Introduction Caribbean Small Island Developing States
Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) bear the most economic costs of
weather-related disasters in comparison to other developing countries (Otker & Loyola, 2017).
Climate change related hazards are predicted to compound these economic pressures (Rhiney &
Baptiste, 2019). For these reasons, climate resilient development has become a priority policy
issue in the region, where the goal is to continuously integrate or mainstream climate adaptation
practices and financing into national development planning (Stacy ann Robinson, 2018).
Between 2010 and 2015, external donors have provided $1477 million USD in climate financing
for Caribbean SIDS, of which 32% has been allocated for climate adaptation activities (Atteridge
et al., 2017, p. 6). These financial interventions build off an extensive history of Caribbean SIDS
being extremely active in participating in regional climate policymaking programs—primarily
administered and funded by the development sector (e.g., the World Bank, the Overseas
Development Institute) (Thomas, 2019). The dominant involvement of the development sector in
funding and managing national adaptation planning has been argued to perpetuate the
postcolonial landscape that originally formed the top-down governing and economic structures
which produced the contemporary social and physical vulnerabilities of these island communities
to environmental change (Baptiste & Rhiney, 2016). By renewing the role of these institutional
actors in national policymaking, there is concern that subsequent climate policies and adaptation
practices will continue to ignore the root causes of vulnerability by promoting technicaleconomic
solutions that prioritize global political interests (e.g., free market access and economic growth)
over local population concerns related to socio-economic inequality—which has proven to drive
the uneven distribution of hazard exposure and uneven access to financial and environmental
resources (Marino & Ribot, 2012; Pelling & Dill, 2010; Schipper, 2007).
Although it may appear that mainstreaming adaptation is promoting development as usual
practices, Bertilsson and Thorn (2020) argue that this iteration of adaptation is different from
previous modes of development produced by these institutional actors as the language that
accommodates climate financing differs from that of past development aid. In particular, they
argue that climate financing for adaptation mainstreaming operates under the discourse (values,
ideas and biases that form actor ideological positions on issues) of country ownership— a
concept that has driven a highly subjective, uneven and contested political process to receive
climate financing, where different local and global interest groups (community organizations,
state governments, development agencies, intergovernmental organizations) negotiate and
struggle over the conceptualization of climate resilient development. Considering much critical
geographic research on climate financing in developing countries has focused on the macro-scale
politics of climate financing which shape the technical-economic biases of climate policy, a
critical research gap exists in understanding these micro-scale development politics of
mainstreaming which also drive the direction of climate policy formulation (Tanner & Allouche,
2011).
This dissertation focuses on the transition to climate resilient development in Antigua and
Barbuda, a Caribbean SIDS, from a pluralistic perspective that considers the different
knowledges, ideas and values that shape whose interests count in mainstreaming adaptation
decisions, and the different ways these decisions shape the drivers of SIDS vulnerability. In
particular, this dissertation examines the construction of the adaptation economy practice, in
which the country is attempting to extract economic value from vulnerability to create a supply
and demand for climate financial products as a form of climate resilient development. The
examination includes an analysis of the discursive foundations which construct the adaptation
economy and its effect on how climate-related policy and adaptation planning frameworks
identify vulnerability in relation to development to create economic value. A concurrent
examination is conducted in local climate financing beneficiary communities to elucidate the
socio-environmental politics which is shaping the meaning of adaptation needs. Through this
analysis, this dissertation demonstrates how adaptation is conceptualized and designed alongside
post-colonial development politics—emphasizing the dialectic between political economic
relations and socio-environmental conflicts which shape the uneven distributional effects of
climate adaptation interventions.
1.2 Theoretical framing
Within the Caribbean region and globally, a majority of inquiries into the relations
between climate adaptation and development ideology has been based in post-development
theory—specifically concerned with the ways uneven power relations are embedded within
development ideas and strategies that promote targeted sets of interventions focused on economic
growth and privilege certain kinds of knowledge and ideas over others (Blaikie, 2000; Escobar,
1995; Ziai, 2007). Within this vein, a small but growing set of scholarship in the field of critical
adaptation is examining how climate resilient development or the retrofitting of adaptation into
existing national development agendas is a kind of intervention based in this existing
development paradigm—which is demonstrating the same failure as past development aid
programs in addressing the underlying drivers of vulnerability by focusing on technicaleconomic
solutions (e.g., improving access to loans, introducing new policies) as opposed to improving
livelihood insecurity (i.e., socio-economic inequalities which affect sustainable access to income
and resources for living needs such as housing, educational facilities and access to food) (Cannon
& Müller-Mahn, 2010; Eriksen et al., 2021). Specifically, these studies, as well as this
dissertation, are concerned with the role and processes of adaptation financing, which are loans
and grants provided by international donors to developing countries for different strategies to aid
in coping with climate change such as large-scale infrastructure projects (e.g., improving access
and maintenance of freshwater resources) and community-based projects (e.g., retrofitting solar
panels and energy efficient technology for commercial and residential buildings to reduce Green
House Gas Emissions).
Critical adaptation work, while building off these general ideas of post-development
scholarship, has critiqued post-development theory for being overtly deterministic in the
treatment of development ideology within adaptation financing processes as operating fully
topdown without accounting for the complicated and unstable processes of local politics which
shape the uneven outcomes of these adaptation interventions. This critique is advanced by
Webber (2016) from a post-colonial position and Eriksen et al. (2021) from a social justice
position, where these theories more specifically engage with how the uneven outcomes of
adaptation financing are embedded in the political relations between institutions, policies and
practices of development. In contrast to existing climate adaptation scholarship, Eriksen et al.
(2021) “pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn
akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically
interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and the processes
(re)producing vulnerability” in order to evaluate the “ paradigms we are in and addressing the
underlying causes of vulnerability and climate change” (p. 12).
While this post-adaptation turn raises important questions about how adaptation financing
reproduces development discourses and practices, Webber emphasizes that these studies are
overtly focused on place-based accounts which miss the multi-scalar problematization of climate
change in terms of how global discourses on adaptation become embedded and practiced with
local development (Webber, 2016). Webber’s point is critical as policymakers in developing
countries actors are confused as to whether adaptation is simply development as usual, or its
different, but they do not know how it is different—which affects their plans and policies and
causes tension between different interest groups in the adaptation process (Denton, 2010). This is
supported by Sherman et al. (2016) who found in their literature review of mainstreaming
adaptation research “that it is problematic to use rigid guidelines for adaptation finance when the
appropriate criteria for satisfying those guidelines are still unclear and often intangible” (p. 721).
This would suggest adaptation research needs to be concerned with how different interest groups
involved in the adaptation process think about and create meaning out of adaptation, and where
conflicts or politics emerge in this process. While Eriksen et al. (2021) rightfully call for an
ontological pluralism approach in adaptation practice to understand how different knowledges,
values and ideas are negotiated and contested to produce particular meanings of adaptation, they
do not set forth a clear research agenda for how to employ this in critical adaptation scholarship
to unpack the vague paradigms under which mainstreaming adaptation functions.
This dissertation utilizes geographic work on the socionatural realities of climate change
to answer this call, which posits that knowledge and discourses of climate change and adaptation
are not separate from politics but are in themselves the product of these political processes
(Castree & Braun, 2001). Socionatural research fulfills an ontological pluralism perspective by
accounting for the multiple perspectives which shape the identity and meaning of adaptation as it
relates to development, in particular stressing that “knowledges, meaning, and actions cannot be
seen as a simple result of underlying structures because they are developed in complex ways,
depending on the relations established between subjects and objects within the broader system”
(Dujardin, 2019, p. 3). Further work in socionatural research has proposed to study adaptation as
a dialectic between biophysical changes and socio-political processes which shape societal
knowledge of global environmental change, with Nightingale (2014, p. 219) stressing that
“adaptation processes cannot be conceived separately from politics: these processes need to be
recognized as developing and unfolding within already-politicized relationships and networks
[ranging] from contentious local politics to global aid relations, requiring adaptation programmes
to take a broader look at how, where and with what consequences they seek to assist people in
developing countries to adapt” (p. 219). This theoretical framing in turn challenges
postadaptation work to reconsider “how adaptation questions are less about techno-engineering
schemes and more about attention to social relations and ‘socionature’ issues” (Nightingale,
2014, p. 219).
However, the dialectical approach does not fully specify how pluralism can be accounted
for to question the discursive and political shifts that shape transitions to so-called climate
resilient forms of development. Here, constructivist studies on climate change decision-making
illustrates how the relational aspect of development discourses and the subjects of vulnerability
are constantly being shaped between multiple actors across different scales through use of
scientific tools and knowledge production (Sovacool et al., 2015; Tanner & Allouche, 2011).
Hajer provides one example of how development discourses become operationalized through
adaptation in the form of stakeholder engagement, where participatory approaches are biased by
who is setting and staging the engagement, what kinds of knowledge is being promoted and why
certain agendas are promoted (Hajer, 2005). It is important to note that determining who and
what is being promoted as adaptation is not simply a performative action by actors, but is part of
a larger observation, specifically in more radical constructivist studies on resilience and
biopolitics, in that populations are being forced to consider “what it means to think about life and
the environment” (Grove, 2014, p. 205). Grove posits that power dynamics delineates who has
authority (actor ability to press one understanding over another) in this rethinking about life and
the environment. Specifically, resilience-thinking justifies governmental interventions that
rethink the relations between people and the environment in order to deal with the sudden
uncertainty of global environmental change. While Grove (2014) rightfully draws attention to
issues of power in adaptation responses using biopolitics as a pluralistic approach, one needs to
be careful to not fall back on deterministic assumptions of power in adaptation processes and one
form of knowledge existing, and instead focus on the effects of power in relation to struggles to
order and govern everyday affairs (Eriksen et al., 2015).
This frame for understanding adaptation politics as a dialectical process between
knowledge, meaning, and actions, also points to climate change decision-making as an active
process of translating local social, environmental and economic vulnerabilities into global
discourses on adaptation and development (Pasquini et al., 2013). This dissertation will refer to
this process as the adaptation dialectic, based in the rationality that it is necessary to understand
“how climate problems are framed and by whom, and how they are adopted as authoritative”
(Nightingale et al., 2020, p. 345). Nightingale et al. (2020) suggests in order to accomplish this,
theorizing should assume that “if people play divergent roles in the co-production of
environments, and are unevenly empowered or disempowered by the outcomes, they will
typically develop radically different understandings of processes that build from irreconcilable
ontological and normative foundations” (p. 345). Nightingale’s assertions point this dissertation
in a direction to bring greater attention to the micro-politics of development, to extend and refine
critical adaptation scholarship’s concern with how power operates through decision processes—
where different interest groups negotiate, accept, or contest what is adaptation (Tschakert et al.,
2016)
Empirical studies exist that have examined the micro-politics of development to
understand how the process of subjectivity shapes the identity and meaning of adaptation
(Ireland & McKinnon, 2013; Klepp & Chavez-Rodriguez, 2018; Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling,
2015; McNamara & Gibson, 2009; Mikulewicz, 2019, 2020). This dissertation uses the lens of
subjectivity to understand how social groups and the environment are identified and defined as
vulnerable in relation to the power dynamics of development discourses to synthesize ideas about
the broader paradigm which is driving national adaptation decisions, and articulate why this
paradigm may be exacerbating current social and physical vulnerabilities for Antigua and SIDS
in general. What separates this dissertation’s work from previous studies of subjectivity in
biopolitics and resilience studies in the Caribbean (e.g., Grove, 2014) is defining this process as
dynamic and contradictory due to the constantly changing interactions between broader political
economic processes and local decision-making politics as described by a number of SIDS
scholars studying adaptation as a form of development (Oculi & Stephenson, 2018; Robinson &
Dornan, 2017; Saxena, Qui, & Robinson, 2018; Thomas et al., 2020). This reframing is in line
with Nightingale (2018) work, who establishes that defining subjectivity as a dynamic process
extends the biopolitical understanding of subjectivity, which tends to treat discourses and politics
as separate, not reflecting the reality of how subject making is an unstable and constantly
changing process. Further, subjectivities of adaptation are dynamic in that the process of
identifying what is vulnerable and what does it mean to adapt are negotiated and contested
between different interest groups—making it a process heavily embedded in already existing
politicized circumstances (Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling, 2015; Mikulewicz & Taylor, 2020). In
conjunction with the socionature framework, combining these theoretical insights point to a new
way to examine how discourses, institutions and knowledge frame adaptation in relation to
development, and in what ways they are the products of political processes.
Finally, this dissertation demonstrates a combined theoretical framing that carefully
considers “what is meant by ‘mainstreaming’ and how adaptation is conceived and implemented
in practice” (Scoville-Simonds et al., 2020, p. 7). According to Nightingale (2016), such research
agendas are missing by stating:
Despite the insistence by social scientists that there is a politics to adaptation (Marino and
Ribot 2012; Eriksen and Lind 2009), the mainstream debate has yet to take seriously
what this fundamental shift in the entry point into climate change adaptation might mean
for adaptation research. (p. 44)
By analyzing the interplay between discourses, knowledge and interests, and the ways they
produce and are produced by political processes, I argue, generate a research entry point that
generates new insights about adaptation decision-making and the drivers of SIDS vulnerability.
1.3 The state of Mainstreaming Adaptation in Antigua
Located in the Eastern Caribbean, Antigua is a two-island nation state with its sister
island Barbuda containing a population of roughly 100,000 people. With 87% of the country’s
economy devoted to the service industry (tourism, yachting, financing), employment remains
substantially vulnerable to extreme weather events and fluxes on the global market.
Approximately 9% of these services are located on the coast, vulnerable to storm surge flooding
and projected sea-level rise (Friedman, 2013). The United Nations Environmental Programme
(2014) considers Antigua to be one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change loss and
damages (UN-ECLAC, 2011), yet as according to Robinson and Carlson (2021):
With a 2016 per capita GNI of US$13,560, the country is classified as a high-income
economy (World Bank 2018). As a result, it finds itself in a peculiar position of losing its
eligibility for many concessional financing streams, including official development assistance…
Eligibility for post-disaster assistance (or loss and damage-related compensation) based on per
capita GNI is not an appropriate benchmark for postcolonial countries [and] does not correct the
injustice inherent in countries such as Antigua and Barbuda that have reached a certain level of
development – despite colonialism. (p. 8) Robinson and Carlson point to a significant
contradiction laden in the categorization between which countries are vulnerable to climate
change, and the financial assistance to help them with core development issues to be able to cope
with changes in climate. But in many ways, adaptation financing, which in Antigua’s context, is
financial assistance and climate policy guidance from the financial mechanism arm of the United
Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), has been able to fill this
contradictory high-income gap. In turn, attaining adaptation financing from the UNFCCC is high
stakes for the nation’s ability to sustain their development in light of current and increasing
disasters.
As tourism is not a sustainable form of development for SIDS, due to the significant
number of foreign ownership and the lack of benefit the country receives from the industry, other
more sustainable forms of development are being pursued (Lee et al., 2015) to create an economy
that could sustain extreme weather events and other climatic changes. Like many other Eastern
Caribbean islands, Antigua’s exposure to disaster and hazards provided impetus for the country
to participate in various Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) trainings on
climate policy integration to find ways to increase their institutional and technical capacity to
deal with the costs of climate change impacts and weather-related disasters. The donor agencies
for these projects include the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the
Adaptation Fund (AF) and the Green Climate Fund (GCF). In particular these projects focus on
understanding the country’s vulnerabilities to climate change in order to “build capacities, engage
in adaptation planning, support mainstreaming adaptation into policy processes, and begin
implementation of adaptation measures” (Medeiros et al., 2011, p. 4). Over time, this resulted in
the country being the recipient of various GEF and AF funded community adaptation
projects/interventions, however there wasn’t a coherent policy framework that was overseeing
these efforts on the country scale. As such, the country has built upon their policy training to
implement a mainstreaming adaptation model based on an adaptation economy framework,
which on the surface appears to commodify adaptation services in order to sustain financing for
adaptation interventions across the national and community level.
Mainstreaming adaptation in Antigua entailed legislative and governmental restructuring
to oversee the continuous integration of financial flows and expertise from outside donors into
development planning. In 2015, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda introduced the
Environmental Protection and Management Act (Government of Antigua and Barbuda, 2015) to
establish the Department of Environment as a climate governing authority to manage the flow of
financing to climate adaptation activities and to make sure these activities could be integrated
into environmental resource management. The Sustainable Island Resource Fund (SIRF) was
introduced through this legislation to enact a national funding entity that is based in national
financing laws, where the goal of the fund is to “manage international and domestic climate
change funding and to help mainstream programmes and projects into national development
strategies and plans at the country level” (Smith et al., 2011, p. 997). The goal of the national
funding entity is to govern over adaptation funding flows and create a supply and demand for
adaptation financing through different adaptation services such as climate risk managers and
financing for household adaptation measures. Antigua is currently serving as a testing ground for
GEF and the World Bank to see how national scale policy could be improved to mainstream
climate change into development, and how local area development plans can be revised to
promote medium- and long-term adaptation climate change (Kuhl et al., 2020).
The nation’s transition to climate resilient development places an emphasis on
resiliencethinking, which is framing problems around climate change, vulnerability and
development in the Caribbean as a technical-economic issue. From a social justice perspective,
Popke et al.
(2016) have a general concern with mainstreaming adaptation and the previously discussed
CARICOM programs, as it is guided by a resilience-thinking which “[risks] eliding important
sources of inequality around climate change vulnerability in favor of a systems perspective that
emphasizes the creation of responsible, resilient subjects” (p.74). The mainstreaming adaptation
program being pursued by the country reflects an impacts-based approach, where the goal is to
increase institutional and technical capacity to respond to specific climate risks. This is
emphasized by the government’s vision for climate resilient development where they define
resilience as:
Changes to the current systems of Governance and economic management to allow
Antigua and Barbuda to adapt to the impacts of climate change such that the economy
and the people can withstand a Category 5 hurricane, one meter of sea level rise, and a
drought lasting over three years, while the core economy is still functioning at a capacity
similar to that as if climate change were not occurring. (Government of Antigua and
Barbuda, 2017, p. 9)
This vision runs counter to a vulnerability reduction perspective which several Caribbean
SIDS scholars consider as a climate adaptation imperative (See Baptiste & Rhiney, 2016; Rhiney,
2015; Robinson & Wren, 2020) to use a social justice perspective to address underlying socio-
economic inequalities contributing to vulnerability to identify who and what needs to adapt to
climate change. Concerns for this resilience perspective can also be situated within broader
tensions within adaptation practice and research in general (Table 1.1). The table denotes
Schipper’s (2007) general observations of the climate financing process as it relates to how
climate change is problematized. The adaptation approach, which Antigua is following,
dominates conceptualizations of adaptation as a form of development because:
From a policy perspective, the adaptation approach to development is simpler: it centers
around mainstreaming adaptation, which comes down to taking into account climate
change in social, institutional and infrastructural development planning. (Schipper 2007:
p.7)
Table 1.1 Adaptation and extension of Schipper’s (2007) framework of climate adaptation.
Practice Strategy Theoretical
Framework
Goals
Adaptation
approach
Adaptation to climate
change
impactàvulnerability
reductionàsustainable
development
Risk-adaptation Increase institutional and
technical capacity to
respond to specific
climate risks
Vulnerability
reduction
approach
Developmentàvulnerability
reductionàImpact
reductionàadaptation
Social justice Address underlying
socio-political processes
contributing to
vulnerability
Although theorizing about why resilience-thinking dominates can account for the ways
technical and economic solutions are being promoted by financing donors—it only explains to a
certain extent the differential drivers behind the country’s decisions on where to integrate
adaptation financing. In describing the country’s transition to climate resilient development, I
was brought back to Webber’s (2016) terming of what I was seeing was the “folding” of
adaptation into an already politicized development context—which counter to a hierarchical
understanding of mainstreaming adaptation from resilience-thinking literature—containing a
dialectical process between political economic and socio-environmental conflicts that determined
how different understandings of adaptation were to be grounded into development planning
practice. These observations emerged when studying a collection of communities in two
watershed areas in the Eastern and Northeastern part of the island identified by the government to
be the initial beneficiaries of climate financing. In the Northeastern part of the island, the
communities of Mckinnon’s watershed (Yorks, Mckinnon’s, Dickenson Bay, Lower Gambles and
Villa) (population 806) have been targeted for SIRF financing mechanisms including household
loans for adaptation, improvement of drainage to minimize flooding, and building disaster
shelters. A majority of households in Mckinnon’s watershed that live along the waterway are
defined as low-income (Nicholson et al., 2016). The collection of coastal communities in the
Christian Valley watershed (Jolly Harbor, Bolands, West Palm, and Jennings) (population 2,067)
are a second site of climate financing beneficiaries to expand household access to the SIRF for
energy efficiency technology. Experimentation with the SIRF is being conducted in these
communities as they experience frequent flooding and are important watersheds that provide a
majority of the island’s water supply.
