Climate Adaptation Book Gives Vital Learning

In the run-up to the 2021 COP26 climate summit, which was originally scheduled for November 2020, the Arkbound Foundation in Glasgow has been collating diverse accounts from people worldwide on themes that cover climate adaptation and alternative economic models, and case studies from a range of different communities.

Climate change is an existential threat to humanity and all other species on Earth. Scientists have been saying this for over a decade, and the United Nations have more recently underscored the same. Despite this, for the most part, the world continues a ‘business as usual trajectory’.

Emissions are increasing, with the brief interlude of COVID-19 being nothing more than a temporary and insufficient dip. Time is running out.

The Arkbound Foundation cannot afford for the next COP to be like every other before it: one of the insufficient promises, often themselves left unfulfilled, as CO2 emissions rocket.

The challenges of truly addressing climate change are interlinked with the Arkbound Foundations’ socio-economic model. According to the Foundation, to prevent extinction, we need a fundamental societal transformation.

The era of exploiting one another and the planet itself is drawing to a close – the world cannot handle more of the same.

The knowledge and experience of transforming already exist from self-sufficient ecological communities to local currencies and cooperatives. In its place, we can look at working examples of different models.

The Foundations’ aim with this project, a book that compiles accounts of climate adaptation is to showcase alternatives to the current socio-economic model based on the extraction and exploitation of people and the environment.

As part of this, the Foundation believes that it is important for those who have traditionally been denied a voice to be given a platform – whether they are indigenous communities or those who for centuries have faced oppression and now face disproportionate consequences from climate change.

Importantly, the book – Climate Adaptation Accounts of Resilience, Self-Sufficiency and Systems Change will not only take a realistic stance to the existential threat before us but set out ways in which ordinary people and communities can deal with it.

Arkbound Foundation does not shy from the mounting challenges and likely impacts ahead. Still, it tackles the issue of structural and systematic change – often skimmed over or dealt with in a purely academic manner by other texts. In this way, the book is both exploratory and practical.

Authors include:

• Dr Ashish Kothari, who presents ‘a pluriverse of radical alternatives’, with a focus on India and the Global South.
• Professor Rupert Read, who explores the concept of ‘Transformative Adaptation’ for structural change.
• Dr Morgan Phillips, who looks at ways in which Himalayan communities have already faced the impacts of climate change and how they have adapted to it.
• Dr Ester Barringa, who reviews different local currencies developed for and by vulnerable communities.
• Fazeela Mubarak, who presents the devastating details of the 2017 Lima drought and how similar drought events can be dealt with.
• Dr Janis Steele, who takes a look at the important role of women’s leadership in the context of climate actions in the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.
• Sylvie Lodie, whose analysis of the Congo drought has implications for other African nations and food security.

Case studies from ecological communities are included, presenting a ‘blueprint’ of adaptation for near-future events.

At the same time, readers will discover the importance of Earth’s interconnected ecosystem – from the ocean to the soil – with much of this knowledge already grasped by indigenous communities centuries before Western society.

In the words of Pablo Solon: ‘we have to learn from the past, from those who lived in harmony with nature.

For the first time, the Arkbound Foundation are bringing such knowledge alongside that of the latest science and setting out ways in which people can use it to prepare, adapt and empower themselves.

By drawing together all these climate adaptation accounts into one publication, Arkbound Foundation hopes to set a new course for this year’s COP26, where localisation and systems change take precedence.

A new dialogue is needed rather than pursuing minor tweaks and reforms that only serve to keep power structures in place and make little difference to emissions.

To read more accounts of Climate Adaptation, visit the Arkbound Foundation website.