The Labor of Climate Adaptation: Unacknowledged Work and Household Decisions in Indian Climate Adaptation Projects

Climate adaptation, whether autonomous or planned, fundamentally involves labor. Yet the time, energy, and resources required to undertake and sustain adaptation remain understudied in climate scholarship. Planned adaptation initiatives aim to reduce vulnerability but rely heavily on beneficiary labor, often without acknowledging its implications for participation and outcomes. In this paper we make a case for understanding intended beneficiaries as adaptation laborers whose efforts, paid, unpaid, and implicit, are central to adaptation outcomes. Drawing on analysis of 36 Indian adaptation project reports and focus group discussions with farmers in Uttarakhand, we examine how labor requirements influence engagement with planned interventions. By showing how adaptation projects redistribute labor onto targeted households, the paper identifies an implementation pathway through which climate interventions may lose legitimacy and generate discontent. Projects demand three forms of labor: compensated work, required in-kind contributions, and voluntary participation. These demands span planning, implementation, and maintenance phases but are often rendered implicit, creating tensions between immediate labor investments and uncertain long-term benefits. We find that projects often undervalue beneficiary contributions, prioritizing compensation for direct infrastructure work while treating meetings, training, coordination, and maintenance as unpaid community participation. While many beneficiaries engaged with the project, others opted out after weighing present costs against uncertain returns. These opt-out decisions reflect constrained agency, as households allocate limited time, labor and resources across competing priorities. Our findings show that adaptation projects often presume that future benefits will outweigh immediate costs, overlooking how labor functions as a scarce asset in household decision-making. Recognizing beneficiaries as adaptation laborers reframes uptake as work rather than costless involvement. We argue that adaptation projects must explicitly acknowledge, value, and support beneficiary labor to achieve equitable and sustainable outcomes.