This paper investigates the perspectives of a set of actors devoted to development in the Pacific on climate change, migration, and adaptation. While much of the debate over climate and migration is centred around the Small Island Developing States in the Pacific, little is known about how the debate is articulated at that regional level. Drawing on poststructuralist discourse theory and using semi-structured interviews with a set of development actors working in the region, the paper discerns three distinctive discourses on climate and migration. These are (1) a main discourse that promotes international labour migration as an adaptation response and two alternative discourses that challenge the main discourse’s views, by suggesting (2) that migration is of marginal importance and engagement with socio-economic factors that influence Pacific Islands' vulnerability is more pressing, and (3) that out-migration is undesirable but that communities may have to be relocated within their countries. The paper further explores why the discourse on labour migration may have emerged and why it is being perpetuated by actors that originate outside the Pacific region. The paper concludes by suggesting that significant differentials in economic and political resources exist between the main discourse and the alternative discourses. In addition to these empirical insights, the paper adds new findings to the growing literature on the politics of climate migration discourses. Unlike earlier work that identifies a shift from an alarmist to an optimist framing, it illustrates that both alarmist and optimistic imaginaries operate simultaneously in the discourse on labour migration.

The ways in which climate adaptation is understood in the European Union is examined via three key policy documents: the Strategy on adaptation and the Green and White Papers that preceded it. Drawing on Poststructuralist Discourse Theory, light is shed on the implicit values and assumptions that underpin this recent policy initiative. The findings demonstrate a tension between the declared ambition to act on adaptation and implicit suggestions that nothing really has to change, and the challenge can be addressed by market and technological innovations, and by mainstreaming adaptation into existing sectoral policies. The policy discourse effectively serves to depoliticize choices societies make in response to climate change, presenting adaptation as a non-political issue. Insight into European adaptation discourse enables deeper understanding of recent policy developments and opens up possible entry points for critique.

As globalization and other pressures intensify the economic, social and biophysical connections between people and places, it seems likely that adaptation responses intended to ameliorate the impacts of climate change might end up shifting risks and vulnerability between people and places. Building on earlier conceptual work in maladaptation and other literature, this article explores the extent to which concerns about vulnerability redistribution have influenced different realms of adaptation practice. The review leads us to conclude that the potential for adaptation to redistribute risk or vulnerability is being given only sparse—and typically superficial—attention by practitioners. Concerns about ‘maladaptation’, and occasionally vulnerability redistribution specifically, are mentioned on the margins but do not significantly influence the way adaptation choices are made or evaluated by policy makers, project planners or international funds. In research, the conceptual work on maladaptation is yet to translate into a significant body of empirical literature on the distributional impacts of real-world adaptation activities, which we argue calls into question our current knowledge base about adaptation. These gaps are troubling, because a process of cascading adaptation endeavors globally seems likely to eventually re-distribute risks or vulnerabilities to communities that are already marginalized and vulnerable. We conclude by discussing the implications that the potential for vulnerability redistribution might have for the governance of adaptation processes, and offer some reflections on how research might contribute to addressing gaps in knowledge and in practice.

An unresolved aspect of the Logics Approach within Poststructuralist Discourse Theory (PDT) is how to operationalize its abstract theoretical concepts – of social, political and fantasmatic logics – for concrete textual analysis, especially of policy documents. Policies often institute new understandings, procedures or practices, something the logics, as originally articulated, fall somewhat short of capturing. To overcome these methodological challenges this article constructs a framework for poststructuralist policy analysis that brings together the Logics Approach with more textually oriented tools developed within Critical Discourse Analysis, namely assumptions and genre chains. For empirical illustration it draws on a case study of the European Union's adaptation policy in response to climate change. The resulting framework offers a means through which more implicit social and political logics can be examined, and contributes new insights to methodological debates around the use of the Logics Approach (and PDT more broadly), specifically in relation to critical policy analysis. The article concludes with seven observations of relevance for future studies and suggests avenues for further empirical and conceptual exploration.

Purpose – Drawing on qualitative fieldwork on a remote outer island in Fiji, this paper aims to address a shortcoming in the literature on climate adaptation in the Pacific. Internationally community-based adaptation (CBA) is recognised as a promising approach to help vulnerable populations adjust to climate change. However, with pilot projects in their infancy documented experience for Pacific Islands remains scarce. This limits the ability of the region – faced with persisting development challenges and predicted significant climate impacts – to learn from and build on previous experiences and develop robust responses to climate change.

