Transformational processes for community-focused adaptation and social change: a synthesis

In the face of coupled climate and socioeconomic changes, transformational adaptation holds both exciting possibilities and daunting challenges for climate research and policy. There is, however, limited research on how dominant societal and policy structures contribute to climate change, and also create the need for transformational shifts within local settings where climate and social vulnerability are most profoundly experienced. Drawing on nascent studies and documented examples of transformational adaptation from a community-focused perspective, this review examines processes of social learning that influence social transformation and adaptation outcomes. Rather than offering solutions within business-as-usual pathways that contribute to vulnerability, this paper argues that adaptation research would benefit from alternative paradigms and social learning processes that can enhance local capacities and reinforce resilience. Climate challenges are explored as windows of opportunity for local stakeholders to envision more progressive adaptation pathways, and initiate processes of radical change in the entrenched systems that shape those challenges. The synthesis carried out in this review suggests a deliberate approach to transformational adaptation, that is initiated proactively by local stakeholders, as the most promising option available in contexts where actors’ capacities and resilience are limited by intensifying climate change, economic globalization, environmental degradation and social inequality.