well used in the disaster risk management areaand in part in the CCA area.

Of course we know such a convention will never be ascribedto in the same way as many still talk of “naturaldisasters” knowing such things don’t exist. But the weightof custom and history and historical error is just tooheavy to remove.

6. By way of conclusion.

The principle objective of the present document is toconsider the “adaptation” to climate change and disasterrisk management themes and the relations and differencesbetween their established subject matters and actionthemes. The document is written by someone coming out ofthe development based, disaster risk management school ofthought. This colors our analysis and ensures thatarguments tend to go from DRM to CCA and not vice versa.

Apart from the basic hypothesis that DRM, it concepts andmethods, practice and strategies has much to offer the CCAfield, we argue that only by critically unpacking disasterrisk management and even more so “adaptation”, examiningclosely their different aims and component parts, can weexpect to be able to reach any real conclusion onsimilarities, differences, relations and divergences.Moreover, any attempt at solving the “puzzle” ofrelationships requires a critical look at concepts anddefinitions as used in both fields. In this sense we touchon the notions of mitigation, hazard, risk, vulnerabilityand adaptation indicating the ways differences not onlyexist between the two areas, but also within the DRMcommunity itself, in particular. The increasing importanceof development based, social science approaches to risk anddisaster and the growing notion of social construction ofrisk, is used to explain these changes and differenceswithin the DRM topic.

DRM is analyzed from the perspective of themes andapproaches, from corrective through prospective management;from prevention through reconstruction. Emphasis is placedon the ways DRM works within the bounds of “normal”environment and its averages and norms, utilizing notionsof hazard return periods and acceptable risk to takedecisions that guarantee that loss and damage associatedwith so-called “extreme” events is maintained as low aspossible given existing social, economic, political,

technological and cultural opportunities and constraints.That is to say, it is environmental “extremes” and theirdamaging effects that have been the subject matter of DRM,but a consideration of these can not lead to positiveeffects unless they are seen in the context ofenvironmental averages and on going every day life andassociated chronic risk. DRM must be seen essentially as adevelopment strategy, an integral part of sustainabledevelopment planning. The same applies to CCA.

The notion of “extreme” events is commented and questioned,following the argument that such nomenclature is typical ofthe physical sciences and relates to discharged energylevels, whereas for the development and social sciencecommunity more interest must be placed on “high impact ordamaging” events where lower levels of energy can beassociated with higher levels of loss due to the pervasiveinfluence of exposure and vulnerability. The explicitconclusion arrived at is that risk is socially constructedand the importance of physical events is directlyproportional to the existence of higher levels of exposureand vulnerability. Moreover, it has been increasinglyargued and proven that accumulated loss and damageassociated with recurrent small and medium scale events mayexceed the one off losses from large, long return periodevents. In the end we must accept that in referring to“extreme” events we are in fact widening the notion toconsider all those events that are out of the normal oraverage range and which are associated with somesignificant levels of probable loss and damage.

Following an initial definition of climate change and itsprinciple factors, the topics of mitigation and adaptationare dealt with, establishing from the outset that both areinterrelated in terms of cause-effect and that the basisof any consideration of these “strategies” must be adevelopment approach. That is to say, climate change isessentially a development and not a physical problem, and

mitigation and adaptation strategies must be built ondevelopment considerations.

The concept of adaptation is criticized throughout thispaper with regard to its use when dealing with humansystems and preference is shown for the term “adjustment”.This criticism is based on the overly encompassing natureof the themes and problems covered by the term, in additionto its use in ways that disobey historical and scientificusage to date.

Support for this argument, as well as information requiredto analyze DRM and CCA relations, is derived from acritical unpacking of the concept and the types of activityand context to which it supposedly responds. Here we haveanalyzed the use of adaptation in such diverse contexts ashuman and natural systems; with reference to changingclimate averages and climate extremes; with reference toadjustments to actual change and to predicted change inclimate; with reference to seal level changes and loss ofpolar and glacier ice, and other diverse contexts. Thisvariety of contexts belies conceptual precision and value.The significance of each of these contexts for the debateon DRM and CCA relations is weeded out. And, dueconsideration is given to the growing importance of smalland medium scale events with climate change and how theycould change the balance of considerations related to“extreme” events and the levels of social loss and damage,or the very concept of “normalcy”.

Overall it is concluded or suggested that the climatechange problem (and “adaptation” or “adjustment” to climatechange as such) should be looked at in terms of changingaverages and norms and not changing extremes Non averageconditions, the extremes and how to deal with them in theframework of normal climatic and development conditionshave been and are the topic of DRM under mostcircumstances. Corrective actions when faced with actual

climate change defined in terms of changing averages willthus be accompanied by DRM work when the extremes havechanged as well. But when dealing with anticipated changeof climate and the ensuing social reactions, DRM and CCAmust merge under a single umbrella guided by developmentprinciples and development planning frameworks given thatthere is uncertainty as much as regards changing averagesas regards changing extremes. Under stable climateconditions this is not the case and the principles ofhazard return periods and acceptable risk can be applied.This planning with regard to anticipated change will have acorrective and prospective bent. Where anticipated futurechange relates to the affectation of what is already therethis will be corrective. And when new investments anddevelopments are looked at from the climate change anglethis will be prospective management

Thus, it is concluded that both CCA and DRM have acomponent that relates to what has been called correctivemanagement, where existing social and economic contexts arethreatened by existing and future climate conditions; bothhave a prospective component where an attempt is made toanticipate risk and change and adjust new investments andactions to these; and both incorporate the need forhumanitarian response when risk has not been resolved onthe ground. Therefore, in essence both themes have the samemajor components and can in many ways and areas be merged.Moreover, an analysis of the types of strategy andinstruments available to both reveals close similarities,both with corrective and prospective management.

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