Both watersheds have been the subject of numerous works in risk and hazards literature
documenting the destruction of sensitive coastal ecological resources such as mangroves and salt
marshes through tourism, marina and oil development, which has significantly altered the
landscape in ways that exposes communities to coastal and inland flooding, and decreasing
community access to local ecological resources for income (Baldwin, 2000; de Albuquerque,
1991; de Albuquerque & McElroy, 1994; Henry, 1985; Lorah, 1995; Mcelroy & de
Albuquerque, 1997). Some of this work highlights the meanings embedded in how governmental
actors value the local environment. For instance, in 1987, a large-scale resort development called
the Marina Bay project was commissioned in the Mckinnon’s community, which put forth dredge
and fill operations that actively reshaped the coast and destroyed mangroves. As De Albuquerque
(1991) observed, “Cries of ‘save the McKinnon’s swamp’ have emanated from the public
periodically…yet the majority of politicians/developers remain to be convinced that mangrove
swamps/salt ponds are important not only environmentally, but economically and socially as
well” (p. 203). However, this finding could not explain why the government had a new interest in
extracting economic value from these so-called ‘nuisance value’ areas (De Aberquerque 1991) in
their climate resilient development trajectory. Ironically, the areas are slated as special
development zones for sustainable to further concentrate businesses and homes in a way to
control land use in these sensitive watersheds.
Based on my hypothesis about the adaptation economy creating economic value from
these watersheds, I was starting to learn entailed a great deal of creating meaning out of the
interventions that were being conducted, which relied on connecting to community knowledge
and value of these places to legitimize adaptation interventions. This observation has similar
parallels to critical adaptation work in SIDS across Oceania, which observed that the discursive
framings produced by climate financing institutions intertwined with local knowledge on hazards
to identify areas that could demonstrate the most need, but which may not be the most climate
vulnerable (Farbotko & Lazrus, 2012; Webber, 2013).
Further, through conducting interviews with homeowners in Mckinnon’s and Christian
Valley, it became apparent that the adaptation interventions happening on the ground —dispersal
of loans for energy efficiency measures, upgrading drainage infrastructure and building
community disaster shelters—were to deal with baseline development challenges and less so for
climate risk. These communities were dealing with already-existing flooding problems due to
large structures such as oil refineries and settlement expansion into areas that were former
mangroves and wetlands. Combined with policymaker interviews, it became more apparent that
adaptation funds were becoming an essential part for national government to pay for long-due
infrastructure projects—such as improving drainage—that they lacked the funds for. However,
under global adaptation funding, they had to rework these long-standing development problems
as climate change problems. Due to this focus, there appeared to be little room for policies to
address community concerns of underlying vulnerabilities, such as government not regulating the
destruction of the local environment for tourism and recreational development. This guided my
inquiries into content analysis of government documents related to adaptation planning and
hazard assessments, as I wanted to know what kinds of environmental hazards were being
relabeled as climate change hazards, and what kinds of risks were being left out in order to get
funding. Theoretically, I had many questions regarding how these ideas were discursively being
produced to illustrate climate vulnerability and whose values eventually counted in adaptation
responses. Other questions included how was the national government translating community
concerns about risk in their neighborhood under climate funding rules? How were different
aspects of the local environment being used to communicate climate risk? And in what ways was
this perpetuating development as usual, but also how was it different?
Using the mainstreaming adaptation program in Antigua as a case study allowed this
dissertation to evaluate these adaptation interventions as they were happening on the ground from
the perspectives of different actors operating at different yet intersecting scales. This included
understanding the discourses that attempted to connect local social and environmental conditions
to climate risk, household responses to government efforts, and what effects these politics of
adaptation had on shaping coastal vulnerability. Conducted this empirical analysis demonstrates
new ways to engage with debates on the connections between SIDS development, climate
policymaking and community wellbeing.
1.4 Purpose of Study and Research Questions
This dissertation seeks to advance critical adaptation scholarship by contributing an
empirical data case study that examines the discursive foundations of adaptation financing
practice. My research contributes to a call by critical adaptation scholars to account for the
specific social and environmental contexts that shape the direction of adaptation processes in
developing countries (Adger et al., 2009; Mikulewicz, 2018; O’Brien, Eriksen et al., 2015;
Pelling, 2011). At the same time, this dissertation fills in a critical gap in critical adaptation
literature, by using theory on the socionatural realities of climate change to account for the
pluralism of mainstreaming adaptation—meaning investigating how to do different knowledges,
institutions and discourses interact between each other develop particular uneven outcomes from
adaptation interventions. This dissertation seeks to advance theoretical development of critical
adaptation work by investigating the operational aspects of these relations including how
adaptation programs are conceptualized, designed and implemented on the ground, how are the
meanings of adaptation negotiated and contested, and in what ways do these adaptation politics
affect vulnerability and capacities to cope with environmental change. In addition, my work fills
in a theoretical gap for adaptation politics scholarship of Caribbean SIDS more specifically, to
account for the dialectic between the structural inequalities of post-colonial political economies
and human experiences with environmental change. By situating micro-political conflicts
between political economic dynamics and human-environment interactions within the macrolevel
politics of climate policymaking, this dissertation presents a conceptual model that evaluates
where uneven distribution of benefits from adaptation mainstreaming may emerge in
development planning practice, and in what ways this marginalizes the socio-environmental
struggles for coastal communities in Antigua. On a more practical level, this analysis provides an
operational framework that connects the political economic drivers of vulnerability to adaptation
responses that can help SIDS policymakers reflect on their position in the mainstreaming
process, and think about alternative ways to challenge the current development paradigm in a
way to decrease vulnerability and improve capacities to cope with environmental change.
1.4.1 Key Research Questions
This research will be guided by the following key theoretical questions:
1. How can we enhance ways to account for the power and politics of pro-development
discourses that mediate SIDS responses to environmental change?
This question pertains to a critical theoretical gap in critical adaptation research, where a lack
of understanding exists on the ways in which conflicts between different interest groups and
institutional actors over development decisions mediate understandings of and responses to
environmental change, and how these micro-politics shape the identification climate change
subjects and meaning of adaptation needs. This dissertation will investigate existing critical
adaptation methodologies that have attempted to analyze the relations between adaptation
practice and pro-development discourses through evaluating how populations and their
environments are positioned as vulnerable in order to create opportunities for policy and
financing interventions. In evaluating the critical adaptation literature, this dissertation
identifies key theoretical gaps which can be filled by socionatural theory on climate change,
which includes a lack of a pluralistic approach that considers the different knowledge, values
and interests which shape mainstreaming adaptation practice. I contend that socionatural
theory can enhance our understanding of the uneven outcomes of mainstreaming adaptation
by using a pluralistic approach to understand how the interplay between already-politicized
micro-scale contexts and macro-scale climate politics shape the meaning of adaptation needs,
which this dissertation calls the adaptation dialectic. This question attends to the already
existing uneven political economic context under which adaptation programs become
implemented, and how these programs can continue to perpetuate vulnerability through
exacerbating uneven access to resources and exposure to hazard. The following subquestions
will guide this inquiry,
i. How can a pluralistic approach be used to create a theoretical and methodological
framework that can evaluate the dialectic between macro-scale climate politics
and micro-scale development politics which shape adaptation responses? ii.
How can the adaptation dialectic theoretical framework elucidate the
interplay between pro-development discourses and knowledge production in
shaping the conceptualization, design and implementation of adaptation
programs?
iii. How is the meaning of adaptation needs for Caribbean SIDS shaped by
postcolonial political economic discourses and practices?
2. How do established development discourses and agendas shape emerging adaptation
processes, and in what ways do these relations act to reinforce the drivers of SIDS
vulnerability?
This question critically focuses on the socionatural politics of adaptation by comparing
development language of a SIDS government with their material responses to climate
adaptation. This inquiry formulates a stronger theoretical connection between SIDS uneven
development, and the role of national governments in driving global political interests
through public policy—a theoretical connection I found lacking within critical adaptation
literature on SIDS generally, and Caribbean SIDS more specifically. Specifically, this
question explores the role of the Antigua and Barbuda national government in creating
climate policies under the auspices of integrating adaptation and development as one
coherent agenda that seeks to improve community livelihoods in light of environmental and
climate change. These policies are mostly concerned with interventions in low-lying coastal
watersheds, where residents face double exposure from environmental and economic risks. I
follow how the national government identifies and produces meaning of climate vulnerability
through combining global political interests, scientific data on the climate and environment,
and community experiences with environmental change. In doing so, this question explores
the adaptation economy practice in Antigua—tracing its emergence, conceptualization and
operationalization into current development planning—and its implications for (re)producing
vulnerability for SIDS. The following sub-questions will guide this inquiry,
i. How does the adaptation economy practice attempt to address the tensions
between economic development agendas and climate change science?
ii. How can the socionatural approach expand an understanding of the ways in
which adaptation financing ideology becomes authoritative in development
planning practices?
iii. How can this research define the interplay between different positions and
knowledge of state actors, institutions and communities, and what implications
does this have for future adaptation planning?
1.5 Organization of Dissertation
Seven chapters will follow this introductory chapter. Each chapter is written as individual
but connected papers. Chapter 2 presents the rationale behind this dissertation’s pluralistic
approach, called the adaptation dialectic, to studying the power dynamics and political economic
context of mainstreaming adaptation. It evaluates current critical adaptation research that has
covered the political scope of climate resilient development practices, and critiques that current
research thus far demonstrates a key gap where the political that produce the subjects of climate
change are treated separately from development discourses which encapsulate local
environmental problems and resource governance. In describing this gap, this chapter argues for
a pluralistic approach as proposed by socionatural research to understand the interplay between
knowledge, institutions and development practices. In doing so, this chapter illustrates the
theoretical framework to study the adaptation dialectic of mainstreaming practices, which takes
into account how different values and interests are shaped and re-shaped, why certain ideas
become authoritative, and who stands to benefit from mainstreaming practices. The goal of the
chapter is to demonstrate how mainstreaming research should use a pluralistic approach to
understand how adaptation is a constantly changing practice, and in many ways, the process is
constantly changing to maintain status-quo power dynamics and economic development practice.
Chapter 3 reviews literature on the state of mainstreaming adaptation for Caribbean SIDS
by evaluating scholarship which has discussed the politics and processes of mainstreaming
adaptation. In conducting a systematic literature review, the chapter discerns finer debates
between two competing theoretical frameworks in the region, the risk-adaptation and the critical
adaptation approach. The chapter introduces two key debates found when comparing the
theoretical frameworks concerning 1) the post-colonial political economy as driver of uneven
Caribbean SIDS development and climate risk and 2) the embeddedness of the development
sector in environmental governance. Both of these debates provide rich descriptions of the
macro-politics of climate change, but a serious gap remains in studying how these macro-scale
processes form an interplay with micro-scale development politics. In evaluating these debates,
the chapter demonstrates a theoretical opportunity to investigate how the post-colonial political
economy context shapes the way adaptation needs are conceptualized, which requires further
engagement with the different knowledge, values and interests which shape the meaning of
adaptation and development.
Chapter 4 describes the methodology used for this research. The chapter describes the
theoretical foundations for this study’s research design and data collection. It demonstrates how
merging grounded theory and mixed methods can enhance our understandings of the
mainstreaming adaptation process and its implications. In particular, this combination of methods
represents a pluralistic research design that many socionatural scholars have called for in order to
understand how pro-development ideology is exercised through different actors, institutions and
resource governing practices. A concurrent triangulated research design is presented as a way to
compare and synthesize results from different datasets. I present combining qualitative datasets
(semi-structured interviews, GIS visualization) with quantitative datasets (keyword frequency
analysis and word collocation) in order to focus on the connection between the language of
climate adaptation to the political realities of development in Antigua.
Chapter 5 presents results that trace the emergence of mainstreaming adaptation ideas by
describing the institutionalization of adaptation financing conditions within Antigua’s
development planning. This chapter shows a mixed-methods approach which includes
quantitative techniques of corpus linguistics (word collocation, word frequency analysis),
policymaker interviews and critical discourse analysis to elucidate how knowledge on
environmental change is shaped and re-shaped to accommodate adaptation financing. Through
studying language, this analysis demonstrates how resilience-thinking (the promotion of
technical-economic solutions to govern over the environment and populations) is shaping the
kinds of interests and knowledge that are considered valid within a mainstreaming adaptation
approach, and the conflicts that arise from this ideology.
Chapter 6 provides complementary results, which expand on chapter 5’s findings on the
macro-scale politics of climate change. The goal of chapter 6 is to define the micro-politics of
development planning in Antigua and examine its interplay with macro-scale climate politics. It
was found that adaptation policy integration into development planning began with watershed
development planning to address development pressures that have severely degraded the local
environment. Specifically, this integration showed evidence of an adaptation economy practice,
where the country was actively trying to extract economic value from climate change
vulnerability. Through tracing the conceptualization and operationalization of mainstreaming, the
articulates the adaptation financing practice within the context of climate financing beneficiary
communities within the Mckinnon’s and Christian Valley watersheds, and in what ways
resilience-thinking is attempting to re-shape community relations with the local environment.
This integration entailed three political actions in order to re-shape understandings of
environmental change and adaptation needs in these areas including building knowledge on
climate risk, institutionalizing financing and identifying casual drivers of loss and damages.
Across each stage of the practice is to illustrate the discursive foundations of the adaptation
economy practice, and how this practice was affecting development planning. This examination
demonstrates the plurality of mainstreaming adaptation by detailing the conflicts between
different interests, values and knowledge between interest groups with a stake in the
mainstreaming adaptation process.
Chapter 7 presents the implications of the adaptation economy practice to outline the
social justice implications of mainstreaming adaptation concerning whose knowledge, interests
and values count in this process. Specifically, the chapter demonstrates how tracing the exercise
of power through this emerging and changing practice, provides valuable insights into how
climate change subjects are formed, and how this political process is connected to the broader
post-colonial political economy context in which Antigua manages it resources. A conceptual
model is presented to articulate how and where power is exercised across the policy-making
process, while at the same time, providing fine detail on the conflicts shaping the meaning of
adaptation needs. The descriptions shed light on the conditions that have resulted in actors with a
stake in environmental processes to not be adequately represented in the mainstreaming process.
Specifically, the chapter illustrates how land tenure insecurity is a key issue that remains
unresolved through this mainstreaming process, which highlights the contradictory
characteristics of adaptation planning as it operates under adaptation economy practices.
Chapter 8, the final chapter, explores the broader theoretical, analytical and practical
implications of this dissertation. Specifically, concluding thoughts are centered around Eriksen-
et al.’s (2021) proposition for a post-adaptation research agenda, which is to examine how
prodevelopment discourses form the politics of adaptation to reproduce vulnerability. In some
ways, this conclusion suggests this dissertation challenges the authors agenda, in that it provides
a more articulate way of thinking about a pluralistic research agenda for adaptation research. In
this way, the theoretical and methodological contributions of this dissertation illustrate alternative
avenues in which to think about the dialectic between macro-scale politics of climate change and
microscale socio-environmental struggles, and how this dialectic shape particular meanings of
adaptation needs. I expand on this contribution by discussing the broader implications this
research has for SIDS policymaking more specifically, and for understanding other parallel forms
of work in the Global North concerning the governmental restructuring that is occurring under
the auspices of climate resilience development. Finally, I describe the remaining issues and
caveats of this research that included various aspects of limited datasets, and directions for future
research in critical adaptation studies concerning the transformative capacity of local-scale
decision-making.
CHAPTER TWO
Re-thinking the political processes of climate resilient development: an evaluation of the
adaptation dialectic
Chapter 1 provided an overview of this dissertation’s theoretical framework which
combines critical adaptation studies with socionatural theory. Critical adaptation scholarship is
generally concerned with studying how development discourses construct adaptation as a form of
development, and in what ways this process repeats the past failures of the development sector in
addressing underlying socio-economic inequalities which shape vulnerability in developing
countries. Typically, these studies are concerned with various aspects of the mainstreaming
adaptation process, or the continuous integration of climate change actions into national
development planning. This dissertation identified a critical theoretical gap in this work, which
was a lack of accounting for the pluralism of mainstreaming adaptation (i.e., the ways different
knowledges, ideas and interests are negotiated and contested under climate adaptation processes).
Extending these studies to socionatural theory on climate change is a way this dissertation will
refine current debates surrounding whose interests, values and knowledge count in climate
adaptation for developing countries. Using a socionatural framing assumes that an individual’s
understanding or knowledge of global environmental change cannot be considered separate from
discourses and socio-political relations which shape how they identify and ascribe meaning to the
environment. In using this extended theoretical framework, this dissertation demonstrates a need
to rethink our interpretations of mainstreaming adaptation as not operating under the same
development paradigm of the past, but as a transformed paradigm called the adaptation economy.
In order to understand why mainstreaming adaptation is potentially maintaining or increasing
vulnerability, this dissertation questions how we can enhance ways to account for the power and
politics of development discourses that mediate SIDS responses to global environmental change.
In this way, chapter 2 evaluates current theoretical debates surrounding approaches to
understanding the political dynamics which shape adaptation outcomes. Dissecting these debates
is guided by Eriksen et al. (2021) call for an ontological pluralism to understand climate
adaptation interventions in a way that unpacks the different knowledge, interests and values that
shape the identity and meaning of climate change within the context of development. Although
this approach builds on post-development theory, it ultimately diverges from its hierarchical
understanding of development ideology to a relational understanding that accounts for the
interscalar conflicts which define climate adaptation programs and policies in developing
countries more broadly, and SIDS more specifically.
In order to evaluate the pluralism of climate adaptation, this chapter uses the format of a
paper publication to synthesize ideas about how the political processes which form the subjects
of climate change are related to the changing discursive constructions which describe
development (identity). The synthesis of this ideas is called the adaptation dialectic, to
communicate that these processes shape each other. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to
demonstrate how this dissertation’s theoretical framework will account for the dynamics of
prodevelopment ideologies through combining critical adaptation and socionatural debates
surrounding the processes and outcomes of climate resilient development.
2.1 Introduction
Global responses to climate change are prioritizing the continuous integration or
mainstreaming of climate adaptation actions into development planning and decision-making.
This imperative is rooted in climate science which has demonstrated that human actions in the
form of resource-intensive consumption and industrial development is increasing global CO2
emissions in a way that is altering regional and local environments in various and uncertain ways
(IPCC, 2018). In turn, socio-economic development has become the subject of climate change as
patterns of resource consumption and livelihood security are unevenly affecting who and what is
impacted by climate change effects (Huq and Ayers, 2008). Sherman et al. (2016) asserted that
blending development with climate adaptation through mainstreaming “has been considered by
some to be an effective and efficient approach to reduce the adaptation deficit in developing
countries, [but] the integration of adaptation and development can also make adaptation more
difficult to distinguish from development” (Sherman et al., 2016: p.708). The crux of Sherman et
al.’s point is established in descriptions of development sector institutions (e.g., World Bank,
Overseas Development Institute) having a renewed and extended role in developing country
decision-making through mainstreaming adaptation programs. This pattern is disconcerting to
social scientists who observed that these actors and institutions continue to use their authority
(social actor asserting a position on issues) to prioritize global political interests (e.g., free market
access and economic growth) over local population interests—potentially driving already-
existing socio-economic inequalities and exposure to hazards (Marino & Ribot, 2012; Pelling &
Dill, 2010; Schipper, 2007).
Although post-development scholars would argue that this current climate adaptation
process in many ways repeats the uneven power dynamics from development of the past, where
the formulation and negotiation of policies at the global and regional levels are applied to the
national level (Scoville-Simonds et al., 2020) — emerging work in critical adaptation studies are
critiquing post-development theory in that this process should instead be studied from a
pluralistic lens as many authors are finding that different sets of knowledge, ideas and interests
from global aid to local governments are shaping the meaning of adaptation and its relationship
to development (Eriksen et al., 2021; Weisser et al., 2014). This chapter argues this is a research
imperative as mainstreaming adaptation can be best understood as a highly subjective, uneven
and contested political process where different local and global interest groups (community
organizations, state governments, development agencies, intergovernmental organizations)
negotiate and struggle over the conceptualization of vulnerability and national development
priorities within the climate adaptation context (Bertilsson & Thörn, 2020; Ireland, 2010).
