Limits to adaptation or a second modernity? Responses to climate change risk in the context of failing socio-ecosystems

Abstract

There is a concerning fallacy at the heart of the debate on climate change adaptation—that adaptation will involve re-adjustments primarily on the periphery of functioning socio-ecological systems. Yet, dominant modern systems are already in crisis. Case study examples from research across global, continental and regional scales are used to argue that gaps between sustainability goals and outcomes are already significant. Analyses of global food security and lost diversity; human migration in Asia; and natural resource management systems in core and remote regions of Australia indicate that climate change forms only part of a failing relationship between people and the environment. There is a need to transform socio-ecosystems so that they become resilient in the context of broader learning on environmental uncertainty, variability, change and risk. Such transformations will occur both in situ, to ensure that local environments are not further degraded or people entrenched in failing systems, and ex situ, as people, systems and infrastructure become increasingly mobile to deal with changing circumstances.