Design/methodology/approach – By using a community-based initiative in response to environmental challenges and unsustainable development as a proxy, the paper interrogates the potential usefulness of the CBA framework for the Pacific and identifies potential strengths and weaknesses. Sketching out the process and its outcomes, it shows how the initiative has resulted in a diversity of strategies, ranging from pollution control measures, to improved governance of resources and community participation in decision making, to livelihood and income diversification.

Findings – Findings indicate that CBA could have a lot of potential for building more resilient communities in the face of climate change and other pressures associated with modernising Pacific societies. However, to be effective, interventions should pay attention to people’s development aspirations; immediate economic, social and environmental benefits; dynamics of village governance, social rules and protocols; and traditional forms of knowledge that can inform sustainable solutions.

Originality/value – The conclusions provide a reflection on the CBA framework in general and make concrete suggestions for practitioners on how the framework could be usefully implemented in the Pacific context.

Since the Adaptation Fund (AF) became operational in 2007, there has been a vivid discussion about equity and efficiency in how resources (predicted to be scarce) are governed and allocated. One complicating factor is that allocation is often discussed between countries rather than between sub-national causes and groups, and while this approach follows from the UNFCCC context, it is problematic because it ignores the fact that vulnerability is a locally contextualized phenomenon. This paper empirically analyses the portrayal of vulnerability and adaptation benefits in project proposals approved by the AF, and thereby comments on the normative principles of equity and efficiency when allocating funds to developing countries and their vulnerable communities. It does this by evaluating actual decisions made by the AF, which has been operating for some time. We qualitatively analyse all proposals approved as of December 2012 by the Fund's Board. First, we compare the ways that ‘particular vulnerability’ is justified or not, especially in light of the minimal guidance available. Second, we compare project proponent's statements (or lack thereof) on economic, social, and environmental benefits arising from the suggested projects, and who they would accrue to. Lessons learned with regard to allocation will also be important for the development of the Green Climate Fund, considering that resources are likely to be scarce for some time in comparison with predicted funding needs.

The Adaptation Fund, established under the Kyoto Protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has now been approving funding for adaptation projects for more than two years. Given its particular institutional status and specific focus on concrete adaptation, it is particularly relevant to study the initial experiences of it for any future upscaling of international adaptation finance, despite the fact that its own resources are getting scarce. Alternative rationales for allocating funds, based on equity and efficiency concerns at both international and subnational levels, are here tested against the criteria and priorities of the Fund and decisions made on project approval. It is concluded that equity concerns appear to be the primary motivation and that allocation is de facto made between states rather than by considering inequity between subnational communities. However, the currency of vulnerability for determining equitable outcomes in allocation decisions has not been formalized, despite its central importance to the Fund. Instead, uniform national caps have been introduced. Such an equality approach can be considered inequitable. Finally, it is noted that although the Adaptation Fund Board has continuously developed its proposal review practices and adopted a learning-by-doing approach, it should provide both a further specification of the evaluation criteria and a compilation of best practices from approved proposals, and moreover enhance the transparency of the review process, all of which would clarify its core priorities for current and future project proponents.

While MSB has many years of experience of implementing environmental and gender perspectives in its humanitarian work; disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation present a different set of opportunities and challenges. Thesefurther emphasise the inclusion of a social change component that overlaps somewhat with more conventional development work. MSB commissioned the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) to prepare this report, noting that women and men (as well as girls and boys) are affected differently by: i) the impacts of climate change, ii) efforts related to climate change adaptation (CCA), and iii) disaster risk reduction (DRR).

This paper examines the possibility that measures taken to bolster livelihoods and adapt to climate change in one place could increase vulnerability elsewhere. In a world characterized by increasingly complex economic, social and biophysical interconnections, vulnerability redistribution may in fact represent the norm rather than an exception. We examine the literature on globalization, development and adaptation to understand how adaptation interventions might create indirect effects that undermine the livelihoods of other people, and how we might predict and/or measure such indirect effects. We then propose a framework that practitioners could use to analyse planned adaptation interventions – specifically, those focused on strengthening livelihoods – in order to identify potential indirect impacts. We apply the framework to a case study of Colombia’s coffee sector, and find several examples of how, because of the connections between farmers in Colombia, and the global nature of the coffee market, adaptation actions within Colombia and abroad could redistribute vulnerability. Finally, we discuss how these insights might inform decisions by adaptation and development practitioners, and suggest areas for further research.