June 2022

June 10, 2022

In reflecting on incremental versus transformative adaptation to climate change, Gardiner’s (2011) seminal book, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, comes to mind. Gardiner reminds us that the climate crisis is fundamentally an ethical issue. Euro-western society has an affinity to focus our responses on the spheres of science, technology, policies, and geo-politics. Furthermore, our responses are predominantly incremental and near-term in scale. This raises key questions: are we solving the right problem, could incrementalism be amplifying the climate crisis, and what is at risk if we are working on the wrong problem?

Drawing on the metaphor of a fishing boat caught in three intersecting storms, any of which could sink the boat, Stephen Gardiner (CGC, 2020) highlights three ethical challenges of climate change. The first is the global storm: to recognize that no matter where we emit carbon to support our present-day comforts, the impacts are global and those least responsible for emissions are bearing profound costs for our benefits. The second is the inter-generational storm: to recognize the time lag between emissions release and climate change impacts. These impacts will impose unfathomable losses and costs on future generations. The third is the ecological storm: to recognize the vast species loss that is occurring to support our day-to-day conveniences and comforts. This metaphor illustrates that the root problem is a human problem – one that requires reflection on ethics and values.

Calls for transformative change echo through the narratives of climate and sustainability leaders, and increasingly in global action frameworks including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. Intuitively we understand that there is a substantive difference between incremental and transformative change, but do we understand what defines transformative change and how we get there? In the absence of clarity on what constitutes transformative adaptation and what we seek to transform, can we meaningful progress? Or are the words “transformative adaptation” destined to be green jargon fading over time like bleaching coral reefs. So, what is transformative adaptation?

Fedele et al. (2019) define transformative adaptation as fundamental systems change with six distinctive characteristics including restructuring, path-shifting, innovative, multiscale, systemwide, and persistent (p. 119). They contrast transformative adaptation, fundamental alterations to social and/or ecological systems, with incrementalism where adjustments in systems occur but the underlying characteristics of systems remain unchanged. Lonsdale et al. (2015) similarly define transformative adaptation as systemic and fundamental change in contrast to incremental “change at the margins” (p. 5). They also pose the question of what is needed to move ‘transformative adaptation’ from a concept to a practice and offer a survey of practice models. Each of these directions provide insight towards understanding transformative adaptation, but do they point us to the right problem?

At its essence, the climate crisis is an ethical crisis, not a technology, policy, or procedural crisis. Ethics involve our individual values, what matters to us at the most fundamental levels (CGC, 2020). If transformative change requires addressing root causes (Fedele et al., 2019), then transformative responses to the climate crisis will require connecting our ethics and values to our decision making. Retolaza’s (2011) research on the dimensions of social change supports this assertion. Three of four of Retolaza’s social change dimensions centre on human ways of knowing, being, and doing – each of which are values centred. These include personal transformation, transforming collective patterns of action and thinking, and transforming relationships (see Figure 1). The fourth dimension is transforming structures and procedures. If we begin by focusing on personal values, mindsets and ways of knowing, we are more likely to reach transformative and systemic change in our structures and procedures. How then do we do this?

Figure 1.

Four Dimensions of Social Change

Note. Adapted from Wilber 1996, 2007; Thomas 2006; Retolaza 2008. Source Lonsdale et al. (2011).

One powerful pathway to reconnecting to values and transforming ways of knowing lies in the wisdom and teachings of Indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge systems are “broad, holistic, place-based, relational, and intergenerational” (Government of B.C., 2021, p. 22). They provide a fundamentally different worldview from Western science and culture. Indigenous knowledge systems can help us to think in different temporal scales drawing from ancestral knowledge of seven generations past to the caring for seven generations forward, an antidote to Gardiner’s inter-generational storm. They remind us of the interconnection of social and ecological systems, and that our health and well-being are inseparable from the health and well-being of the natural world, an antidote to Gardiner’s ecological storm. In Returning the Gift (2014), Robin Wall Kimmerer’s poetic words remind us of the need for a change of ethics.  

“I don’t think that it is more technology we need, or more money or more data. We need a change in heart, a change in ethics, away from an anthropocentric worldview that considers the Earth our exploitable property to a biocentric, life-centered worldview in which an ethic of respect and reciprocity can grow” (Kimmerer, 2014, p. 22).

The lure of incrementalism or quick wins in climate adaptation and mitigation is strong. We seek validation that we are good citizens, good organizations, and good countries. Incrementalism creates complacency with simply doing less bad which distracts from the larger problems at hand, and this substantially increases risk and cost to future generations who will be left facing far greater challenges than us today. It also allows continued degradation of our natural world. This raises important questions when developing the business case for change. For example, how can we integrate ethics (consideration of global, inter-generational, and ecological well-being) into the business case analysis for adaptation and mitigation? What tools and methods do we need to centre values and ways of knowing within planning and decision making for climate action? Can we reconceive incremental change as capacity building steps within a larger vision of transformative change?   

The climate crisis is fundamentally an ethical dilemma. If transformative change requires addressing root causes (Fedele et al., 2019), then transformative responses to the climate crisis will require connecting our ethics and values to our decision making. To disrupt the perfect moral storm, we must reach beyond the fleeting rewards of incremental less bad and transform our value systems.  The “transformative quest to change the future of humanity” (CGC, 2020, 22.37) is then principally a quest of changing values and mindsets.

References:

CGC (Cambridge Global Conversations). (2020). Stephen Gardiner on Climate ethics: A perfect moral storm [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/376304243

Fedele, G., Donatti, C. I., Harvey, C. A., Hannah, L., & Hole, D. G. (2019). Transformative adaptation to climate change for sustainable social-ecological systems. Environmental Science and Policy, 101, 116–125. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901119305337?via%3Dihub

Gardiner, S.M. (2011). A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change. Oxford Press Scholarship Online. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379440.001.0001.

Government of B.C. (2021). Climate preparedness and adaptation strategy: Draft Strategy and Phase 1 Actions for 2020-21. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/environment/climate-change/adaptation/cpas_2021.pdf

Lonsdale, K., Pringle, P. & Turner, B. (2015). Transformative adaptation: what it is, why it matters & what is needed. UK Climate Impacts Programme. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects
/uuid:40000abd-74a0-4a3e-8e7334374852474c/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe
_filename=UKCIP-transformational-adaptation-final.pdf&type_of_work=Report

Retolaza, I.E. (2011). Theory of Change: A thinking and action approach to navigate in the complexity of social change processes. GSDRC Applied Knowledge Services. https://gsdrc.org/document-library/a-theory-of-change-a-thinking-and-action-approach-to-navigate-in-the-complexity-of-social-change-processes/

Robin Wall Kimmerer. (2014). Returning the Gift. Minding Nature. https://www.turtlelodge.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Kimmerer-Returning-the-Gift.pdf