Through reviewing the differential contexts in which mainstreaming adaptation occurs, this
chapter will also highlight the influence of development worldviews or discourses in shaping
knowledge on climate vulnerability and its effect on emerging climate policies and development
planning. Specifically, this chapter will demonstrate how these discourses influence subjectivities
surrounding adaptation, meaning shaping the kinds of positions and biases actors have on who
and what is vulnerable to climate change (Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling, 2015; Mikulewicz &
Taylor, 2020).
Broadly engaging with critical adaptation work can help understand “how bringing
adaptation into the development arena has become a matter of problem definition and program
realization” (Webber, 2016: p. 406). Despite this focus, a gap exists in critical adaptation work,
where studies often treat the analyses of political tensions which shape subjects— who (i.e.,
communities) and what (i.e., physical environment) is considered vulnerable to climate change—
separate from analyses of the changing discursive constructions which describe development.
Through reviewing critical debates and interpretations from these studies, this chapter uses a
socionatural framework to argue that politics should not be treated separate from discourses but
instead be observed as a dialectic between each other to provide a holistic accounting of the
different ideologies and practices which determine whose values and interests count in adaptation
decisions. In engaging with these arguments, this chapter makes a case for studying the
adaptation dialectic, an approach that attends to the social relations and ‘socionatural’ issues of
mainstreaming adaptation to explain the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of
climate change. This is achieved by examining the relations between the political processes of
climate adaptation subject-making and the dynamism of development discourses.
By taking a pluralism approach, this chapter demonstrates how this dissertation’s research
framework can unpack the paradigm which is shaping current decision-making inequalities found
in mainstreaming adaptation practices. Specifically, this dissertation answer’s Nightingale et al.
(2020) identification of an opportunity within critical adaptation research to understand “how the
issues we are trying to solve are also products of the way they are framed in the first place and
the power relations they reflect” (p.344). This chapter aims to encourage this conversation by
attending to the different ways knowledge, values and interests coalesce to define adaptation, and
the ways development discourses shift to accommodate these definitions. In doing so, this
chapter demonstrates points of synthesis and conjuncture in evaluating the power and politics of
mainstreaming adaptation discourses.
This chapter will be organized as follows. Section 2.2 is will provide a brief background
on ow critical adaptation work emerged out of the critique if post-development research. At the
same time, the section will establish some key assumptions this dissertation will be using from
post-development work to formulate the adaptation dialectic theoretical framework. Section 2.3
introduces the rationality behind why a pluralistic approach is needed to re-think the relations
between politics and discourses in critical adaptation scholarship. Section 2.4 explain how
critical adaptation research has approached studying the politics of climate change
subjectmaking, and to establish this chapter’s argument that this condition is key to
understanding the uneven outcomes of mainstreaming adaptation. Section 2.5 describes how
development discourses are dynamic in the adaptation process by illustrating various case studies
that show how it is modified from global to local scales. Section 2.6 discusses how the adaptation
dialectic framework can provide an additional avenue in which to explore the transformative
characteristics of adaptation research. Specifically, this section argues that it provides a re-think
of society-environment relations in a way that account for the complex and dynamic qualities of
climate adaptation. Section 2.7 provides concluding thoughts on how this theoretical framework
can be used to decipher the relations between adaptation and development.
2.2 The global political economy as structural driver to inequality
Critical adaptation is borne out of post-development critique on the role of the global
political economy in driving inequality across developing countries. This section will provide a
brief discussion of post-development work as its core emphasis is to study development
discourses and their power in perpetuating socio-economic inequalities in developing countries
—which shapes social and physical vulnerabilities to global environmental change. The goal of
this section is to support Ireland and Mckinnon’s (2013) stance on adaptation and development
sector involvement, who posited that, “little work has been done to analyse the underlying
assumptions of approaches to adaptation by the development sector. We see an urgent need to
question the underlying assumptions of adaptation and to investigate the ideologies and agendas
that are shaping adaptation discourses” (p.1).
In this way, this dissertation’s theoretical framework is anchored in key arguments from
post-development theory and its forms of analysis. First, post-development research has looked
at the role of the development sector in packaging global political interests such as economic
growth and access to the free market in the form of aid and interventions for developing
countries (Escobar, 1995, 2001). According to Smith (2007), these strategies were implemented
under the idea that developing countries have “inadequate technology, and inappropriate and
inefficient political and economic institutions” and thus the “the road to development, was to be
found in modernization: the provision of what was lacking, remedies for absence” (Smith, 2007,
p. 171). Escobar (2015) extended Smith’s interpretation—which was lacking an explanation of
how this process occurred in practice—by identifying how this ideology translated to practice
through modernization narratives which conceptualized social life as a technical problem, thus
justifying the need for developing countries to use development aid networks to implement
socalled rational decision-making, management and financing to continue to expand access to the
free-market and perpetuate pro-economic growth agendas (Escobar, 2015). These development
aid networks and technical interventions demonstrated a propensity to perpetuate uneven
historical power structures that existed for developing countries as colonies under imperial rule,
with wealthier countries continuing to have power and authority in creating rules and conditions
for wealth production and access to resources (Radcliffe, 2005; Sidaway, 2002; Sparke, 2006).
Second, in order for this dissertation to unpack how this inequality is produced and
reproduced, post-development research has attended to how development operates as a discourse.
Discourses are related sets of ideas, concepts and biases that form a position of how one thinks
about issues (Fairclough, 2010). In this way, discourses exert forms of power and control where
specific socio-political interests are expressed (Watts & Bohle, 1993; Gilmartin &
Berg, 2007)). Here, development is critically examined as a discursive strategy produced by the
Global North where identity of underdevelopment for countries in the Global South (Latin
America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa) are embedded in “colonial discourses of race, progress
and civilization [which] were reworked into the language of development” (Sidaway, 2007, p.
346). Typically, approaches use a grounded analysis of how these power relations exist within
countries, attending to the nuances of the translation of development ideas into local government
practices by studying the language and actions of various actors and institutions involved (Bell,
2002; Kapoor, 2008).
Understanding how development operates as discourse is a critical form of analysis to
unpack the uneven power dynamics of previous development aid programs and how these
dynamics pervade through climate adaptation programs and financing. But, critical adaptation
research, while built on this theoretical foundation, has found fault with post-development’s
treatment of discourses, and politics as a whole. A vein of this critique is based in post-colonial
research where theorists such as Edward Said (1986) have contended that:
One way of getting hold of the commonest post-colonial debate is to analyse not its
content, but its form, not what is said so much as how it is said, by whom, where, and for
whom. But even trying to do this sort of analysis requires a kind of akesis not easily come
by, given the arsenal of enunciative strategies is so well-developed, so tempting, so ready
at hand. (p.46)
Here, incorporating post-colonial interpretations of development is valuable as it recognizes that
researchers need to be wary of their own interpretations of development discourses, and to
consider the different ways of knowing how pro-development rhetoric is practiced within
different contexts in relation to interest group positionalities. In this way, extending a
postcolonial lens to adaptation research situates development discourses and power relations to
be dynamic due to the re-making of development language and practices that occur on the ground
through external interventions which privilege development sector knowledge, and local interests
which privilege certain environmental problems over others—especially with regards to
mainstreaming adaptation programs (Blaikie, 2000; Ziai, 2007). This dissertation uses Webber’s
(2016) post-colonial critique of post-development theory based on Goldman’s (2005) work, who
contends that post-development research is “deterministic” in its treatment of development as a
“steam-roller running rough-shod over the Third World with no one in the driver’s seat and
nothing to stop it” (p.23 from Goldman citing in p.403 of Webber 2016). Webber rightfully
critiques post-development’s treatment of development ideology because studying climate
adaptation “requires searching for the ‘making and remaking’ of development policies, the kinds
of practice this engenders, and the gaps between ‘rhetoric and reality’” (Webber 2016: p 403).
While this notion reflects the dire need to expand research on how development ideology is being
“folded” into adaptation (Webber 2016), there continues to be a lack of synthesis regarding how
political and discursive processes come together to drive the adaptation-as-development agenda
across developing countries.
2.3 The pluralism of mainstreaming adaptation
In order to synthesize the political and discursive processes of mainstreaming adaptation,
this dissertation attempts to critically understand how development ideology works through
climate adaptation practice. Through this understanding, according to critical adaptation scholars
such as Eriksen et al. (2021), Sherman et al. (2016), Lovbrand et al., (2015 ) and Nightingale et
al.(2020), a pluralistic approach is required to critically engage with how different knowledge,
ideas and interests are negotiated and contested to produce particular meanings of adaptation and
identities of climate change vulnerability as it relates to development. The rationale behind why a
pluralistic approach is needed is because 1) mainstreaming adaptation programs operate
differently than development aid programs which did not include as much involvement of
different actors and their interests on the national and local scales of developing countries and 2)
using a middle-income country such as Antigua to study, has equated to a lessened development
aid presence, hence, a hierarchical type of analysis would not be able to account for the
differential dynamics of adaptation and the drivers behind the country’s approach to adaptation
mainstreaming. Instead, development institutions and their associated rhetoric have re-shaped
themselves to promote a new idea of country-ownership that is influencing how adaptation is
designed and implemented by guaranteeing interventions that “are aligned with national climate
policies and strategies, to increase recipients’ accountability, to ensure engagement of national
stakeholders, and to improve access to finance” (Zamarioli et al., 2020). In practice, this has
created adaptation responses that produce benefits unequally, and therefore understanding the
politicization of vulnerability as exercised by different actors across different scales can help us
illustrate the unequal adaptation to climate impacts (Mikulewicz, 2018, p. 19).
The increased incorporation of different interest groups in mainstreaming adaptation has
pushed for a critical climate adaptation research agenda that theoretically and empirically focuses
on the role of discourses in driving particular development pathways (Schlosberg et al., 2017;
Symons, 2014). This work recognizes not only the role of the global political economy in
driving development discourses, but also seeks to illustrate the ways in which powerful state
actors, development institutions and international scientific governing bodies shape the meaning
of adaptation to fit within particular development agendas— which often do not address core
vulnerabilities of marginalized communities (Ireland & McKinnon, 2013; Webber, 2013). In
evaluating debates across critical adaptation scholarship, the pluralistic research approach points
this dissertation to investigate two critical theoretical aspects of mainstreaming adaptation, which
include,
1. the political processes which form the subjects of climate change
2. the changing discursive constructions which describe development.
The rationale behind selecting these two conditions is due to selecting a socionatural
framing in which to evaluate critical adaptation literature, specifically following Nightingale
(2018) socionatural contextualization of adaptation as an unstable and constantly changing
process entailing an interplay between interscalar politics and discourses. Within this chapter, I
propose to study these two conditions as the adaptation dialectic, a theoretical framework that
attends to the interplay between political processes of adaptation and development discourses.
This framing complements vulnerability reduction studies critical assessments of how discourses
and power relations “shape the unevenly distributed opportunities and vulnerabilities and the
outcomes associated with climate trends, events, and interventions” (Marino & Ribot, 2012, p.
324). Observing the adaptation dialectic is valuable in that it contributes to critical adaptation
scholars’ theories about how the long-standing conditions of uneven development pervade
through adaptation plans, but they do so differently across developing countries due to how
actors frame climate change problems (Runhaar et al., 2018; Yates, 2012). In particular, their
empirical studies have found that adaptation decision-making relies heavily on the translation of
local social, environmental and economic vulnerabilities into global discourses of adaptation and
development—making for a contested battleground of whose values count in decision-making
(Pasquini et al., 2013). Therefore, in evaluating the literature, and the ways it can attend to the
theoretical concerns within this dissertation, the next three sections will discuss what is known
about these two conditions, how critical scholars treat and define these concerns in their
literature, and what gaps remain moving forward to challenge current adaptation paradigms.
2.4 The political processes which form the subjects of climate change
This section will focus on current critical debates surrounding what kinds of knowledge
influences adaptation decisions, and the subsequent subject-making that occurs. Understanding
the subjects of climate change, meaning who and what is considered vulnerable relative to
socioeconomic development, is one critical inquiry set forth by this dissertation to understand the
uneven power dynamics that drive how economic value is derived from being vulnerable to
climate change. In situating this concern through a pluralism lens, constructivist studies on
climate change decision-making illustrate how the subjects of vulnerability are constantly shaped
and re-shaped between multiple actors across different scales through the use of scientific tools
and knowledge production to situate particular populations and physical environments as
vulnerable (Sovacool et al., 2015; Tanner & Allouche, 2011). Specifically, this dissertation uses
a portion of this work to unpack why certain contradictory socio-political agendas such as
promoting rapid economic growth remains dominant in responses to climate risk (Cannon &
Müller-Mahn, 2010). This work specifically focuses on decision-making, as it is a space where
global and local interests coalesce to form material responses to environmental change that can
affect vulnerability (Hulme, 2008). Decision-making is also a space that demonstrates the “crisis
of objectivity” where scientific certainty of risk and “matters of concern” for economic growth
compete to define environmental crises (Latour, 2004, p. 22)—lending a partial reason as to why
this dissertation sees that extracting economic value from vulnerability is a contested and often,
contradictory process.
Constructivist research has used the pluralistic approach to mainly unpack the
technocratic control of adaptation responses—which can explain how deriving economic value
from climate change vulnerability is used to drive the consumption of climate adaptation
financial products and services. Guiding both of these decision-making processes are scientific
framings of climate change impacts combined with development sector rhetoric on increasing
access to the free market. This has limited interpretations of vulnerability to be a measured
amount of exposure to biophysical hazards and financial capacity to return to ‘normal’ from
disasters— restricting adaptation policies and plans to define vulnerability as the technical and
economic capacities of countries to deal with increasing scales of disasters from weather and
climate-related events (Barrowman & Kumar, 2018; McLaughlin & Dietz, 2008). This is in
contrast to social justice framings of vulnerability which seek to understand what makes people
and places vulnerable to environmental change by examining the circumstances that puts places
and populations at risk from hazard as well as the socio-economic conditions that affect the
ability of individuals and communities to respond to these threats (Boruff & Cutter, 2007, p. 25).
Therefore, it is important to understand how knowledge of risk and hazards is privileged over
other concerns for vulnerability rooted in socio-economic inequalities. For instance, one of the
critical challenges of technocratic climate policies is the significant focus on developing
countries to attain up-to-date climate models and data in order to inform policy (Buschmann &
Oels, 2019). Critical literature has found this focus to shape plans for adaptation that minimize
attention to socio-economic inequality as these efforts deemphasize conflicts over resources and
power dynamics (Anguelovski et al., 2016). It is argued that these impact-driven policies treat
climate change separate from other livelihood stressors in developing including food security,
access to ecological resources and poverty (Ford, 2007).
Using governmentality analysis, Oels (2013) looks at how impacts-based approaches of
risk management are being used to render climate change a governable issue and ‘biopolitical
risk’, explaining that:
Science plays an important role in identifying and legitimating a ‘tolerable’ level of
risk…Traditional risk management assumes that risks can be known, calculated and
controlled on the basis of scientific probability calculations (Aradau and van Munster,
2007, p. 107). One technology of risk reduction is the targeting of risk groups. By
comparing the specific risk of mortality of a particular population subset with the average
risk of mortality, it is possible to identify ‘dangerous’ groups that are particularly
vulnerable. Governmental interventions are then prioritised to these dangerous groups in
order to ‘bring the most unfavourable [distributions of normality] in line with the more
favourable’’ (Foucault, 2007, p. 63). Under this governmentality, a risk is acceptable so
long as it can be repaired (at least in theory) (Aradau and van Munster, 2007, p. 103).
(p.18)
Governmentality analysis provides rich syntheses of how governmental interventions become
justified through impacts-based rationalities. Further, it explains to a certain extent how risk
management renders defining who and what is vulnerable within the confines of measured risk
exposure limits developing country policymakers minimal room to consider socio-economic
inequalities. It is one way to explain how technologies of risk reduction assist in defining who or
what is vulnerable through knowledge and rationalities that justify these definitions. Grove
(2010, 2014) extends Oels work, by commenting on how biopolitical risk is based in
‘resiliencethinking’, which is broadly forcing government and populations to re-consider “what it
means to think about life and the environment” (Grove 2014 p. 205). Grove’s notion would
suggest that there is a larger paradigm shift happening through governmental interventions in the
name of climate resilient development or climate compatible development, where the goal is to
pursue uninterrupted economic growth in a way where climate change impacts can be managed.
Subsequently, since this paradigm shift is guided by impacts-based methods which determine
who and what are the subjects of climate change— it is found to result in climate policies which
prioritize technological interventions over context-specific and historically contingent factors that
contribute to local vulnerability (Ojha et al., 2016).
Although these radical constructivist studies provide one way to use a pluralistic approach
to understand the different ways governments attempt to govern over populations,
Eriksen et al. (2015) critiques this interpretation of decision-making processes in a similar way
Webber (2016) critiqued post-development work for being overly deterministic— it assumes
only one form of power and knowledge exists. Eriksen et al. (2015) instead argue a need to focus
on the effects of power in relation to struggles to order and govern everyday affairs. This
dissertation, while gleaning partially from this radical constructivist work, agrees with Eriksen et
al. (2015) interpretation, and finds it is critical to highlight the political nuances of what makes
someone or something a subject of climate adaptation as it relates to developmental contexts.
In order to extend radical constructivist conversations, this dissertation looks to critical
adaptation work that has studied the characteristics and actors of state responses to integrating
climate adaptation actions into development practices as a means to reduce socioeconomic
vulnerabilities. A key issue that the literature noted were tensions between different
understandings of development and adaptation in countries that attempted to practice
mainstreaming adaptation. As policy mobilities literature would suggest, these tensions are
embedded in the process of adaptation as a traveling idea that is formed in global settings which
is then translated and modified within local political settings (Berrang-Ford et al., 2014; Prince,
2016). But Denton (2010) highlights the more nuanced particularities of this traveling process,
where through mainstreaming adaptation, the translation of adaptation within local development
contexts attempts to blur the lines between adaptation and development. This is a critical issue as
the vagueness of concepts stemming from global definitions cause confusion among local actors
as adaptation solutions appear similar to past development aid projects, causing actors to
question to what extent climate change plays a role in their development—meaning the process
isn’t a direct translation. Denton shows this affects any type of meaningful strategies that can be
implemented to improve the coping capacities of vulnerable communities. Therefore, the role of
whose knowledge is involved in planning is critical as this lack of effective translation is due to
the multiple types of development and local actor involvement in the mainstreaming process.
This is substantiated by Suckall et al.’s (2014) study which found that the politics of this process
underscores why a lack of a cohesive governing framework exists by noting two main conflicts:
first…the gap between scientific knowledge and development practitioners’ needs; and
second … the competing priorities and different knowledge of practitioners who work on
distinct areas within development and climate. (p.39)
Further, through studying adaptation programs in Rwanda, Gebauer and Doevenspeck
(2015) using Latour’s association analysis combined with policy analysis, found that these
tensions between different forms of knowledge produce particular power structures influence
how adaptation is conceived on the ground. Gebauer and Doevenspeck urged that “ the travelling
idea of ACC (adaptation to climate change) plays out in different ways in the Global South, and
suggest a conceptual framework for a better understanding of the many variations of the
adaptation idea in places different from those where the idea emerged” (p.98). These findings
would suggest that creating subjects of climate change is not a clean process to interpret, and
direct connections between technical-economic rationalities and the targets of eventual climate
adaptation actions is not straightforward.
In many ways, the synthesis of ideas presented in this section would suggest that the
politics of climate subject-making provides one way to understand the differential outcomes of
mainstreaming climate adaptation. This dissertation will use these theoretical works to explain
why pro-economic growth rationalities pervade across climate adaptation decisions—specifically
focusing on how developing countries are expected to extract economic value from identification
of their vulnerability as it is a measured way to adapt to climate change, while at the same time,
justifies reliance on external financing and technology from development sector and risk
management actors. Yet, this only defines one part of why climate adaptation stands to benefit
some over others. And as some studies showed, there is a considerable amount of vagueness
which mediate the translation of economic growth rationalities into local climate adaptation
contexts. The next section will review the role of development discourses in mediating the
political relations of subject-making and argue for its treatment as a dynamic process.
2.5 The dynamism of development discourses
Development discourses have played a significant role in shaping conceptualizations of
vulnerability as a technical and economic issue, which has limited the range of adaptation
responses to only address immediate hazards and risks. The previous section emphasized the
negotiation and conflicts involved in shaping the subjects of climate change and the targets of
climate adaptation responses as it moves from global to national and local decision-making
spaces. While this extended framework moves away from a hegemonic understanding of the
interactions between knowledge construction and power, these studies mostly treat discourses as
static and not as changing or dynamic—potentially framing mainstreaming adaptation processes
as deterministic and therefore missing critical aspects of what makes integrating adaptation
actions into development planning vague and ambiguous at times. Instead, this dissertation builds
on these conversations to understand how discourses change throughout these political
interactions occurring across climate adaptation processes. As Weisser et al. (2014) observes:
Discourses are being appropriated and modified locally…[thus] adaptation [research]
needs to take into account a multitude of other potentially important processes, such as
the general concern for environmental problems in a society, and the extent to which
funds are made available to influence economic development or environmental issues.
