The ‘Single Adaptation Imaginary’ (SAI): mapping the contours of dominant adaptation

In its fullest sense, climate change adaptation is a political invitation to rethink and reimagine humanities’ coexistence with one another and the more-than-human world. Calls for reimagining future possibilities in ways that fundamentally reimagine human and more-than-human relations, ethics of care and responsibility towards one another have been summoned-up by critical, feminist, Indigenous and decolonial thinkers alike. Yet, despite the diversity of radical political invitations for living on a more plural, just and thriving planet, a culturally homogenous and singular adaptation imaginary frames formal adaptation planning across scales. In this paper, we systematically review the critical adaptation studies literature to illuminate the contours of what we refer to as the Single Adaptation Imaginary (SAI). Our findings suggest that the SAI is bounded by commitments to Eurocentric rationality, techno-science and neoliberal ideology – which are co-constitutive of hegemonic adaption actions. Our intention here is to name and unpack the rationalities and practices that enact and are enacted through the Single Adaptation Imaginary, and furthermore call for future research that attends to identifying the excluded and multiplicity of adaptation imaginaries that resist, contest, and exceed the myopic and canonical logics of the SAI.