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What Happens When the World Bank Does Climate Change Adaptation

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What Happens When the World Bank Does Climate Change Adaptation ADAPTING KIRIBATI, ADAPTING PROJECTS: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE WORLD BANK DOES CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION? by Sophie Webber B.A./B.Sc., The University of Melbourne, 2008 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Geography) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2011 © Sophie Webber, 2011 Abstract In this thesis I analyse the effects of the Kiribati Adaptation Project (KAP). The KAP is an early climate change adaptation project and it has been instrumental in the World Bank’s (the implementer of the KAP) expansion into the climate change agenda. I situate the KAP in the long, colonial, history of developmentalism and draw from critical development and policy studies to understand this project. Although climate change adaptation and development are contradictory in many senses, they have similarities: they are practiced by the same institutions, with the same project management techniques, and they are implemented through projects. I ask the following research questions: 1. What work does climate change adaptation do as an organising principle for a project? 2. How is climate change adaptation as a policy articulated into grounded practices? 3. What are the unintended effects of a novel climate change adaptation project in an archetypical vulnerable place? To answer these research questions I draw from six weeks field work in Kiribati, where I met with KAP project managers and consultants, government officials and other interested onlookers. In chapter three, I observe that the KAP was focused on producing technical reports and technical expertise. I analyse why this is the case and what some of the effects of this are. By participating in the KAP, consultants, funders and other i-Matang relatives of the project gain expertise in the novel, and increasingly lucrative, arena of climate change adaptation. In chapter four, I analyse the ways in which i-Kiribati actors assemble and perform their vulnerability to climate change. Performances are an intentional strategy to gain recognition for the plight of the low-lying and fragile atoll nation. Officials and public servants have little choice but to perform ii their vulnerability; the Government of Kiribati depends on these finances, but this dependence is uncertain. The KAP is a key site, as it exemplifies the asymmetries of climate change adaptation and mitigation. The KAP expects to create local resilience in the face of an exogenous threat, in the place least able to be resilient, and least responsible for causing the threat. iii Preface This research was undertaken under with approval from the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board, Ethics Certificate Number H11-00709 “Climate and Pacific Society”. iv Table of contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... ii Preface........................................................................................................................................ iv Table of contents ......................................................................................................................... v List of tables .............................................................................................................................. vii List of figures ........................................................................................................................... viii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ix 1. Climate change adaptation as the latest development paradigm ............................................ 1 1.1 Critical studies of adaptation ............................................................................................ 4 1.2 Research questions ............................................................................................................ 8 1.3 Bringing it together ........................................................................................................... 9 2. Understanding and interrogating climate change adaptation ................................................ 14 2.1 Climate change................................................................................................................ 15 2.2 Kiribati ............................................................................................................................ 17 2.3 The Kiribati Adaptation Project ...................................................................................... 35 2.4 Understanding adaptation ............................................................................................... 39 2.5 Methodology ................................................................................................................... 44 3. What does the Kiribati Adaptation Project do, and why? ..................................................... 51 3.1 Environmental and climate governance .......................................................................... 54 v 3.2 Computing climate change adaptation: projections, models and best practices ............. 63 3.3 These calculations have implications.............................................................................. 75 3.4 Adaptation is more than the sum of its disentangled parts ............................................. 90 3.5 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 97 4. Performing/performative vulnerabilities ............................................................................. 100 4.1 Defining vulnerability ................................................................................................... 101 4.2 Theorising performance and performativity ................................................................. 107 4.3 Assembling vulnerability .............................................................................................. 112 4.4 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 136 5. Conclusions: Entangling adaptation ................................................................................... 138 5.1 Research questions ........................................................................................................ 141 5.2 Re-entangling adaptation .............................................................................................. 145 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 148 Appendices .............................................................................................................................. 168 Appendix A: Table of interviews ........................................................................................ 168 Appendix B: Information document ................................................................................... 171 vi List of tables Table 1 Kiribati climate change projections ................................................................................. 28 Table 2 Ecology of Kiribati .......................................................................................................... 31 Table 3 Social statistics ................................................................................................................. 32 Table 4 Economic statistics .......................................................................................................... 33 Table 5 Kiribati’s and other countries’ 2007 per capita CO 2 emissions ....................................... 36 Table 6 Summary of KAP-II Activities ........................................................................................ 38 Table 7 Interview locations and description ................................................................................. 45 vii List of figures Figure 1 Map of Kiribati ............................................................................................................... 20 Figure 2 Map of Tarawa ............................................................................................................... 25 Figure 3 Reef profile ..................................................................................................................... 25 Figure 4 Joint probability distribution of sea level and wave height in Betio (Ramsay et al., 2008, p. 50) ............................................................................................................................................. 67 Figure 5 Option identification table, example of check box system (Beca International Consultants, 2010, pp. 8-11) ......................................................................................................... 70 Figure 6 Runway at Tarawa International Airport showing erosion on the ocean side of the runway........................................................................................................................................... 72 Figure 7 Consultant drilling into groundwater lens ...................................................................... 74 Figure 8 ‘Base layer with infrastructure’ slides from Copenhagen 2009 presentation (Kay, 2009) ....................................................................................................................................................
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