We therefore maintain that the answer to one of the key questions in current adaptation
research – ‘adaptation to what?’ (Pittock and Jones 2000) – will remain incomplete as
long as one talks only about changing climatic conditions. (p. 113).
The authors point to critically engaging with debates about which problems actors are
locally concerned about, and how these positions interplay with funding institutions which seek
to use their authority to influence positions on defining the relations between climate change and
development. As such, this section will focus on empirical and theoretical critical adaptation
work studying adaptation financing which has accounted for how development discourses are
shaped and re-shaped from global to local scales through climate financing networks and
institutions. Overall, the objective of this section is to establish how social groups and the
environment are identified and defined as vulnerable to climate change in relation to the power
dynamics of development discourses.
Taking the theoretical approach that the discursive aspects of climate change are dynamic,
attends to how even though decisions are informed by scientific findings ( as demonstrated in
section 2.4), defining adaptation is malleable, which is evidenced by the way its definition has
shifted in the past 25 years across Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reports and policy responses from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) (Schipper, 2006). According to Schipper (2006), these definitions shifted
from a mitigation framing called the ‘limitationist view– which prioritized the reduction of
greenhouse gas emissions– to a ‘realist view’–where climate change is recognized as a fact, and
that developing countries are vulnerable and lack the capacity to adapt to these risks (p.84). The
‘realist view’ accommodates adaptation financing measures, which are loans and grants to make
up for the inequalities of this capacity gap across developing countries by improving abilities to
cope with various aspects of climate risks. For example, this includes projects focused on
improving water infrastructure to cope with changes in precipitation or managerial type
responsibilities, such as overseeing commitments to various multilateral environmental
agreements.
Underscoring much of this financing allocation are pro-development discourses, which
situate developing countries as resource scarce, therefore, promoting positions that technology is
needed to extract resources to lessen the effects of environmental change (Kuhl et al., 2020). As
observed by Lemos and Boyd (2010), this framing is connected to traditional development aid
channels which continue to play a dominant role as adaptation funding donors, producing
problem framings of climate change that continue to focus on technical issues rather than issues
of socio-economic equality that are driving societal vulnerability. However, this view is
challenged by Mori et al. (2019), who using empirical analysis, found that the determinants of
fund allocation was beyond rhetoric on the lack of technical-engineering capacities and instead
largely focused on:
absolute economic savings of host countries while low on the level of vulnerability,
poverty, and equal funding per capita in fund allocation (Stadelmann, Persson, Ratajczak-
Juszko, & Michaelowa, 2014). While [funding] attempts to ensure equity between states,
it does not prepare any operationalized definition of particular vulnerability for approval
or prioritize countries from the most vulnerable quantile in practice (Persson & Remling,
2014). (p.368)
This finding suggests if the definition of vulnerability is vague on the global aid level, but
economic growth is clearly defined, then it challenges what kinds of risks are considered valid
underneath the funding’s discursive framework to make a ‘return on investment’– emphasizing
that adaptation research needs to critically engage with inequalities of adaptation beyond
technical planning. There are several emerging strands of critical adaptation work that examines
the ‘adaptation to what’ question beyond hegemonic understandings of development discourses
by situating these issues as a matter of competing discourses and their relations to governance
structures and national political economic issues. For instance, Pascoe et al. (2019) introduce the
concept of discourse hybridity in Papua New Guinea to demonstrate “how discourses may
become dominant, particularly in relation to a state’s positionality, political economy and
interests” (p.84) by comparing dominant discourses found in global climate agreements–
economic growth, technology building and adaptation as a matter of survival–with eventual
country policy frameworks and state actor positions on climate change issues. This entailed
closely examining how ideas from global climate aid funds become institutionalized, namely,
how are global climate dialogues are mainstreamed into existing socio-political agendas through
policy-making and national institutions. This led to findings which suggested that “discourses of
long-term climate science are used strategically and politically in processes of discourse
institutionalization” to further economic growth, and only uptake climate adaptation solutions
that fit within the current political economic structure and not challenge current power dynamics
in country (p.85).
Understanding the dynamism of discourses on the macro-scale adds critical details
concerning identifying the entry points for climate adaptation frameworks into national
development planning. However, focusing only on these macro-scale politics poses the risk of
missing how these discourses are maintained on the day-to-day and to what extent they can
eventually change socio-economic relations. The dynamism of discourses draw attention to
issues of authority on the micro-scale, or actor(s) asserting their positions on particular issues to
promote their own agenda through adaptation financing interventions (Owusu-Daaku, 2018;
Paprocki, 2018). This sub-set of power dynamics forms part of the political dynamics identified in
section 2.4, where the subjects of climate change are a negotiated process. In turn, this process
shapes adaptation implementation and policy design to privilege socio-political agendas that
address only immediate hazards and concerns such as infrastructure maintenance and risk
management, rather than vulnerability reduction measures that improve community livelihoods in
the long-term (Artur & Hilhorst, 2012).
In Manuel-Navarrete and Pelling’s critical adaptation work (2011) which investigates
cities along the Caribbean coast of Mexico, the authors demonstrate how changing development
discourses are connected to the power dynamics of governance structures which are “established
(formal and informal) patterns of relationship amongst the state, market players, civil society, and
individuals” (p. 250). In particular, they argue that political contentions, where different actors of
the governance structure clash over what visions of development are most needed, demonstrate
that significant effort is required to stabilize dominant or hegemonic discourses of tourism
development into pre-existing social relations. This resulted in shifting socio-economic relations
by furthering the economic growth interests of political elites, weakening counter-social
movements and furthering the of disaster risk reduction strategies only focused on the hazards
themselves rather than underlying socio-economic inequalities. Similar findings were made by
Klepp and Chavez-Rodriguez (2018) concerning adaptation interventions in Kiribati, a SIDS in
Oceania, observing socio-economic relations within the country were changing due to “ aid
programmes having been reframed as climate change adaptation programmes, which in turn
often resulted in a shift in responsibility from the Kiribati Government to a more abstract and
ever-changing assemblage associated with climate change effects” (p. 4). In turn, the authors
found this meant that certain national development programs would no longer be considered
fundable under adaptation financing conditions, such as domestic violence programs.
In understanding the restructuring that occurs due to shifting from development aid to adaptation
financing conditionalities, it becomes apparent that the answer to the ‘adaptation to what’
question is that developing countries are adapting their governing and institutional structures to
external financial flows and external technical expertise, rather than adapting to the biophysical
conditions of global environmental change. While this answer provides a description of
adaptation processes, the previous studies mentioned in this section lack a clear articulation of
how economic rationalities of adaptation interventions are enacted on the ground. Barrett (2014)
empirical work in Malawi fills this gap by offering a partial insight as to how global and local
ideas of economic value are connected to creating a demand for adaptation financing services.
The author found that “funding channels rely on local leaders to communicate specific forms of
vulnerability that relate to physical vulnerability rather than socio-economic vulnerability, and
distribution of financing favors those communities with already established aid networks, leaving
the most marginalized and climate vulnerable communities to receive the lease financing”
(Barrett, 2014, p. 131). Further interpretation from Ayers and Dodman would suggest this is
evidence of the broader discourses of mainstreaming adaptation which promote climate
adaptation as an addition to current development plans, rendering climate risk and capacities to
cope with disturbances as something that could be mainstreamed or “ ‘tacked onto’ development
rather than being an integral part of it” (Ayers & Dodman, 2010, p. 131).
2.6 Re-conceptualizing the foundations of vulnerability for transformative adaptation
In re-conceptualizing power relations and discursive foundations of adaptation as a
dialectic, the previous sections build on conversations from what critical authors have termed the
adaptation-as-development paradigm to synthesize ideas about the broader logic that is guiding
mainstreaming adaptation practice in developing countries, and in what ways this logic separates
itself from development of the past. This framework shows the potential to fill in a disconnect
between vulnerability reduction studies and the growth of critical adaptation research focused on
transformation which intends to reconceptualize society-environment relationships that challenge
the power and politics of development discourses (Pelling et al., 2015). Attending to this gap in
some ways supports Eriksen et al. (2021) assertion that:
If stuck within the same development paradigm that is in part generating vulnerability,
interventions aimed at transformation risk [have] even more adverse effects on
marginalised populations than current adaptation, such as through coercive
transformation of people’s livelihoods. Within such a conception of ‘transformation’, the
marginalised become responsible for adapting to a climate change problem created by
others, adding insult to injury. (p. 12)
This claim is supported by a plethora of vulnerability reduction studies (Ribot, 1995;
Adger et al., 2009; Cutter et al., 2003; Ribot, 2014) which state that adaptation research needs to
challenge the paradigm that is underlying why a developing country is susceptible to global
environmental change in the first place, if coping to this change is to be done in a way that does
not repeat the deleterious effects of previous development practices (Dolšak & Prakash, 2018;
Ribot, 2011). But alluding that mainstreaming adaptation is producing the ‘same’ development
paradigm can unintentionally contribute to the perpetuation of underlying vulnerability if one
cannot acknowledge the different socio-economic changes, knowledge and institutions which are
transforming the conditions and outcomes of these responses. Therefore, if adaptation
interventions risk producing or reproducing inequality (Atteridge & Remling, 2018; Juhola et al.,
2016; Pelling & Dill, 2010; Work et al., 2019), it is important to attend to “how climate problems
are framed and by whom, and how they are adopted as authoritative” (Nightingale et al. 2020:
345).
Instead, a rethink of the how the adaptation-as-development paradigm operates through practice,
aligns closer with Ensor et al.(2021) position on adaptation scholarship, where the authors see
that future research should:
highlight the significance of identifying windows of opportunity for investing in political
capabilities and democratizing the goals and values of recovery and redevelopment
(Birkmann et al., 2010; Brundiers & Eakin, 2018). Without this, the transformations that
play out reproduce the political and socio-economic interests of decision-makers,
politicians and local elites, sustaining authority, reinforcing subjectivity and failing to
reflect development and disaster risk priorities and trade-offs that are valued by more
marginal groups within the affected communities. (p. 4)
This would suggest that in order to transform these relations, adaptation research should
use critical framings of adaptation as a tool to identify these opportunities in order to
reconceptualize society-environment relations and challenge hegemonic mainstreaming
adaptation paradigms. In re-thinking mainstreaming adaptation as a critical research tool,
adaptation is situated as a pluralistic process to examine how different knowledge, values and
interests come together to support or challenge adaptation interventions. Several studies have
already demonstrated a similar usage of critical adaptation research to challenge the power
structures and discourses which shape adaptation processes. For instance, Nagoda’s (2015) case
study on Nepal’s National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) used a diagnosis tool to
compare policies on climate adaptation and food security with community perceptions of
vulnerability to understand to what extent policies were reflective of local power dynamics that
were perpetuating household vulnerability. Through this empirical analysis, Nagoda found that
the government focused mostly on minimizing the physical impacts of climate change and made
little effort to challenge the current development paradigm that perpetuated household
vulnerability. The author argued that instead of thinking of adaptation as an object of study, its
critical understandings should also be used as a tool for identifying and addressing the causal
drivers of local vulnerability in order to produce transformative approaches that reduce
vulnerability in the long-term. Similarly, Holler et al. (2020) undertook policy analysis to
understand how the United Nation Development Proframme’s (UNDP) National Adaptation
Programs of Action (NAPA) planning process engaged with households through participatory
activities. The authors wanted to know if this programs practices had any impact on transforming
development as usual practices through engaging communities. Through language coding and
statistical analysis of community engagement impact on policies, Holler et al. found that national
governments made little effort to engage with vulnerable households through adaptation
decision-making processes, and what little engagement they did, did not push for
transformational kinds of development agendas such as social justice reform.
In addition, Tschakert et al. (2016) demonstrates how critical adaptation approaches can
be used as a tool for community engagement that could demonstrate opportunities for more
transformative kinds of changes. Through participatory scenario building work with local
communities in the Eastern Brahmaputra Basin of Assam India, the authors conducted colearning
activities with community members to identify opportunities across different aspects of decision-
making politics that could challenge local authority in some way. The authors used these
engagements to understand how local power relations and development contexts limit
community influence on state authority. The goal of these workshops was to improve community
livelihoods in regard to flood planning and management. As a result, it was found that adaptation
research should play an active role in identifying opportunities for community members to
control the vulnerability narrative in some way that can open spaces for transformational
adaptation.
In being able to unpack the pluralistic aspects of adaptation, there is a case to be made to
study mainstreaming adaptation differently than from adaptation programs of the past. It is
critical to use a pluralistic framing to understand how adaptation actions are continuously
integrated into national development planning as it is exacerbating the already-existing
vulnerabilities of communities. Specifically, mainstreaming has been found to perpetuate a
developing country’s reliance on market mechanisms to pursue economic growth and
technocratic projects without considering how these choices fully affect local community
capacities to cope with climate change (Beckman, 2011; Holler et al., 2020; Nagoda, 2015). As
found through interviews of local interests groups of adaptation projects in the Marshall Islands,
Bordner and Ferguson (2020) are concerned that this process continues to deprive local actors the
ability to define the adaptation process to meet their needs. Similarly, Piggott-Mckellar et al.,
(2020) through interviews with households, found that adaptation projects in Kiribati
demonstrated poor levels of community engagement and omitted critical local development
contexts that drive underlying vulnerabilities of communities such as income and employment
opportunities. In the same way, Barnett observed in Niue that donor interests tend to drive the
priorities under which adaptation financing is spent, omitting involvement of vulnerable
communities in expressing their livelihood needs (Barnett, 2008).
2.7 Conclusion
Mainstreaming adaptation differs from adaptation programs of the past by expanding the
scale at which adaptation actions and external actors should be continuously involved across all
aspects of development planning for developing countries. Because of this deeply interscalar
process, this chapter suggested a pluralistic framing is needed to study the inequalities and
political processes of this particular form of decision-making. Critical adaptation studies have
studied mainstreaming adaptation practice through observing whose decisions count, and the
technical-economic solutions proposed, and why vulnerabilities persist because of these
solutions. In contrast, this chapter suggests a socionatural re-thinking of these observations to
understand how this trajectory of change is unfolding in development practice by “understanding
how climate change governance becomes enrolled in other, ongoing processes of political
contestation and governing such that what is at stake is often not, in fact, climate or even
adaptation (Nightingale, 2017, p. 13). In using a socionatural framework to review critical
adaptation work, this chapter argues a need to study the adaptation dialectic. This dialectic is
concerned with how the political processes which influence who and what is defined as
vulnerable to climate change (subjects) shapes and is shaped by development discourses which
are shifting to accommodate different understandings of environmental problems as it relates to
socio-economic development. The chapter demonstrated a close examination of how the power
dynamics between the macro-politics of climate change and the micro-politics of socio-economic
development shape adaptation needs (See also Nightingale, 2017).
In analyzing climate change subject-making, this chapter illustrated how meaning is
ascribed to climate change affects who and what is considered vulnerable to climate change, and
how particular problem framings become authoritative. Specifically, the way meaning is ascribed
to climate change is typically a top-down driven process of risk management approaches to
identifying climate hazards combined with pro-economic growth ideology where climate
financing or intergovernmental agencies establish the conditions in which to carryout
mainstreaming adaptation in developing countries. In turn, mainstreaming adaptation turns into a
tool to reduce socio-economic vulnerabilities to build a kind of development that is resilient to
the effects of climate change--meaning who and what is vulnerable to climate change is relative
to economic growth. At the same time, these social constructions of climate change vulnerability
are mediated by micro-scale politics in developing countries, where national government agendas
and different subjectivities of environmental problems shape how adaptation policies and
financing are to be used for different economic sectors.
The uneven outcomes of adaptation interventions are significant, but the ways in which
development ideology is becoming embedded within adaptation practice requires a re-imagining
of vulnerability beyond the techno-engineering schemes which are re-enforcing social
inequalities (Dujardin, 2019). In examining the interplay between the politics of climate change
subject-making and the dynamism of development discourses, this chapter found that critical
adaptation research demonstrated that social relations were changing around these mainstreaming
adaptation programs, but these changes occurred in order to maintain status-quo inequalities in
developing countries. This finding is in contrast to past critical adaptation interpretations of
mainstreaming adaptation which tend treat power dynamics as static, missing a critical temporal
aspect to these kinds of adaptation interventions. As such, this chapter demonstrates a further
need to understand how adaptation and development are similar but also different at the same
time. In particular, McGray et al. (2007) have suggested to situate this inquiry as a continuum
where,
the range of adaptation activities may be framed as a continuum of responses to climate
change, from “pure” development activities on the one hand to very explicit adaptation
measures on the other. At one far end of the continuum, the most vulnerability-oriented
adaptation efforts overlap almost completely with traditional development practice,
where activities take little or no account of specific impacts associated with climate
change. (p. 2)
Recognizing how mainstreaming adaptation is a blending of these different activities can
make for more fruitful research on transformational adaptation, specifically concerning why it is
hard to articulate what exactly is the adaptation-as-development paradigm, and why it is
producing or reproducing vulnerability in developing countries. If future research can examine
adaptation integration through studying the different knowledge, values and interests which
become shaped and re-shaped, researchers can illustrate the exact ways adaptation interventions
produce vulnerability across various contexts. Subsequently, critical opportunities emerge to
examine the current adaptation paradigm in a way that engages with how authoritative aspects of
adaptation programs are produced. In this way, researchers can explore other avenues in which to
ask why certain knowledge or values are not included in adaptation decision-making to suggest
more equitable mainstreaming adaptation practices.
CHAPTER THREE
What does it mean to know adaptation needs? A review of critical debates on the politics of
climate resilient development within the context of Caribbean SIDS
Chapter 2 described the pluralistic theoretical approach this dissertation will be using to
unpack the political dynamics and discursive foundations of mainstreaming adaptation practice in
Antigua. In evaluating the critical adaptation literature through a socionatural lens, the chapter
argues for a need to understand the adaptation dialectic or the interplay between the
macropolitics of climate change and the micro-politics of socioeconomic development in order to
explain whose interests and values count in mainstreaming adaptation decision-making. This
chapter established how this dissertation will fill in for a gap in critical adaptation literature to
address the multiple forms of knowledge, institutions and development practices which shape the
integration of adaptation actions into development planning. At the same time, there still remains
a need to critically engage with the mainstreaming adaptation literature in the Caribbean to
establish general understandings of what is known about this practice in the region, and the
theoretical and empirical approaches scholars use within these studies. In this way, chapter 3
builds on chapter 2 to answer the question of how can we enhance ways to account for the power
and politics of development discourses that mediate SIDS responses to global environmental
change?
Chapter 3 will evaluate the state of mainstreaming adaptation literature in the Caribbean
to synthesize ideas about the general macro-politics of climate change specific to the region,
while simultaneously establishing the post-colonial socio-economic development context in
which adaptation actions are being integrated into. It will provide the reader with a general
understanding of the emergence climate resilient development, and its conceptualization as
mainstreaming adaptation practice in the region. The chapter will then define key tensions which
are shaping the interscalar relations between knowledge, institutions and development practice in
order to contextualize regional observations within this dissertation’s case study in Antigua.
Specifically, this chapter will examine how regional scholars study the relations between
adaptation interventions (policies, financial institutions, non-state actors) and national
development planning particular to the Caribbean SIDS context. To establish the general context
under which mainstreaming adaptation programs in the region function, this literature review will
introduce the conceptual frameworks used to study mainstreaming adaptation practice—the risk-
adaptation approach and the critical adaptation approach. The risk-adaptation approach is a
dominant concept guiding mainstreaming adaptation, with a specific focus on resilience-thinking
that advocates for using risk management to identify hazards and protect key economic sectors
from climate risk. This is in contrast to the critical adaptation approach, which uses a political
economic lens to address the drivers underlying socio-economic inequalities that will be
exacerbated through climate change impacts. This chapter uses these two framings to compare
the mainstreaming adaptation literature in the region to understand the different ways of knowing
adaptation needs in the region.
