The missing movement on climate adaptation?

Abstract

Speaker: Joost de Moor, Sciences Po Paris Climate adaptation has become an increasingly urgent challenge – even across the so far relatively unaffected European continent. Moreover, critical climate scholars now underline adaptation’s deeply political nature, arguing that what counts as adaptation to one actor may present maladaptation to another. They propose a transformational approach that incorporates adaptation into a radical project to address the fundamental drivers of climate vulnerability in society. Despite this contentious potential, there appears to be little evidence that climate movements across Europe are addressing adaptation. This is all the more surprising given what some depict as the movement’s shift towards ‘postapocalyptic environmentalism,’ which focuses on dealing with, rather than preventing climate disruptions as they are no longer seen as avoidable. Furthermore, since transformational adaptation incorporates climate justice as a central tenet, it fits within much of the climate movement’s broader agenda. Why, then, do we see so few signs of mobilizations around urban adaptation on behalf of the climate movement or adjacent struggles? In this seminar, I will address this ‘mystery’ by reviewing main results from several of my recent studies, including a comparative case study of climate movements in five European cities, a case study of the Swedish city of Malmö, ethnographic research with one British climate movement organization, and survey research of participants in Fridays For Future climate strikes across 13 cities in Europe, Australia and the US. In explaining the lack of activism on adaptation, I draw on various theoretical and conceptual models, including on logics of consequences, affect, habit and appropriateness, climate urbanism, emotions, and temporality.