Short-terming Adaptation: How Governance Processes Shape Local Climate Adaptation Logic and Time-Horizons

• In Event: 40420 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1: Politics and Democracy

Abstract

How do collective adaptation frameworks develop? What influence does this have on the time horizon used in local adaptation policy? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, digital ethnography of recorded governance meetings, archives, government documents, and interviews, this research compares two coastal cities in California facing similar threats of sea-level rise and high erosion rates to understand why one city is pursing and the other opposes the long-term adaptation policy of managed retreat. While the inherited built and natural environments play a role, I argue it is the governance process itself that informs the way risks are collectively conceptualized and adaptation time horizons develop, impacting a city’s adaptation policy. Preliminary findings indicate a local government’s processual obligation to a state agency discounts a longer-term adaptation option, while factors that hamper consensus building during deliberation of adaptation strategies narrow focus onto shorter-term measures. This research responds to calls for expansion of a sociology of loss and a sociology of adaptation in relation to climate change, while engaging with notions of Beck’s reflexive modernization in a risk society.

Author

• Betsy Priem, University of Chicago