This chapter is formatted as an individual paper. Content analysis was performed across
literature from the region—similar, but not as robust compared to the content analysis performed
later in this dissertation (chapter 5), as this is typically how literature reviews of Caribbean and
general SIDS are presented across the field of risk and hazards (See Robinson 2018; Robinson
and Wren 2020). This empirical method helped discern debates across the literature as studies in
the region review varying aspects of adaptation planning, making it hard to delineate debates and
theoretical frameworks without an analysis structure that can qualify conceptual patterns across
the literature. In comparing both sets of literature, two debates were found to be underlying
tensions across Caribbean mainstreaming adaptation research: 1) the post-colonial political
economy as driver of uneven Caribbean SIDS development and climate risk; and 2) the
embeddedness of the development sector in environmental governance. Through these debates,
this chapter argues for a pluralistic approach that has a stronger accounting of the
decisionmaking practices as identified in risk-adaptation research within an analytical framework
of power relations and discourses as found in critical adaptation research.
3.1 Introduction
Caribbean small island developing states (SIDS) are considered among the most
vulnerable nations to climate change impacts that include sea level rise, more frequent and
intense storms and hurricanes, and increasing global temperatures. Simultaneously, Caribbean
SIDS are experiencing rapid environmental degradation, and are highly susceptible to exogenous
shocks from the global economic market due to heavy dependence on outside resources to
sustain economic development (e.g., tourism, development aid, fossil fuels). Global narratives on
how to build resilience to improve these nations’ ability to recover from these different risks were
intensified by recent destruction from Hurricanes Maria (2017), Irma (2017) and Dorian (2019)
that produced catastrophic economic and infrastructural damage throughout the region. In
particular, the cost of damages from these Hurricanes far exceed the financial resources of
Caribbean SIDS—leading regional policymakers to question how they can pursue climate
resilient development or sustain their nations’ economic development in light of more frequent
and intense disasters. At the same time, evaluating solutions to construct a form of climate
resilient development to disaster builds on an established history of incorporating global financial
institutions and actors through planned adaptation interventions across Caribbean SIDS to
intertwine adaptation with development.
Linking climate adaptation with development has been a multi-decade pursuit in the
Caribbean through planned adaptation approaches that integrate climate adaptation into existing
national level development policies, plans and programs. Specifically, mainstreaming adaptation
has been the overarching goal of these efforts, where adaptation actions are to be continuously
integrated across national development planning. These kinds of efforts have been taking place
on the national level for Caribbean SIDS, in cooperation with external development agencies and
climate financing programs, to develop climate policies and build institutional and technical
capacity to cope with hazard and disaster. The main goals are to improve governance
mechanisms that oversee national climate financing flows, scientific knowledge and expertise
(Webber, 2016). These planning efforts have existed as trainings and project initiatives, but
country efforts to implement adaptation as part of national development agendas are relatively
recent (Rhiney & Baptiste, 2019).
Pursuits of climate resilient development have been widely noted to be embedded in
politics or struggles between state governments and climate governance institutions over defining
what counts as adaptation needs (Remling & Persson, 2015; Schipper et al., 2020). Specifically,
these politics occur through the practice of retrofitting global adaptation ideas into national
development needs (Milman & Arsano, 2014). At the same time, an extensive research gap exists
regarding how different theoretical approaches also affect the ways in which adaptation needs are
conceptualized, which in turn shapes how those with a stake in planning practices are to identify
who and what is vulnerable to climate change. Studying these politics of climate resilient
development is especially pertinent to Caribbean SIDS adaptation scholarship, where a large
focus exists on studying the physical effects of climate change and apolitical evaluations of
adaptation programs—leaving more to be known about first, how countries in the region are
attempting to continuously integrate adaptation actions into planning practices which are heavily
influenced by post-colonial development legacies (Barker, 2012; Bishop & Payne, 2012), and
second, what struggles define the emerging and changing relations between Caribbean SIDS state
actors and global climate governance institutions (Baptiste & Rhiney, 2016).
In order to fill this research gap, this chapter will perform a literature review that
examines how regional scholars have characterized plans, policies, actors and programs in
Caribbean SIDS that attempt to implement climate resilient development practices. The literature
review will consist of a systematic content analysis to discern the different theoretical
frameworks used by authors and comparing key debates occurring across the literature. In
synthesizing these comparisons, this review is guided by the question of what does it mean to
know adaptation needs? —referring to how different theoretical frameworks conceptualize
concerns for climate resilient development in the region differently. In engaging with critical
regional debates, the goal of this analysis is to establish other research avenues in which to study
the practices of climate resilient development in a way that can untangle the different knowledge,
values and interests which drive who and what counts in adaptation decision-making.
This chapter is divided into six parts. In section 3.2, there will be a general overview of
how adaptation has emerged as a form of development globally, and for Caribbean SIDS more
specifically. Section 3.3 will describe the methods used to perform a systematic content analysis
of the literature. Section 3.4 will present general results of the literature review which includes
commonly used keywords and key theoretical frameworks used. A critical analysis of key
theoretical debates will follow in section 3.5 which include 1) the post-colonial political
economy as driver of uneven Caribbean SIDS development and climate risk; and 2) the
embeddedness of the development sector in environmental governance. Section 3.6 will discuss
the meaning of the debates within the context of what does it mean to know adaptation needs--
establishing a rationale for pursuing a pluralistic research agenda to unpack the different
complexities and struggles in defining and practicing climate resilient development. A conclusion
will be presented in section 3.7 that discusses implications of findings and directions for future
research
3.2 The Pursuit of Integrating Adaptation with Development
This section provides a general overview of mainstreaming adaptation efforts relative to
the intergovernmental agencies and financial institutions which have established the conditions
for its integration across Caribbean SIDS. The goal of this background is to describe
mainstreaming adaptation decision-making as an interscalar decision-making process. At the
same time, the section emphasizes the expanded role of external institutions and actors in
national development planning for Caribbean SIDS. Both of these conditions underly the key
debates found across Caribbean SIDS mainstreaming adaptation literature to be discussed in
section 3.3-3.5.
3.2.1 The Global Emergence of mainstreaming adaptation
Forming linkages between adaptation and development has been a longstanding agenda
within global responses to climate change. These linkages are based on the recognition that
unsustainable development is the cause of climate change, and therefore development trajectories
shape vulnerability to climate change impacts (Huq & Ayers, 2008). Global discourses contend
that responses to climate risk should take into account sustainable development, where social,
economic and environmental problems of countries should be addressed in a way that reduces
poverty and improves livelihoods of the population by decreasing their overall vulnerability
(Huq et al., 2003). In this way, the development context affects a country’s adaptive capacity or
ability to cope with climate change related hazards, where the social, ecological and economic
problems of developing countries have been framed as a source of their acute vulnerability to
climate risk—and subsequently interventions are needed to increase their adaptive capacity
(Mcgray et al., 2007).
Following the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third
Assessment Report that called for adaptation to be a priority, questions started to emerge about
what kinds of country attributes should count as adaptive capacity, and how can adaptation be
integrated into existing sustainable development planning (Schipper, 2006, p. 87). Subsequently,
negotiations and proceedings under the UN policy making body for climate action, the United
Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), called for the need to increase the adaptive
capacity of developing countries to increase their access to “economic, ecological, social and
human resources including institutional structures, decision-making processes, information and
public awareness “ (Huq et al., 2006, p. 13). In this way, the term mainstreaming played a critical
role in defining how climate adaptation policies were to be integrated into existing national
development plans and programs (Huq et al., 2005; Smit & Wandel, 2006). This created a
discourse that rationalized the need for resources, including financing and development programs
to play dominant roles in administering and funding policy driven approaches in developing
countries. Specifically, the UNFCCC oversees three funds for financing adaptation policies in
developing countries, the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Fund, the Adaptation Fund (AF),
and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF). In addition, the UNFCCC has two programs that
oversee the integration of climate change into development policies, including the National
Communications and National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs) (Huq & Reid, 2004).
Under mainstreaming, the UNFCCC interprets adaptation as an addition to a country’s
existing development planning through technology transfer, financing, expertise and institutional
capacity building (Khan et al., 2019; Lesnikowski et al., 2017). Scholars critique that this views
adaptation as an outcome, instead of a process that is intertwined with a country’s development
trajectories that are contributing to underlying vulnerability (Barrett, 2013; Barrowman &
Kumar, 2018; Dupuis & Knoepfel, 2013). The critique is based on observations that this
approach pursues policies that rely on market-based rationales that prioritize the protection and
management of economic growth, and does not take into account the role of the political
economy as contributing to the uneven impacts of climate change (Brown, 2011; Eriksen &
O’Brien, 2007).
3.2.2 Mainstreaming Adaptation with SIDS Development
Intertwining adaptation with national development planning has been a longstanding
climate change agenda item identified by SIDS. They played a critical role in pushing adaptation
to be a part of UNFCCC negotiations and funding, and as part of the overall sustainable
development agenda (Hoad, 2016). In particular, SIDS have been strongly pushing for a
vulnerability reduction approach to mainstreaming due to their already sensitive development
contexts that place them in a position to experience the greatest loss and damages from climate
change as these nations are highly vulnerable to economic fluctuations and will be among the
first to experience climate change impacts (e.g., sea-level rise, increasing frequency of storms)
(Wallbott, 2014).
Scholarship focusing on mainstreaming adaptation in SIDS has noted that policies
implemented thus far pay minimal attention to vulnerability reduction. For instance, it has been
observed that many SIDS governments have taken the adaptation approach to mainstreaming
where pre-existing development contexts are not addressed (Baldacchino, 2018). The main
critique has been that development institutions have placed economic growth as the main priority
in mainstreaming adaptation interventions for SIDS, undermining other underlying factors that
contribute to their vulnerability (Barnett and Waters 2016). In this way, SIDS policymakers
found mainstreaming adaptation to be an appropriate strategy if not directed by external
development agencies, and a process that should be tailored to their development context
(Robinson, 2019b).
3.2.3 Mainstreaming Adaptation across Caribbean SIDS
Caribbean SIDS have been recognized as being extremely active in adaptation planning
(Thomas et al., 2019). Climate change has been promoted as a development agenda for the past
20 years through workshops and trainings focused on mainstreaming practices (Rhiney &
Baptiste, 2019). Specifically, these initiatives have focused on building institutional capacity to
integrate climate change risk and hazards into development planning, relying on public
awareness, exchanging knowledge and identifying vulnerable economic sectors across Caribbean
SIDS (Parker, 2002). Table 3.1 displays the different adaptation planning projects across
Caribbean community (CARICOM) States and their respective funding and implementing
entities.
Table 3.1: Adaptation Planning programs across CARICOM (Caribbean Community Climate
Change Centre, 2020).
Project Funding
Entity
Implementing
Entity
Years
Active
Goals
The Caribbean
Planning for
Adaptation to
Climate Change
(CPACC)
the Global
Environmental
Facility (GEF)
The World Bank 1997-
2001
Build capacity for
CARICOM to cope
with impacts of
sealevel rise through
adaptation planning,
vulnerability
assessments and
technical capacity
building
Adaptation to
Climate Change
in
the Caribbean
(ACCC)
The World
Bank
The World Bank 2001-
2004
Building on CPACC,
extending adaptation
planning efforts,
technical and
institutional capacity
building and public
awareness
Mainstreaming
Adaptation
Climate Change
(MACC)
the Global
Environmental
Facility (GEF)
The World Bank 2001-
2004
Building on CPACC
and ACCC, building
capacity for
CARICOM
countries
to integrate
adaptation strategies
into sustainable
development
agendas
Special Program
on adaptation to
climate change
(SPACC)
the Global
Environmental
Facility (GEF)
The World Bank 2007-
2011
Pilot projects that
integrate adaptation
into management of
terrestrial and
marine resources
and land degradation
to inform future
sustainable
development
policies
Pilot Program for
Climate
Resilience
(PPCR)
Inter-
American
Development
Bank
Climate Investment
Fund (CIF)
2008present Enhancing financial
and institutional
capacity to
incorporate climate
resilience into
regional and national
development
policies and
planning
EU Global
Climate Change
Alliance and
iLand Resilience
(EU-GCCA) or
(OECS/GCCA
SLM/CCA)
European
Union
Organization of
Eastern Caribbean
States (OECS)
2011-
2015
Build capacity to
integrating climate
adaptation into land
management
through pilot
projects on adapting
physical
infrastructure and
ecosystems
Small Island
Developing States
Sustainable
Energy Initiative
(SIDS DOCK)
The UNDP,
World Bank,
AOSIS, the
Government
of Denmark
Energy Sector
Management
Assistance Program
(ESMAP)
2012-
2016
Provide institutional
framing to create a
sustainable energy
sector across
CARICOM states by
increasing access to
financing, technical
expertise and
technology
Regional Planning
for Climate
Compatible
Development in
the Region
the Caribbean
Community
Climate
Change Center
(CCCCC)
CCCCC, Climate
Development and
Knowledge
Network,
Acclimtise—
Department for
International
Development(DFID)
2009-
2021
An implementation
plan to mainstream
adaptation into
different vulnerable
sectors across
CARICOM
As illustrated in the table, there are many non-state actors involved in building the
capacity of Caribbean SIDS to intertwine adaptation into development policies and planning.
Capacity building implemented by these programs typically involves building legislative, policy
and planning frameworks to integrate adaptation across different sectors (e.g., agriculture,
tourism, water, electricity, economic development) and providing expertise and technical
capacity for hazards and risk monitoring. All of the programs in the region are externally funded
with the exception of the Regional Planning for Climate Compatible Development in the Region
program funded by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC), however
implementation of the project is through external development agencies such as the Department
for International Development (DFID). Most programs follow an adaptation approach to
development, where the goal is to protect vulnerable sectors by identifying specific climate risk
and hazards, and performing interventions as policies, programs, plans and/or funding needed to
reduce those risks.
All of the programs seek to build sustainable development for CARICOM countries, but
methods to integrate adaptation into development policies, planning and programs differ based
on sectors a funding entity wants to address. The different external agencies involved in
adaptation planning programs in the Caribbean brings up questions about disproportionate
distribution of knowledge, where outside expertise is framed as a requirement for policy and
program implementation, undermining reliance on local knowledge of risk and hazards (Rhiney,
2015).
3.3 Methods
Articles for this study were collected from online academic search engines including
JSTOR, EBSCO and web of science. Search queries included the following: Caribbean AND
climat* AND chang* AND adapt* AND develop* AND SIDS; Caribbean AND climat* AND
chang* AND adapt* AND sustainable AND SIDS; Caribbean AND climat* AND chang* AND
adapt* AND mainstream* AND SIDS; Caribbean AND climat* AND chang* AND adapt* AND
national AND SIDS. The search yielded 181 articles in total (JSTOR: 123, EBSCO: 29, web of
science :29). All articles were reviewed to see if they covered the Caribbean region and were
relevant to planned adaptation. After review, 147 articles were removed for not meeting the
criteria, leaving 34 articles for analysis.
In order to compare content across articles, this study used computer aided text word
analysis software to perform keyword analysis and word collocation. Keyword analysis examines
the most frequently used words in a document group. Content analysis software, ATLAS.ti, was
used to produce a list of the most frequently used keywords. The keywords were then used in a
word collocation analysis, which examines the most significant co-occurring context words with
each keyword to examine phrasing patterns. The strength of the relationship between keywords
and context words was measured using different forms of statistical analysis. This study used R-
based word concordance software, CasualConc, to perform z-score analysis to examine the
strength between the keywords and context words as lexical units across articles. The lexical
units are used to study how word phrases are chosen and used within the text (Pollach, 2012).
Both keyword analysis and word collocation stem from corpus linguistics which looks how
language is used across different contexts through large amounts of text, which is applicable in
this case as I want to examine how the risk-adaptation approach framed planned adaptation
compares to the critical adaptation studies in the Caribbean.
The top ten most frequently used keywords in the literature were chosen based on word
count and if it pertained to aspects related to adaptation planning, governance or development. A
stop word list was applied during keyword analysis to remove commonly occurring nouns such a
“the” “and” and “is”. A z-score was calculated for each keyword, in which the list would be
sorted from largest to smallest z-score to determine the top five significant co-occurring words.
The top five co-occurring words for each keyword were qualitatively chosen to remove
commonly occurring nouns as those mentioned in the keyword analysis. After performing zscore
analysis on each of the keywords, the statistically significant co-occurring words with each
keyword were used as lexical units to create codes of significantly used phrases. These codes
were used to autocode the text in ATLAS.ti, which assigned codes to sentences containing the
word phrases of the keyword plus context word.
The lines of text listed under each code were examined to determine larger groupings or
themes the text would fall under. Codes were place in larger groupings under governance,
development or adaptation planning action topics. These three general groupings were chosen
due to general review of background literature on planned adaptation, in which a majority of this
field of study’s scope was limited to characterizing governance, development and adaptation
planning action aspects of adaptation planning. After this general grouping, further examination
followed to determine general themes across the three topics where ten general themes were
identified. After performing an additional comparison, this grouping was decreased to seven
themes as it was found some themes could be lumped together due to their commonality. Each
theme includes the word phrasings found when combining keyword and word collocation
analysis.
Following the creation of the seven themes, each article was examined to categorize the
methods and conceptual frameworks used and any exemplary quotes that related to any of the
seven themes. Close attention was paid to the conceptual approaches used to study planned
adaptation in the Caribbean as different theoretical framings affect the kinds of methods, findings
and interpretations determined by authors. Articles were then grouped by conceptual approach
within ATLAS.ti to determine patterns of studying planned adaptation within and across
conceptual approaches. This was to determine the aspects of adaptation planned that was
included and omitted from particular ways of studying planned adaptation. Code occurrences in
each document were compared to determine the differences and similarities in topics covered by
the literature.
3.4 Results
3.4.1 Overview
The top 10 keywords from the reviewed literature are displayed in ascending order as
shown in table 3.2. The first seven top keywords are focused on national scale practices and
processes of adaptation planning that include policymaking and national governments. The last
four words of the word frequency count represent the characteristics of Caribbean SIDS that
include the current state of environment, global climate projections, vulnerability to climate
change and local knowledge and attitudes. The z-scores were calculated to determine each
keyword’s most significant co-occurring context words, which is also displayed in table 3.2,
listed in ascending order.
Table 3.2: Top 10 most frequent keywords and their statistically significant word collocates used
within Caribbean adaptation planning articles.
Keyword Word Count Significant Word collocates
Climate 5914 change, finance, impacts, reduced
Adaptation 4650
planning, barriers, mitigation, financing,
strategies
Planning 1715
process, stages, national, spatial,
regulations
Policy 1705
makers, coherence, senior, science,
formulation
Development 1674
sustainable, resilience, goals, assistance,
priorities
National 1125
level, governments, regional,
communications, plans
Environmental 926
global, science, security, degradation,
governance
Global 859
facility, warming, change, temperature,
models
Vulnerability 821
assessments, impacts, reducing, risk,
climate
Local 768
communities, knowledge, government,
level, adaptation
The keywords and their word collocates were used to auto code the articles containing the
following formula, keyword: word collocate (e.g., policy: coherence). A total of 50 codes were
created to index sentences that contained the words of the code. The codes were grounded in
3,994 quotes or sentences. The quotes of each code were examined to determine whether they
addressed governance, development, and/or adaptation planning actions in their text. Codes that
fit under the governance topic had to refer to characterizations about the relationships between
development actors, communities, state government, and other institutional actors. The
development topic included codes that referred to agendas or pathways to improve social
wellbeing, the economy, and/or the environment. The adaptation planning actions included codes
that referred to actions or conditions that pertain to reducing climate risk and promoting some
aspects of social change. After organization of the codes under the topics in table 2, further
examination was made to determine common themes occurring across the topics. There were six
themes extrapolated from qualitative analysis of the quotes for each code. Each theme relates to
specific aspects of the relationships between governance, development and adaptation planning
actions. Literature was then reviewed to categorize the conceptual framework and methods used
across the chosen articles. There are two kinds of conceptual frameworks used across the articles:
the risk adaptation framework and critical adaptation framework. Table 3.3 displays the article
typology along with their related theoretical framings, assumptions, methods and number of
articles that fell under each typology. Analysis of the articles revealed each type of framework
used by the authors rely upon particular kinds of theoretical frameworks that affects the kinds of
assumptions and methods chosen to study adaptation planning.
