Urban resilience to climate change and capabilities: for a human development centered approach of adaptation in cities context - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2014

Urban resilience to climate change and capabilities: for a human development centered approach of adaptation in cities context

Résilience urbaine au changement climatique et capabilités : pour une approche de l'adaptation en contexte urbain centrée sur le développement humain

Béatrice Quenault

Résumé

The main idea of this paper is that the prevailing vision of “adaptation” and “resilience” is too restrictive, in order to understand the “human development” dimensions of climate change and to promote an effective socio-ecological transition (a deliberate transformation) towards a sustainable development pattern. Human development refers to these various facets or crosscutting issues characterizing both resilience and adaptation to climate change: human problems, nature-society relationship, inequities in exploiting or using resources, social links and, mostly, capabilities. This explains why human development issues cannot be highlighted with a narrow or restrictive definition of resilience, adaptation and vulnerability (Moser, 2011). On this crossing point between climate change resilience/adaptation and human development, the segmentation of approaches is still strong with only few insights realized as regards cities and urban areas. Even if the debate is focusing more and more on societal responses and resilience to climate change in city contexts, it is not yet clearly stated “what does mean building a societal capability for adaptation to climate change” in cities and “what the pathways are to achieve this goal in the human development perspective”? Our interpretation is that the current framing fails to engage with the real ‘adaptive challenge’ of climate change, i.e. a questioning of the assumptions, beliefs, values, commitments, loyalties and interests that have created the structures, systems and behaviors that contribute to anthropogenic climate change, social vulnerability and other environmental problems in the first place. As a result, we risk falling into the ‘inevitability’ trap, accepting both the problem and the solutions as given, leaving little room for alternative thinking and focusing instead on the practicalities of reducing vulnerability through adaptation (O’Brien, 2013). Consequently, the aim of this paper is double: first, it attempts to clarify the interrelated concepts of resilience (to disaster risk), adaptation (to climate change) strategies and sustainable transformation to identify the conditions of a better convergence of this three fields of policy in city contexts; secondly, it underlines that in a human development perspective resilience/adaptation to climate change is not so much a (physical) property of buildings and infrastructure but the capacities of households, communities and local governments to act in a preventive way (even as this includes making buildings and infrastructure more resilient/resistant) allowing the enhancement of the population adaptive capabilities.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

halshs-01865206 , version 1 (31-08-2018)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-01865206 , version 1

Citer

Béatrice Quenault. Urban resilience to climate change and capabilities: for a human development centered approach of adaptation in cities context. Resilience 2014. Resilience and development: mobilizing for transformation. Third International Science and policy Conference on the resilience of social & ecological systems, May 2014, Montpellier, France. ⟨halshs-01865206⟩
102 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More