Table 3.3: Typology of conceptual frameworks used across adaptation planning studies in the
Caribbean
Conceptual
Framework
Theoretical
Framings
Assumptions Methods Articles Reviewed
Riskadaptation • Socio-
ecological
Identifies
climate risk
• Content
analysis
(Benjamin, 2010;
Bizikova et al., 2015,
• systems
(Resilience/P an
archy) Network
analysis
and
appropriate
short and
long-term
measures to
deal with risk
•
•
•
•
Surveys
Statistical
modeling
Interviews
Workshop
s
2018; Holdschlag &
Ratter, 2016; Jaja et al.,
2017; Klock & Nunn,
2019; Mycoo, 2018;
Pittman et al., 2015;
Robinson & Wren,
2020;
Robinson &
Gilfillan,
2017; Robinson, 2017,
2018a, 2019b;
Scobie,
2016, 2018; Taylor et
al.,
2016; Thomas, 2019;
Thomas & Benjamin,
2018)
Critical
adaptation
•
•
•
•
Biopolitics
Climate justice
Postdevelopment
Social
construction of
adaptation
Examines the
power
relations
between
development
agendas,
adaptation
planning
actions and
governance
actors
•
•
•
•
•
Content
analysis
Surveys
Interviews
Literature
review
Discourse
analysis
(Bishop & Payne,
2012;
Butcher-Gollach,
2015;
Dellarue, 2018; Dulal,
Shah, & Ahmad,
2009;
Grove, 2010; Popke,
Curtis, & Gamble, 2016;
Rhiney, 2015; Rhiney
&
Baptiste, 2019;
Saxena,
Qui, & Robinson,
2018;
Sealey-Huggins,
2017)
More than half of the articles used the risk-adaptation framework (n=24).While they did
not use the phrase risk-adaptation explicitly, all of the studies falling under this category hold the
assumption that identification of the climate risk and vulnerability will lead to suggestions of
what would be the appropriate short and long-term adaptation measures to mediate the impacts of
climate change. There were general discussions of adaptation planning measures in relation to
overall climate risks for Caribbean SIDS including sea-level rise, increasing frequency and
intensity of hurricanes, sea-level rise, rising sea surface temperatures (Benjamin, 2010; Mycoo,
2018; Robinson, 2017; Taylor et al., 2016; Thomas & Benjamin, 2018). However, most
discussions centered on adaptation planning being a response to the political economic
vulnerability of Caribbean SIDS, including management of loss and damages (Thomas &
Benjamin, 2018), development priorities (Robinson 2019), globalization and development
(Holdschlag & Ratter, 2016), lack of climate policies and policy coherence (Bizikova et al.,
2018; Scobie, 2016), and environmental governance (Pittman et al., 2015; Scobie, 2018). The
responses to the political economic vulnerability of Caribbean SIDS were mostly discussed
within the context of climate or adaptation financing (Mycoo, 2018; Robinson, 2018b, 2019a; S.
ann Robinson & Dornan, 2017; Scobie, 2016, 2018), cooperation between national and regional
social institutions (Bizikova et al., 2018; Robinson & Gilfillan, 2017), and national level
adaptation processes and actors (Robinson, 2018b);Robinson, 2018a).
Less than half of the articles (n=10) used critical adaptation frameworks to examine
planned adaptation in Caribbean SIDS. These studies relied upon theoretically driven kinds of
analyses within the post-structuralist framing of adaptation where positions based on values,
knowledge and ideas (discourses) affect how humans relate to and understand climate risk. This
work contends that these social constructions ultimately affect the actions chosen as adaptation
responses, which has critical implications for Caribbean SIDS current and future vulnerabilities.
This framework is used to examine how these discourses mediate the power relations between
development agendas, adaptation planning actions and governance actors. Common theoretical
frameworks include biopolitics (Grove, 2010), climate justice (Dulal et al. 2009; Popke et al.,
2016; Rhiney, 2015), post-development critiques (Bishop & Payne, 2012; Rhiney & Baptiste,
2019; Sealey-Huggins, 2017) and discourses of vulnerability and adaptation (Butcher-Gollach,
2015; Howard, 2018; Saxena et al., 2018).
3.5 Key Mainstreaming Adaptation Debates
This section will compare and contrast literature across three key debates which define
tensions over how adaptation should be situated within current development planning practice.
3.5.1 The post-colonial political economy as driver of uneven Caribbean SIDS development and
climate risk
Both sets of literature acknowledged that current political economic tensions affected
Caribbean SIDS ability to respond to climate change, by mainly producing uneven access to
finances to pursue adaptation in comparison to wealthier countries of the Global North. Bishop
and Payne (2012) emphasize that the region is disproportionately affected by climate change due
to preceding development pathways, which have placed countries with high levels of debt
burden– limiting policymakers to consider short-term strategies for adaptation planning that
primarily consider forms of economic growth to lessen the debt burden and continue their access
to the free market. These post-colonial dynamics extend to global climate governance where:
a complex range of inequalities exists between those countries considered to be rich and
those considered to be poorer, those which are heavy emitters and those which are not,
and, of course, those with some relative capacity to respond and others – such as the
islands of the Caribbean …[where] the emergent climate change regime that has built up
at the global level over the past several years has struggled to cope with the extent of
these inequalities”. (Bishop and Payne 2012, p. 1537)
The existing post-colonial political economic relations act as a key vulnerability for
Caribbean SIDS, and the continuation of these dynamics through mainstreaming adaptation
programs is acknowledged as a critical issue (Robinson and Carlson 2021) where these
interscalar conflicts shape how these development-as-usual ideologies become embedded in
adaptation practice. Specifically, Robinson (2018) provided in-depth interviews with Caribbean
policymakers, finding that “Most interviewees agreed that financing and organisational capacity
are two of the major limits to adaptation in Caribbean SIDS” (2018. P. 88). These adaptation
needs can be seen as a result of the political-economic situation Caribbean SIDS are currently in
and continues the perpetuation of post-colonial dynamics through economic driven
decisionmaking processes with Robinson (2018) finding that:
“Interviewees acknowledged that access to international adaptation financing is a
challenge for Caribbean SIDS and argued that most countries required
support…Considering the demand side of adaptation financing in SIDS, ‘Programs and
policies are driven by financing’ (ID14). (p. 90-91)
Despite this acknowledgement, there remains a chasm between how risk-adaptation and
critical adaptation scholars characterize the post-colonial political economy within the context of
ameliorating the tensions between adaptation financing and post-colonial development. A key
tension between these works is using resilience-thinking as an objective framework to integrate
adaptation actions into development planning versus critiquing the impact of resilience-thinking
on adaptation responses and development practices. The use of resilience-thinking as an
objective framework by risk-adaptation scholars focused on planning as the optimal pathway in
which to integrate adaptation into already uneven development processes (Thomas 2019).
Specifically, these conversations occurred within the context of aligning the conditions of climate
financing programs and with national governance mechanisms (Robinson 2018). For instance,
Scobie’s (2016, 2018) works argue for climate policy integration across Caribbean SIDS as:
an important pillar of good governance and as a concept is both a normative value and a
process of governing (Jordan and Lenschow, 2010)…but is difficult to put into practice
[as] developing states’ policy makers have the difficult task to balance short term
domestic priorities with long term development goals…Policy integration favours the
efficient use of resources, it fosters synergies, builds on complementarities between
different policy initiatives, reduces overlaps and integrates sectorial objectives (Lafferty
and Hovden, 2003) in processes that require the consistent involvement of both private
and public actors at all stages from policy conception to implementation and monitoring.
(2018, p. 17)
Scobie’s use of the policy integration framework (a subset of mainstreaming adaptation),
while arguing for the addressing of local needs and being eligible for adaptation financing
conditions, focuses on countries planning within the confines of already-existing political
economic conditions (e.g., expanding the presence of external actors, continuing access on
external financing), rather than challenging the power dynamics which are influencing the
uneven distribution of financing and exacerbating loss and damages from climate change
(Benjamin, 2010). This partially stems from the rather technical framings of resilience-thinking
which tend to argue for external interventions such as policy to keep socio-ecological and
political-economic relations operating without disturbance from disasters or economic
fluctuations (Grove, 2014). However, using resilience-thinking to frame climate problems within
the adaptation financing context runs into contradictions with its own impacts-based ideology.
While performing a descriptive content analysis comparing Caribbean SIDS adaptation policies
and hazard and vulnerability assessments, Thomas et al. (2019) found there was minimal
connection between hazard, impact or vulnerability assessments (HIVRA) and adaptation plans,
illustrating that:
the linkage between the use of HIVRA and identification of adaptation options is very
broad. The narratives that are given provide justification for adaptation in general to take
place but do not provide justification for why particular adaptation options were
chosen… These results are perplexing given that in a review of UNFCCC National
Communications from Caribbean SIDS, Robinson (2018a) finds that vulnerability and
impact assessments were the most commonly reported adaptation action. (p. 2021-2022)
The authors posit that adaptation financing conditions are contributing to these planning
gaps, where multilateral financing conditions form the confines under what does and does not
count as a climate change problem. This fits in with the broader observation of this content
analysis which found that while there was acknowledgement of these tensions (See Robinson &
Gilfillan, 2017; Robinson, 2017), there was a lack of explanation as to why these tensions existed
beyond a description of the climate governance process. In contrast, critical adaptation research
in the region attempted to use the post-colonial political economy as a lens in which to explain
why the resilience-thinking approach is changing policy, governing and managing structures
across Caribbean SIDS in a way that is furthering their marginalization. Specifically, these works
focused on understanding how climate financing and climate governance institutions promote
discourses (worldviews that promote a particular position on issues) through authority (actors
asserting their particular position on issues over other positions). Popke et al. (2016) used the
climate justice lens to understand how resilience, adaptation and vulnerability each act as
discourses where particular climate initiatives in the region have:
shaped the regional discourse about how to measure and respond to climate change and
its impacts, and have also funneled significant resources toward particular sectors and
projects in many Caribbean countries. (p. 71)
In their study, the authors conducted fieldwork in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, to
examine an agricultural community’s access to technological innovations to adapt to changing
climate conditions. Popke et al. illustrate the influence of global institutional frameworks on
climate adaptation—finding that discourses specifically based in resilience-thinking (referred to
as risk-adaptation framework in their study) formed dominant power structures that constrained
local adaptation decision-making. Constraints included maintaining underlying political
economic conditions that favored providing adaptation resources to formal farming networks
over small farmers—perpetuating small farmers’ lack of access to social and financial capital,
and lack of access to knowledge, information and technology to cope with changing
environmental conditions. Through this finding, Popke et al. propose that scholars who study
mainstreaming adaptation need to question “who is able to pursue different avenues of adaption
and who is not, and what are the causes and consequences of this difference?” (p.78) as there is a
lack of focus from the Caribbean policy community on vulnerability, where inequalities and
political-economic factors marginalize particular social groups—missing a critical dynamic
affecting Caribbean SIDS responses to currents hazards and climate change impacts (p.79).
In general, critical adaptation scholars in the region argue for a vulnerability reduction
approach to ameliorate the tensions between adaptation and post-colonial development
trajectories. Specifically, Rhiney and Baptiste (2019) argue that current regional research misses:
an explicit focus and recognition of the inherent vulnerabilities and inequities that are
linked to the type of development pathways and macro-economic models that have been
pursued by regional states over the years… So, while the region’s ongoing call for high
income nations to shoulder the brunt of the responsibility for combating climate change is
indeed valid and necessary, one cannot overlook the long-held and underlying structural
and systemic issues that must also be addressed if the Caribbean is to achieve genuinely
sustainable and transformative forms of adaptation. (p. 73)
Through this content analysis, there was a demonstrated need for Caribbean
mainstreaming research to focus increased attention on why adaptation integration interventions
in the region stand to benefit some over others, and critically engage with the already-existing
socio-economic relations with climate governance mechanisms are acting to shape
marginalization of particular social groups. Further emphasis on this condition is found in Rhiney
(2015) work, which explains that vulnerability needs to play a greater role in adaptation planning
to take into account how practices of development produce and reproduce vulnerability of
marginalized communities in Caribbean SIDS. Similarly, Dulal et al. (2009) argues that
adaptation policies in the Caribbean should include vulnerability reduction in a way that accounts
for resource access, unemployment and poverty.
3.5.2 The embeddedness of the development sector in environmental governance
As comparisons between the risk-adaptation and critical adaptation literature in the
previous section would suggest, the integration of adaptation financing, policies and actors is
playing an increased role in development planning for Caribbean SIDS. On the broader scale,
this integration can be framed as a perpetuation of post-colonial political economic dynamics.
This section will delve further into what mainstreaming adaptation entails on the decisionmaking
process level—specifically comparing how authors have discussed the integration of external
actors into environmental governance for Caribbean SIDS.
Through analyzing the descriptive work of the risk-adaptation literature and the
explanatory discussions found within critical adaptation literature, a nuanced picture of
mainstreaming adaptation emerged where the integration of global climate policies and financing
conditions in Caribbean SIDS relied on shaping understandings or knowledge of climate change,
development and planning practices. It was apparent through this review that the risk-adaptation
framework supported the integration of external actors and processes into planning practices
through knowledge building activities that built relationships between local and global
viewpoints, and political will for adaptation planning. One defining work in this aspect comes
from Holdschlag and Ratter (2015) study on building environmental knowledge systems in
Grenada and the Bahamas. Their study is framed under the theory of socio-ecological systems
(SES), where the ability to adapt to climate risk is contingent upon building resilience between
humans and the physical environment—reducing adaptive capacity to qualities that can be
measured and categorized. Generally, SES literature on adaptation tends to focus on building
institutional capacity by illustrating that knowledge is critical to forming multi-scale relationships
within governance structures to promote resilience between humans and the physical
environment. In this study, the lack of adaptive capacity and ability to respond to disasters in
these two countries is framed as a knowledge deficit issue which to fix requires: collaborative
production of new knowledge through various agents and their communication is important
(Tengö et al., 2014). Necessary integration, for instance of local knowledge and science, can be
furthered by creating connective organizational forms, e.g. to foster trust and responsibility,
communal learning, vertical and horizontal cooperation, or goal-finding and conflict solution. (p.
83)
Similarly, Robinson (2019) uses resilience-thinking under the SES framework to
understand categorical aspects of mainstreaming adaptation through identification of barriers and
drivers at the institutional and policymaking level to align current global climate financing
requirements, national political-economic conditions, and policymaker needs. Bizikova et al.
(2015, 2018) works also used a resilience-thinking approach to problematize mainstreaming
adaptation in the Caribbean as one of lacking knowledge and technology to manage their
environmental resources. While these approaches focus on technical knowledge gaps within
Caribbean SIDS, it also unintentionally justifies a top-down decision-making structure for
adaptation as produced by climate financing mechanisms—involving an extended integration of
global political interests from development institutions and climate financing agencies in
determining the adaptation needs of the region over national and local interests. Cretney
(2014)argues that these resilience framings wrongfully equate human systems with ecological
systems, and thus interpretations are void of social dynamics such as the power and politics
which generate vulnerability. Therefore, these interpretations do not account for how resilience is
a “manifestation of power …[and] thus, discussions of resilience mask the ways in which
resilience discourses reinforce and create hegemonic political and ideological discourses”
(p.632). This finding is substantiated by regional critical adaptation scholars such as
SealeyHuggins (2017), who contends that mainstreaming adaptation is demonstrative of how
histories of imperialism have created a path dependence in the region, where because funding is
contingent upon demonstrating specific kinds of physical vulnerabilities, there is a further
production of inequalities across Caribbean SIDS where these rules and frameworks compete
with other national priorities such as high debt burdens caused by dependence on development
aid.
Grove’s (2010) work on biopolitics and resilience is one of the more in-depth works
studying how external agencies embed themselves in national development planning by
investigating the connection between dangerous climate change narratives and the influx of
insurance and risk management as adaptation strategies across Caribbean SIDS. Biopolitics
studies how populations and the environment are rendered subjects whose conduct can be
governed through particular forms of governmental order. Most significantly, Grove found that:
discourses on dangerous climate change construct similar narratives of environmental
security through articulating geographical imaginations of development with a
fundamentally different set of assumptions about the nature of security. These
assumptions position disaster risk, rather than environmental change, as the fundamental
problem for environmental security, thus creating a new series of problematisations in
which climate change becomes legible as a security issue. (p.544-545)
Indeed, while Grove rightfully contends that climate change discourses from external
institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations try to instill a form of order and
communicate that climate change is a condition that can be controlled, there is a critical gap that
remains in the analysis of this discourse translation across development practice. As argued in
chapter 2 of this dissertation, biopolitical interpretations of mainstreaming adaptation assume
only one type of knowledge and power dynamic to exist. On the contrary, the process should be
viewed relationally to account for the involvement of other interest groups in the mainstreaming
process.
Saxena et al.’s (2018) study is one of the few critical adaptation studies in the Caribbean
that re-conceptualizes the relations between climate change science, policymakers and adaptation
as an interplay between institutions, knowledge production and development planning practices.
The authors studied how Caribbean technical experts interpreted resilience within the context of
limiting global temperature rise to the 1.5 C target as committed through the Paris Climate
Agreement. Through performing interviews using the assumption that knowledge of climate
change is based on how actors ascribe meaning to the phenomena, the authors found that the
different interpretations of resilience were complicating “communication and action across
various actors working at different scales and in different local contexts” (p.157). At the same
time, concepts endemic to the resilience conversation was “not domestic to the Caribbean” —
meaning these ideas did not stem from Caribbean actor interests—and instead “experts’
knowledge of transformation [was] shaped by interactions between the Caribbean region and the
international community, particularly international donors and funding agencies such as the
GCF” (p. 157).
Synthesizing ideas across the regional risk-adaptation and critical adaptation scholarship
directs adaptation researchers to critically question whose interests count in the knowledge
production processes of mainstreaming adaptation. At the same time, the intense focus by both
sets of literature on macro-scale climate politics, misses the micro-scale conflicts on islands (with
the exception of Popke et al. 2016) specifically involving development planning and how
knowledge is produced around adaptation integration. But this chapter’s synthesis doesn’t
suggest mainstreaming research should entirely transition to a micro-political view of
mainstreaming. Instead, there is a need to engage with both the macro and micro-political side of
mainstreaming adaptation to account for the finer connections that shape the inequalities across
this decision-making process. The next section will discuss what this research approach means
for the region within the context of broader socionatural scholarship that attempts to account for
this interscalar dynamic.
3.6 Discussion: Expanding the ways of knowing Caribbean SIDS adaptation needs
The previous sections demonstrated how the crux of conflict in integrating adaptation
actions into development planning across Caribbean SIDS is embedded in the macro-politics of
the climate policy process and the subsequent translation of these processes into national scale
planning decisions. For instance, even though the works between Robinson (2019) and Saxena et
al. (2018) use disparate theoretical frameworks, they do similarly find that a point of contention
lies within different interest group conceptualizations of adaptation needs. As Saxena et al.’s
(2018) work on Caribbean technical experts suggested, these needs are flexible as knowledge
about what it means to adapt is continually being shaped by interest groups’ interactions with the
different institutions involved in mainstreaming (e.g., climate financing institutions). In
rethinking mainstreaming adaptation as a constantly changing political process, this discussion
section asks what does it mean to know adaptation needs?
Risk-adaptation scholars contend that adaptation needs of Caribbean SIDS are predicated
by their physical and social disposition as islands competing in a global political economy for
economic growth with limited ecological and financial resources. At the same time, this
explanation falls short of explaining why then when adaptation financing is attempting to be
distributed across these countries, there is a point of conflict between what national policymakers
view as their country’s needs, versus what external institutions view as Caribbean SIDS
adaptation needs. Critical adaptation scholars in the region contend adaptation needs of
Caribbean SIDS predominantly concern underlying vulnerabilities such as socio-economic
factors that contributed to their exposure to climate risk in the first place. While these studies rely
on using discourse analysis to explain how pro-development ideology becomes embedded in
adaptation practice, these interpretations tend to produce a deterministic view of mainstreaming
adaptation processes, where Caribbean SIDS accept climate financing conditions without
contestation. Instead, to combine the viewpoints from both sets of literatures, this section
suggests that these politics should be situated relationally. Taking a relational understanding of
politics stems from socionatural realities of climate change scholarship which assumes that one’s
understanding of climate change issues are embedded within the socio-political struggles which
determine its meaning and connection to individuals (Castree & Braun, 2001). In this way, while
adaptation is intended to be a response to the biophysical conditions which are causing risk, it is
also a socio-political process which is re-shaping the way individuals and institutions view and
manage environmental resources. Socionatural theorists assume politics to be:
underpinned by a relational and emergent conceptualization [of] power (Dean, 2013),
meaning that evident inequalities and other dimensions of social stratification are
performed in everyday interactions. Social, political and economic differences, therefore,
are the outcome of the exercise of power rather than indications of power held (or not)
(Allen, 2014; Butler, 1990, 1997). A relational conceptualization of power draws
attention to the contradictory outcomes of the practices, relationships and contexts
wherein power is exercised (Butler, 1997; Dean, 2013; Foucault, 1995), rather than trying
to pin down whether power is a positive or negative force. (Nightingale, 2017, p. 13)
Nightingale’s assertion highlights an important aspect of the regional mainstreaming
adaptation work, where much focus is on the outcomes of uneven power dynamics rather than
understanding how these power dynamics operate through the mainstreaming process. Instead,
based on Nightingale’s interpretation, it would be more appropriate then to use a fine lens to
unpack the interscalar socio-political struggles which define the subjects of climate change and
shape the meaning of adaptation. Therefore, assuming that power and politics shape adaptation
needs points to a research agenda that explores, “the consequences of these struggles over
authority to understand which institutions and people are authorized (Ribot, 2003), how, and
what kinds of priorities for coping with climate change emerge as a result” (Nightingale, 2017, p.
13). As discussed in chapters 1 and 2, this dissertation uptakes this pluralistic research agenda
referred to as the adaptation dialectic to fill in for a gap in critical adaptation literature which
lacks a dialectical understanding of macro-climate and micro-development politics. In reviewing
the Caribbean SIDS mainstreaming adaptation literature, it has also become apparent that this
dissertation will fill in for a need to combine risk-adaptation findings on the realities of climate
policymaking with the critical adaptation findings on the post-colonial ideological structures that
shape planning practices.
If this dissertation is to uptake a pluralistic or adaptation dialectic research agenda to
study mainstreaming adaptation in Antigua, a Caribbean SIDS, it would imply that different
perspectives should be compared to understand who is shaping adaptation needs, and how do
these needs become planning priorities. Socionatural studies on mainstreaming adaptation in
other parts of the world demonstrate how a pluralistic research agenda can be used to critically
engage with the multiple political processes which shape adaptation outcomes. For instance,
Zegwaard et al. (2015)specifically focus on the ontological politics of mainstreaming adaptation
in the Netherlands to argue that decision-making processes are dynamic, where decision-makers
are simultaneously influenced by the increased flooding in their area and by climate change
discourses. These two interacting dynamics were found to shape the meaning of floods from a
short-term to long-term issue. But it is important to note, this research takes place in a Global
North country, which misses critical political economic dynamics found in the Global South that
ascribe particular meaning and practices to economic development and adaptation. In this way,
Dujardin and Dendonker (2019)research takes place in a development context using
ActorNetwork Theory (ANT) to offer a more nuanced approach to understanding the multiple
ways in which different management actors seek to order t coastal environment in Bohol,
Philippines through techno-scientific categorization of climate change and community
participatory planning. Although these two studies are not representative of all socionatural
literature on mainstreaming, they provide examples of how Caribbean SIDS scholarship could
use a pluralistic approach to delve into the complexities of socio-environmental struggles,
knowledge production and planning practices within a mainstreaming adaptation context.
3.7 Conclusion
This chapter performed a content analysis of mainstreaming adaptation literature across
Caribbean SIDS to discern key debates concerning the conceptualization of development
planning within the context of climate adaptation. Due to the over two-decade history of
mainstreaming adaptation practices in the region, this chapter contended that it is critical to
attend to what actions have been taken in the region thus far, and what have been the subsequent
impacts. In reviewing the literature, scholarship was separated based on the risk-adaptation
approach or the critical adaptation approach. The literature was concerned with two key debates,
1) the post-colonial political economy as driver of uneven Caribbean SIDS development and
climate risk, and 2) the embeddedness of the development sector in environmental governance.
Through synthesizing ideas about these debates, this chapter deduced that the risk-adaptation
research provides much needed empirical information to make connections between the
micropolitics of planning and the macro-politics of climate change policymaking. In particular,
there is a clear accounting and categorization of macroscale processes (e.g., institutions,
financing mechanisms, national policymakers, multilateral agreements), which is needed, but
their interpretations typically remain apolitical (i.e., minimal attempt to challenge dominant
ideological structures that are driving SIDS vulnerability). Although critical adaptation research
in the Caribbean does challenge what it means to mainstream adaptation by interrogating the
language and ideas which shape adaptation needs—many studies lack an effective engagement
with the practices of policymaking.
Comparing these research perspectives provided an impetus for this chapter to question
what it means to know adaptation needs. In tracing the climate financing institutions and the
conditions required to receive financing for Caribbean SIDS, it became apparent that individual
perspectives on what is needed for adaptation is shaped by a post-colonial political economic
ideology which has effectively changed the physical environments of SIDS in a way that has
produced physical vulnerability, and at the same time, is a discourse that situates these physical
vulnerabilities as a lack of financial and technical resources to promote climate resilient
development (pursue economic growth in a way that is climate-proof). In this way, this chapter
contends that in order to understand who stands to benefit from mainstreaming adaptation, it is
critical to re-frame understandings of hegemonic development ideologies and adaptation
planning practices as a dialectic between micro-scale socio-environmental struggles and
macroscale climate policy processes.
A dialectical understanding of mainstreaming adaptation forms the basis for future
research to pursue a pluralistic research agenda. Specifically, this chapter proposes the goal of
this agenda is to understand how the perspectives of different interest groups forms power
dynamics between each other that affect adaptation needs. In many ways, this research approach
contributes to the goal of critical adaptation work to transition away from the post-colonial
development paradigm which is simultaneously increasing physical hazards and limiting the
scope of conceivable solutions within the adaptation and development planning decision-making
space. As Nightingale (2017) proposes, adaptation is a trajectory of change that unfolds in
practice where “understanding how climate change governance becomes enrolled in other,
ongoing processes of political contestation and governing such that what is at stake is often not,
in fact, climate or even adaptation” (P. 13). I assert that based on reviewing Caribbean SIDS
mainstreaming adaptation literature, what is most often at stake is control over and access to
environmental resources for livelihood needs—making environmental governance a critical pivot
point for connecting development needs with climate adaptation actions.
Finally, critical approaches to understanding mainstreaming adaptation in the Caribbean is
a small but growing field of study. The formal implementation of climate adaptation actions into
development planning is increasing across the region, requiring scholars to significantly question
in what ways this practice is re-producing post-colonial development ideology (Baptiste &
Rhiney, 2016; Bishop & Payne, 2012), and in what ways is it different from development aid
structures of the past which promote top-down decision-making structures (Grove, 2010).
Therefore, it is essential to introduce a refined pluralistic lens that captures the emergence,
conceptualization and organization of ideas and planning structures surrounding mainstreaming.
This literature review highlights that articulating the socio-political struggles which shape how
adaptation is integrated into development planning, necessitates an understanding of the relations
which shape these struggles and subsequent meaning of climate change, adaptation, and
development. In examining these relations, this dissertation can form new avenues in which to
understand how different ideologies and practices determine whose values and interests count in
adaptation decisions.
CHAPTER FOUR
Reframing climate adaptation within local development discourses: merging grounded
theory and mixed methods to evaluate the political dynamics of mainstreaming adaptation
processes
Chapters 2 and 3 define a pluralistic research agenda to study mainstreaming adaptation
in the Caribbean SIDS context. Chapter 3 established that mainstreaming adaptation in Caribbean
SIDS is a contested socio-political process over whose perspectives of adaptation needs count in
the decision-making process. The chapter suggested in order to investigate these dynamics, a
pluralistic research agenda could uncover the different knowledge, institutions and practices
which shape the trajectories of mainstreaming. Similar to chapter 2, chapter 3 suggests a
socionatural approach of adaptation can formulate a theoretical framing which attempts to
investigate the macro and micro scale struggles which shape how social groups and the
environment are identified as vulnerable to climate change in relation to the power dynamics of
development discourses. The goal of this theoretical framework is to synthesize ideas about the
broader paradigm which driving national adaptation plans in Antigua. Chapter 4 continues a
discussion of this theoretical framework by detailing the methodology this dissertation will be
using to inquire how can we enhance ways to account for the power and politics of development
discourses that mediate SIDS responses to global environmental change?
Chapter 4 introduces a research design based in Nightingale’s (2016) description of an
epistemological pluralism agenda for adaptation research. This agenda posits that using different
data sources can provide different interpretations of adaptation processes, which critically focus
on the relations between discourses and material practices. This approach is based in the
argument that knowledge of biophysical change cannot be separated from the socio-political
dynamics which shape an individual’s relations to that change, in which Nightingale therefore
asserts:
adaptation is not a response to biophysical change per se, but rather is understood as
networks of regulation, actors and social relations that mediate people’s interactions with
the biophysical environment. Politics, in the form of both state regulation (laws, policies
and programmes), and in the form of contestations over those regulations, have been
shown to shape how environmental issues unfold. (2016: p.43)
In this way, this chapter demonstrates how this dissertation will evaluate mainstreaming
adaptation through the programs and policies implemented in Antigua, and at the same time,
evaluate the negotiation and struggles surrounding the meaning of these interventions. This
entails evaluating different aspects of mainstreaming adaptation that is grounded in the positions
of different interest groups involved in the process. Grounded theory is used to guide data
collection and interpretation under the auspices of generating a theory from data about the social
world to explain how a social phenomenon works in context. It is of particular utility to a
pluralistic research agenda, as it produces sets of related concepts that explains problems
grounded in participant’s positionalities and knowledge. In order to carry out data collection
under grounded theory, this chapter will also describe the use of mixed methods from feminist
geographic research that has investigated the power dynamics, discourses and local contexts that
shape socio-natural relations.
4.1 Introduction
Integrating or mainstreaming adaptation practices into national development planning is
becoming a dominant approach for developing countries to reduce economic exposure to climate
(Ayers et al., 2014; Scoville-Simonds et al., 2020). Climate adaptation practices are typically
dominated by impacts-based methodologies, where identification of climate problems begin with
assessing risk and hazard. This methodological entry point is reflected by a majority of
adaptation science research, where assessments of the material impacts from climate change are
seen as the initial step to identifying adaptation strategies and climate policies (Oels, 2013; Popke
et al., 2016; Schipper, 2007). This is in contrast to critical adaptation work which sees
vulnerability reduction as a methodological starting point, whereby the researcher begins their
investigation into the underlying political dynamics of economic development that drive
socioeconomic inequality —exploring avenues in which to transform the current development
paradigm in a way that improves livelihoods and capacities to cope with environmental change
(Sherman et al., 2016). Critical climate adaptation research has demonstrated the utility of
empirical case studies in extending understandings of the discursive aspects of local development
(e.g., different actor positions on livelihood enhancement and economic growth, agendas
regulating financial and ecological resources) to the material practices of adaptation as a way to
elucidate why these practices produce an uneven distribution of benefits (Ireland & McKinnon,
2013; Klepp & Chavez-Rodriguez, 2018; Lemos & Boyd, 2010). However, most of the
methodological approaches used by these studies rely on qualitative methodologies, and rarely
entail mixing quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the different ways we can
understand how these power relations frame social and biophysical conditions for adaptation
interventions (Eriksen et al., 2015).
Attending to the discursive and material aspects of climate adaptation requires a mixed
method research design—combining quantitative and qualitative forms of inquiry —that try to
evaluate the ways conflicts, or socio-political dynamics, connect to biophysical processes. More
recent research exploring the research practices of critical adaptation work has called for ‘plural
epistemologies and hybrid methodologies’ that account for the socionatural relations or
interactions between complex biophysical processes and dynamic socio-political conditions
(Nightingale et al., 2020). According to Nightingale (2016), this entails a research design that
starts from a point of understanding how socio-political relations affect human framings of
biophysical changes. For instance, the development sector continues to play a dominant role in
establishing the conditions under which adaptation financing is received (e.g., who and what is
considered vulnerable to climate change)—producing adaptation practices and discourses (values
and biases) that limit the kinds of knowledge that are considered legitimate by local political
authorities and use economic growth framings to determine which biophysical processes are
climate risks (Alam et al., 2011; Tschakert et al., 2016). Therefore, these political dynamics
reflect power relations that restrict solutions to technological and economic framings of climate
change problems rather than addressing the underlying vulnerabilities posed by development as
affecting population livelihoods (Mikulewicz & Taylor, 2020; Ojha et al., 2016).
This chapter will present a research design that seeks to situate climate adaptation within
local development discourses by merging grounded theory with mixed methods. The goal of this
work is to investigate how adaptation programs are conceptualized and implemented on the
ground, how are the meanings of risk negotiated and contested, and in what ways do these
adaptation politics affect vulnerability and capacities to cope with environmental change. Using
grounded theory allows this research to create a theory that is grounded in constant comparisons
between multiple phases of data collection. Through using mixed methods guided by grounded
theory techniques, different datasets that describe social and environmental conditions in case
study communities are analyzed concurrently, and their results are triangulated or compared in
order to explain the political drivers of adaptation decision making. The goals of this
methodology are to identify the drivers behind decisions within Antigua’s mainstreaming
adaptation practices and explain how these drivers affect community vulnerability and capacities
to cope with environmental change.
The chapter will be organized as follows. The next section will provide a brief overview
of how climate adaptation can be understood as a socionatural process by reviewing
poststructural geographic work on the discursive and material effects of environmental change.
This will be followed by a section describing my rationale for merging grounded theory
techniques with mixed methods using critical adaptation work on grounded theory and feminist
geographic scholarship on mixed methods research. A description of the study site follows,
documenting the significance of Antigua in performing this kind of study. The proceeding
sections will document the research design process by describing the data collection, data
analysis and merging results phases. This is followed by a discussion of the research design,
including a discussion on methodological limitations and ethical concerns. Finally, a conclusion
section will summarize major points of the research design and ways forward for future research.
4.2 Framing climate adaptation as a socionatural process
Critical social science studies on climate adaptation and development has illustrated the
dynamic ways in which biophysical processes are shaped by conflicts over conceptualizations of
climate change vulnerability by different actors at different scales (See Barnett, 2020;
MillsNovoa & Liverman, 2019; Oculi & Stephenson, 2018). This research has used analysis
from the starting point that conflicts or political dynamics are embedded in development
discourses (i.e., sets of ideas and biases produced by global political interests that exert power
and control over development practices) which shape state actor positionalities on the direction
of climate policy agendas. These agendas have been found to specifically privilege technological
and economic framings of climate change over social justice framings (See for example
Bertilsson & Thörn, 2020; Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling, 2015; Marino & Ribot, 2012; Nagoda,
2015; ScovilleSimonds et al., 2020). Subsequently, it is understood that political dynamics can
shape the biophysical impacts of global environmental change processes by regulating the use of
financial and environmental resources, which produce the socio-economic inequalities that drive
uneven vulnerability (Dujardin, 2019).
As Popke (2016) argues, these dynamics demonstrate the ‘hybrid character of
environmental change’, where observations of biophysical changes cannot be separated from the
ways socio-political processes shape our understandings or knowledge of these conditions. This
argument stems from long-standing post-structural geographic work on the socionatural realities
of climate change, which argues against analytical inquiries that produce a binary separation
between the physical environment and social political conditions (See for example Forsyth, 2014;
Ribot 1995). In this way, considering this relationship requires a reframing of current approaches
to climate adaptation scholarship, where scholars need to consider research designs that cross
different theories and methods in order to elucidate the various drivers of adaptation agendas that
shape vulnerability in the form of access to resources and exposure to hazard (Ensor et al., 2019).
This can open for ways to reduce vulnerability and increase capacities to cope with
environmental change that challenge current development discourses (Gillard et al., 2016;
Scoones, 2016).
4.3 Merging grounded theory with mixed methods
Unpacking the hybrid character of climate adaptation entails a research design that is
embedded in understanding the process from multiple perspectives. As such, this dissertation will
use grounded theory as a methodological starting point, as adaptation studies are beginning to use
this approach to ground their inquiries about power and politics within actual data sources (See
(Eisenack et al., 2012; Moser et al., 2019; Raymond & Robinson, 2013; Wolf et al., 2010).
Grounded theory approaches follow that theory emerges from recursive analysis of data where
there is constant comparison between datasets and analyses, with each informing the other, which
guides further data collection and analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). It involves a form of open-
ended data collection which helps researchers analyze these datasets “for a rich description of the
phenomenon as well as for themes to develop a detailed rendering of the complexity of the
phenomenon, leading to new questions and personal interpretations made by the inquirers”
(Creswell et al., 2003, p. 174). As Moser et al. argues, a grounded theory approach can facilitate
theory building that describes and explains the drivers behind adaptation decisions from the
perspective of local framings—accounting for challenges that a theoretically driven or objective
based analysis might have overlooked (Moser et al., 2019). However, a major critique of
grounded theory studies has been the lack of using mixed methods or mixing qualitative and
quantitative forms of data collection and analysis to expand the different framings of social
phenomena (Walsh, 2015).
In order to fill this methodological gap, this dissertation extends grounded theory
techniques to include feminist geographic approaches that have explored hybrid geographies.
This work pushes the bounds of using mixed methods by combining critical social theory with
more quantitative and spatial analytical forms of inquiry (See Pavlovskaya, 2002; Knigge &
Cope, 2006; Nightingale, 2003; Whatmore, 2002). This research has explored the use of mixed
methods to investigate power, discourses and local contexts in shaping socio-natural relations
(Kwan, 2004). Specifically, these mixed methods unpack the hybrid character of climate
adaptation by using case studies to document the complex relationships between social, cultural
and biophysical phenomena. Some exemplar studies combine grounded theory with spatial
analyses including examining the interrelationship between urbanization, sweetgrass basket
making and rural gentrification (Hurley et al., 2008), local use of community gardens and vacant
spaces (Knigge & Cope, 2006), public housing issues and gentrification (Walker & Hanchette,
2015), and comparing aerial photos and oral histories to document the different interpretations of
environmental change (Nightingale, 2003). These methods relied on the open-data approach of
grounded theory to collect various kinds of ethnographic, spatial and quantitative forms of data in
order to identify themes and connections between ethnographic and GIS datasets, and provide
nuanced insights about social relations (Pavlovskaya, 2006).
In this way, this dissertation considers the different ways we can investigate the position
of different actors on development and environmental change, and in what ways does this affect
adaptation responses. For instance, through interviewing policymakers, I wanted to understand
the language patterns they used to communicate adaptation plans, what kinds of knowledge did
they have about biophysical processes, and in what ways do we see the influence of global
development agendas in their understanding of environmental change processes. In parallel, I
wanted to evaluate community member understandings about environmental change in their area,
their perspectives on what makes them vulnerable, and how do their understandings align or
differ from policymaker framings. At the same time, I wanted to observe the kinds of
environmental changes taking place in the adaptation project areas through using GIS and remote
sensing to understand what kinds of environmental changes, human and non-human caused, were
included in adaptation plans. In this way, in order to understand the hybrid character of climate
adaptation in Antigua, I needed to consider the different kinds of methods that could be used to
understand how different framings of environmental change affect human responses and coping
strategies (Goldman et al., 2016).
4.4 Study Site
Antigua is a two-island nation state with its sister island Barbuda, where a large
concentration of communities and economic activity are located in low-lying coastal zones prone
to frequent flooding. Over 87% of the country’s economy is devoted to the service industry
(tourism, yachting and financing). While close to 23.2% of the country’s labor force is employed
by the service industry, which is a seasonal form of employment, over 60% of country
employment is served by the agricultural industry, clerical support, school occupation,
professionals, crafts and trades, technical professionals (Antigua and Barbuda Statistics Division,
2021).
Due to the portion of the labor force and economy devoted to services, and the exposure
of these services to disasters such as hurricanes, the United Nations Environment Program has
deemed Antigua one of the most vulnerable nations to climate change (UN-ECLAC, 2011). At
the same time, because the country is classified as a high-income country, they do have access to
same kinds of development assistance as those countries classified as low-income countries
(Robinson & Carlson, 2021). Therefore, climate adaptation and access for financing a high stakes
endeavor for the country’s development.
Antigua is one of the first countries in the Caribbean to pursue a full functioning
mainstreaming adaptation model called the Climate Change Transformation Program that is
further entrenching the development sector into day to day decision making, while other
countries in the region are in the planning stages. Mainstreaming adaptation in Antigua required
legislative and department changes in order to provide a form of governance that oversees
financial flows and expertise from these outside donors. The Government of Antigua and
Barbuda introduced the Environmental Protection and Management Act (EPMA 2015) to
establish the Department of Environment and its roles in governance over climate adaptation
activities and management of environmental resources. The Sustainable Island Resource Fund
(SIRF) was introduced through this legislation where its rules and structure were defined—
paving way for this policy to be legally enforced. These actions established the institutional
mechanisms for mainstreaming adaptation into existing development plans.
At the same time, these plans are being instituted within an already-politicized landscape,
where socio-environmental struggles have produced contested meanings over the value and
meaning of wetland ecosystems. This is due to the fact that the Climate Change Transformation
Program is being piloted for communities within two heavily degraded watersheds, the
Mckinnon’s watershed and the Christian Valley watershed. The communities of these two
watersheds will be closely studied by this dissertation to understand how the mainstreaming
program is being operationalized, while at the same time, evaluate how these communities are
deemed by the nation to be in need of adaptation. Due to the limited availability of census data,
general assertions are made by this dissertation concerning the description of the communities in
these two areas. Within Mckinnon’s watershed, a recent income assessment found that most low-
income residents live along the waterway stemming from Mckinnon’s Pond (Figure 4.1). A
majority of the buildings in the watershed are residential, with the exception of the tourism area
in the northwest part of the watershed, and an oil refinery in the eastern part of watershed.
Figure 4.1: Mckinnon’s Watershed field site. Map by author.
The spatial layout of the Christian Valley watershed is rather different than Mckinnon’s
(Figure 4.2). There is a tourism enclave on the eastern coast of the watershed which includes
resorts, residential development and golf courses. Sitting behind this enclave are multiple
communities, with areas of heavy residential occupation. Both watersheds have experienced
significant forms of alterations to the landscape, which have mostly included extensive removal
of mangrove and wetland ecosystems for various forms of tourism and industrial development.
Risk and hazards literature has heavily documented the conflicts between communities in these
watersheds and the national government over the destruction of these areas (See (Baldwin, 2000;
de Albuquerque, 1991; de Albuquerque & McElroy, 1994; de Albuquerque & Mcelroy, 1995;
Henry, 1985; Lewsey et al., 2004; Lorah, 1995; Mcelroy & de Albuquerque, 1997).
Figure 4.2: Christian Valley watershed field site. Map by author.
Both areas are known to flood frequently from rainstorms, and provide a majority of the
country’s water supply, much climate financing is being promoted within these areas to resolve
this issue. A majority of local climate adaptation efforts by GEF and the Adaptation Fund have
been concentrated in the Mckinnon’s watershed area, focusing on how to implement SIRF
financing mechanisms for household adaptation loans, improving drainage to minimize flooding,
and building of disaster shelters for hurricanes. The coastal communities of Christian Valley on
the Western coast are also incorporated as part of these projects to expand household access to
the SIRF for energy efficiency technology and other adaptation measures.
Utilizing mixed methods helps this research evaluate the conditions of mainstreaming
adaptation responses in Antigua by unpacking the power and politics of this process. These
include accounting for the following, 1) climate policies and adaptation plans are based on
impacts-based methods to identify physical hazards and risk, 2) global political interests play a
significant role in defining the conditions for allocation of adaptation financing and 3) local
development practices by government have affected local environmental changes and community
vulnerability. Using the mainstreaming adaptation program in Antigua as a case study allowed
me the chance to evaluate these adaptation interventions as they were happening on the ground
from the perspectives of different actors at different scales.
4.5 Research Design
A concurrent triangulation research design was used to combine quantitative and
qualitative modes of data collection and analysis. Figure 4.3 provides an overview of how I
employed this design by following Creswell et al. 2012 format by listing the procedure and
products of each phase of the project including data collection, data analysis and merging results.
Collection of qualitative (QUAL) and quantitative (QUAN) data was conducted simultaneously.
Analysis of data was done in a manner where the quantitative data informed part of the
qualitative data analysis to provide an empirical way to account for language patterns that could
lend insight into values and biases affecting positions on adaptation responses. One of the
challenges in collecting this data simultaneously was determining significant sets of findings.
Most commonly, a quantitative dataset based on word statistics would indicate a significant idea
being communicated through a set of documents, but when I would delve deeper into the textual
content, and compare it alongside the qualitative dataset, the finding would be deemed not as
significant.
Comparison of results using triangulation helped overcome some of these struggles ss it
relies on identifying critical comparisons to evaluate the commonalities and differences between
datasets. Although this type of research design is typically used by researchers to offset the
weaknesses of one method with the strengths of another method (Creswell, 2013), I used this
design to create a pluralistic methodology that incorporates different ways we can understand the
local context of adaptation decision-making. The goal of this approach was to use one method to
inform another method, which required much tie and close attention to detail to evaluate
significant sets of patterns occurring across the datasets. The following sections will detail each
phase of the research design.
Figure 4.3: Project design utilizing a concurrent triangulation approach. Graphic by author.
4.6 Data collection
Multiple methods were needed to capture the political dynamics of mainstreaming
adaptation at different scales and from different perspectives. Specifically, I wanted to account
for the discourses that attempted to connect local social and environmental conditions to climate
risk, household responses to government efforts, and what effects these politics of adaptation had
on shaping community vulnerability. Table 4.1 summarizes the multiple methods of data
collection that were used to ground this research study.
Table 4.1: A summary of data collection methods.
Method Description Data Volume
Semi-structured interviews Households in Mckinnons and
Christian Valley watersheds,
policymakers, NGO and
private sector
64 participants
Participant observation Community meeting in
Christian Valley/field visits
3 extended site visits
Corpus linguistics Quantified language patterns
across three corpus groups,
•Vulnerability and
hazard assessments
•Adaptation plans
•National Action Plans
139 documents
Content analysis Local and regional news
media articles on climate
adaptation. Photos and videos
documenting local adaptation
efforts from the perspective of
climate financing agencies
and government. And my field
visit photos documenting
environmental conditions in
communities.
152 media articles
295 photos
21 videos w/ transcription
GIS visualization techniques Georeferenced and digitized
historical aerials to record
environmental changes.
Georeferenced maps and
recorded from interviews
flood risk areas of Christian
Valley and Mckinnon’s
Watershed. Included shapefiles
of land use (residential,
tourism, commercial) and
environmental characteristics
(e.g., ponds, water drainage,
mangrove extent)
21 aerials, 60 shapefiles
4.6.1 Semi-structured Interviews
First, my ethnographic methods relied primarily on semi-structured interviews,
attendance at community meetings on climate adaptation and document collection of
newspapers, reports, and multimedia sources. Semi-structured interviews were conducted during
June – July 2017 and April 2019. Interviews conducted from June 2017 to April 2019 focused on
policymakers and government decision makers involved in development and environmental
management. Interviews in April 2019 focused on household views on climate and environment
issues, and continuing interviews with policymakers and government about climate adaptation
actions (financing, policy and practice). A total of 64 interviews were conducted. This included a
total of 46 homeowners in the Christian Valley and Mckinnon’s watershed area, 14 Antigua and
Barbuda policymakers and government decision-makers, 2 NGO representatives, and 2 private
sector actors. Interviews were conducted in person only. During interviews, notes from
discussion were written in notebook, and transcribed on the computer for record keeping and to
use with computer aided qualitative analysis software. No interview was conducted without
confirming the verbal informed consent of the participant. Each interview with participants
occurred in one single interview session. Interviews with homeowners and private sector actors
occurred in outdoor public spaces such as food and fruit markets, and outdoor community
centers. Interviews with policymakers, government decision-makers, and NGO members
occurred in Antigua and Barbuda government offices. Snowball sampling was used for the
policymaker and government decision-maker interviews based on referrals from government
contacts. Convenience sampling (sampling data from a group of people that are easily accessible,
for instance in public spaces, and if they were outside of their homes) was used for homeowner
interviews, which depended on convenient accessibility and proximity of public spaces within
the neighborhoods of Christian Valley watershed and Mckinnon’s watershed.
The semi-structured interview process consisted of a combination of open-ended and
detailed questions. Interviews with Antigua and Barbuda policymakers and governmental
decision-makers would begin with open-ended questions about their position within government,
and how it relates to climate adaptation (either financial, practice and/or policy). Detailed
questions would follow to gather in-depth data and information about their role, and the
government’s role within climate adaptation actions on the national and community level. For
instance, this would include personal views on management of adaptation and economic
development, issues with establishing sustainable financing for adaptation and supplementary
information to current adaptation efforts not included in publicly available documentation. The
interview would conclude with open-ended questions about what the participants felt were future
challenges and opportunities for the island regarding climate change.
For homeowners, the interviews began with open-ended questions about what they felt
were major environmental issues in their neighborhood. More detailed questions would follow to
gather in-depth data and information about the context of these issues. For instance, this would
include identification of problem actors, government projects adversely affecting them, and/or
their observations of risk and vulnerability related to their livelihoods, well-being and local
physical environment. The interview would conclude with open-ended questions about what
kinds of solutions they felt needed to be implemented by government.
4.6.2 Participant observation and field visits
During Summer 2017 and Spring 2019, field visits were made within the Christian Valley
and Mckinnon’s watershed to document development projects, physical environmental risk (e.g.,
degradation, flooding) and building/construction style. Documentation included taking photos
and writing down notes in a notebook. During these visits I also noted signs that were placed in
areas where adaptation projects were taking place and documented what kinds of physical
interventions I could observe, if any. These signs are used as public communication by the
government to community regarding who is financing the project and for what purpose the
project is serving.
In June 2017, I attended one community meeting on climate adaptation in Antigua at
Bolans Primary school, centrally located in the Christian Valley watershed within the Palm
Beach community. Community members of the Christian Valley watershed and representatives
from local government and adaptation financing NGOs attended. Notes of questions and
discussions were recorded in a notebook during meeting.
4.6.3 Corpus Linguistics
Corpus linguistics studies the nature of language usage within a large body of text known
as a corpus, and investigates different aspects of grammar, discourse structure and other issues
related to textual content (Gregory & Hardie, 2011, p. 297). It relies on computer aided analysis
of large bodies of text, which looks for frequency counts of words or word sequences by
displaying instances of words or phrases as a concordance of each instance of text. Concordance
is the data output of all text matches within a corpus that displays keywords and their co-text
(i.e., words occurring near search term) (Gregory et al., 2015). Within the concordance analysis,
the researcher analyzes keywords in relation to context text through qualitative analysis to draw
conclusions about occurrences (Anthony, 2013).
4.6.3.1 Documents Used
Text is an important part of understanding different actor perspectives on climate adaptation
and development. Multiple sources of text documentation were selected related to vulnerability
(climate, environment, socio-economic), and/or adaptation actions (policies, financial documents,
best practice). These document collections were used to partially understand the discursive
strategies of state and non-state government agencies. In total, 139 documents in these categories
were used for this dissertation. These sources were separated into groups based on their content.
Table 4.2 summarizes the kinds of documentation that were used. These groups were separated
into three categories: adaptation financing, hazard and vulnerability assessments, and national
action plans. Descriptions of each corpus are included below,
1. Adaptation financing documents pertain to text that speaks about establishing the
institutional framework to receive climate funds and plans to prepare the country to
receive financing.
2. Hazard and vulnerability assessments documents were mostly assessments reports
conducted by the government of Antigua and Barbuda, or non-state agencies, or a
combination of both. These assessment documents consisted of background about the
general environment of the island such as country environment profiles, and what types
of risks they face, and who is facing them. These reports include maps showing general
geophysical and environment information, and spatial models of climate or
environmental risk.
3. Action Plans corpus pertaining to reports and trainings including any kind of national
development plans, mainstreaming adaptation plans and other types of rezoning plans.
These plans provided an outlook for what the country intended to do to resolve
socioeconomic and ecological vulnerabilities they identified.
Table 4.2: Summary of the kinds of text materials categorized under each corpus group.
1. Adaptation Financing
(n=69)
2. Hazard and Vulnerability
Assessments (n=40)
3. Action Plans (n=30)
Antigua and Barbuda national
communications on climate
change
Desertification conditions
(report)
Biodiversity plans (reports)
Legislation Climate change risk and
community vulnerability
(reports)
National Action Plans, and
national Physical
Development Plans (reports)
Green Climate Fund materials
(reports, presentations,
website content, proposals,
Watershed management
(reports)
Sustainable cities (meeting
and presentation material)
financials documents)
Global Environment Facility
materials (reports,
presentations, website content,
proposals, financial
documents)
Country environment profiles
(reports)
Financing Resilience of SIDS
(meeting and presentation
material)
Adaptation Fund (reports,
presentations, website content,
proposals, financials
documents)
Academic sources
documenting environmental
degradation and hazards
Sustainable Island Resource
Management Plans (reports)
Sustainable Island Resource
Fund (SIRF) (presentations,
proposals, financial
documents)
Country risk profiles Mainstreaming Adaptation
Planning materials (proposal,
trainings)
4.6.3.2 Keyword Analysis
Keyword analysis entails examining the most frequently used words in a corpus. Initially,
this list can inform the researcher about general language trends. Keyword frequencies can
consist of single word or lexical bundles, where one can examine words lists consisting of two,
three- and four-word clusters using word concordance program. Lexical bundles help examine
how individual keywords are used in context and helps us understand the ways that keywords are
used (Baker, 2004). However, one must use caution when working with keyword analysis. Most
frequently used words in a list alone do not necessarily show a certain word is significant within
the vein of the research question. In addition, a keyword(s) must be examined across corpuses to
provide a more thorough analysis of keywords. For each corpus collection, numeric data in the
form of a keyword frequency table was created through ATLAS.ti. The top 10 words from each
frequency table were selected from the list. The word frequency table shows a count of how
many times the word appears in the text materials. Any words that were in the STOP list in
ATLAS.ti was removed including nouns such as “a”, the” and “then”. In addition, any terms that
looked like they were used in combination such as “climate” and “change” were considered to be
together.
4.6.4 Content Analysis
Photos and videos play another significant part in the ethnographic inquiry of this study.
They provide a visual side to vulnerability discourses, mainly in terms of understanding their
nuances. This is especially critical in the use of materials used to communicate vulnerability to
the public such as maps and imagery. Approximately 214 photos were collected during
ethnographic fieldwork in Mckinnon’s and Christian Valley. Photos depicted styles of homes in
the areas, and any evidence of significant environmental risk. In addition, approximately 81
photos were collected from social media accounts of the government of Antigua and Barbuda
that they distributed as part of adaptation seminars. Content analysis of the photos were
conducted using ATLAS.ti where I coded parts of the photos to compare my documentation of
the field sites with the way institutional actors documented photos of the areas to understand
what is defined as vulnerability. The coding allowed me to organize significant parts of photos
that depict the communities. The analytical memo documentation function in ATLAS.ti allowed
for me to critically reflect on these relationships and keep these syntheses organized by topic.
Specifically, coding of the photos is a way to reflect upon human settlements in spaces where
populations are deemed “most” vulnerable to climate change based on individual knowledge and
positionality. Videos were collected of government public engagement on climate adaptation
issues and community meetings in the watershed areas on climate adaptation, in which ATLAS.ti
was also used to code significant parts of verbal conversations relevant to patterns emerging
across datasets. In addition, 152 news media articles were collected, but 42 articles were chosen
and analyzed through ATLAS.ti out of the search results based on if climate change was
mentioned within the context of adaptation action (financial, policy or practice) on either national
or community scale.
4.6.5 GIS Visualization techniques
The third anchor to this research was creating several maps that explored 1) what
environmental/climate issues my respondents spoke about and where these issues were
occurring, and 2) environmental/climate issues mentioned or illustrated in the formal
mainstreaming adaptation process. Documenting environmental destruction in the coastal
neighborhoods of the Mckinnon’s and Christian Valley watershed areas involved reconstructing
the historic distribution of coastline features, which includes aspects of the physical environment
(mangroves, coastline change, water courses) and development trends (resorts, housing
settlements). This work entailed digitizing historical aerials, review of academic articles and
reports on the local environment. Historical aerials of the Mckinnons and Christian Valley
watershed were copied with permission from the National Museum of Antigua and Barbuda.
Aerials were scanned using a high-resolution scanner and organized by area in computer folders.
Aerials selected were taken by the British Royal Air Force during the following years: 1941,
1958, 1966 and 1968. This search yielded 542 aerials that were scanned and categorized. Out of
the 542 aerials digitized, 21 aerials were selected that captured imagery of the Christian Valley
and Mckinnon’s watershed and organized into folders.
In order to collect data from the aerials, the images had to be georeferenced and their
features digitized within ArcMap. The aerials were georeferenced to a modern-day aerial of
Antigua. It is important to note, since a significant amount of the coastal features changed since
1941 compared to today, I tried my best to use georeferenced points of objects or features in the
landscape that did not move. Once georeferenced, the images could be digitized. By digitizing, I
created feature classes for the coastline and ecosystem features. I created other sets of feature
classes that had shapefiles for development trends that included resorts and housing settlement
features. I also included datasets on landuse, landcover, parcel type, and cadastral features, which
were obtained from the National Parks of Antigua and Barbuda.
4.7 Data analysis and Merging Results
Analysis of data relied on following a grounded theory coding schema to understand the
relationships between findings under common groupings and themes. Coding organizes the
content of datasets through the use of categories as defined by the researcher, which reduces
content to a conceptual unit of analysis (Hansen, 2005). Through data analysis, coding helps
organize disparate sets of data, which in the case of this research included spatial data,
audiovisual data, and text (Saldaña, 2013). Specifically, this technique follows how datasets
relate to each other, and what relationship patterns emerge through comparing their
commonalities and differences. The coding structure I created for this research was
multipronged, involving the organizational structure of ATLAS.ti for audiovisual and text,
CasualConc for word collocate data, and Arcmap for spatial data. This procedure is similar to
other researchers who have combined computer aided qualitative data analysis software
(CAQDAS) and GIS software to organize and code content from ethnographic and spatial data
(See Fielding & Cisneros-Puebla, 2009; Jung & Elwood, 2010; Knigge & Cope, 2006).
4.7.1 First Cycle Coding
Following commonly used coding procedures, analysis of data was multi-phased,
including first cycle and second cycle coding (Figure 4.4). First cycle coding is where different
categories are initially explored within data to form the basis for further inquiry. This first cycle
coding relied upon initial, in Vivo and corpus linguistics techniques to code datasets. Initial
coding breaks qualitative data into distinct parts. In Vivo coding is a type of coding that uses the
exact phrasing of text as a code, as it “keeps data rooted to participant’s language” (Saldaña,
2013, p. 7). This is particularly useful for interviews where sometimes a participant would make
comments that seemed to encapsulate a theme about the relationship between climate adaptation
and development. I used ATLAS.ti to initial code and In Vivo code interviews, photos and video
where I manually coded text line by line, and coded content of photo and video by looking over
transcripts and highlighting significant parts of photos. Simultaneously, ArcMap was used as a
way to initially code spatial data, where using spatial attribute tables, I would denote distinctive
characteristics as codes I wanted to record about each community.
Figure 4.4: Schematic of coding techniques.
Due to the corpus groups representing a large number of documents, I wanted to use
techniques that would statistically determine significant patterns occurring within and across the
different text groups. I used statistical analysis of the top 10 keywords found in the data
collection phase to form a subcoding technique for each corpus document group. Through
CasualConc, an open-source word concordance software, keywords were further investigated
using the keyword in context function (KWIC), and word collocation statistics. The z-score was
calculated for each keyword to identify the most significant context words for each keyword.
Zscore is particularly useful for studying discourses, as it relies on identifying lexical units which
provides insight into “semantic preferences and characteristic discourse features in text”
(Pollach, 2012, p. 272). I used KWIC to see how keywords and their statistically significant
context words would exist as lexical units, such as certain phrasings or terms, and determine if
they could be a significant code. The word collocates would guide the search phrases used to
autocode corpus text in ATLAS.ti. I used the following subcode structure to label the search
phrases, keyword: context word.
After going through this process of coding, I formed analytical memos in which to record
the reasons why I created certain codes, and any significant patterns that I saw emerging
regarding the conditions of the adaptation process. Analytical memos form an integral part of
grounded theory as it helps the researcher synthesize data. Through this initial data synthesis, I
also started to create maps of my codes using the ATLAS.ti network function. Throughout this
stage I would do recursive forms of analysis, looking back and forth between my memos and
coded content.
4.7.2 Second Cycle Coding
Second order coding was used during the merging results phase of this research to
examine the broader patterns occurring across the datasets. Recurrent data analysis continued to
play an important function through focused and axial coding techniques. Taking the first order
coding results, I used focused coding to organize codes based on significance and frequency. All
of the coded quotations and attributes were organized into an excel spreadsheet, where I
compared data to identify emerging relationships (Figure 4.5). Using axial coding techniques, I
sorted and labeled content into conceptual categories. Using color coding in excel, I also denoted
the dataset type (ethnographic, remote sensing/GIS, documents) and data source (author) of each
line of content so I could visualize and think about what kinds of identity and meanings about
environmental change are being illustrated.
Figure 4.5: Example of merging results in second cycle coding process
Through theoretical coding, the conceptual categories and their respective codes were
reviewed to determine major themes. Part of this work entailed using ATLAS.ti to organize the
codes into code groups and analyze the significance of these groups. This involved several
iterations of transforming qualitative data into quantitative data, specifically counting the
instances codes appeared under particular themes. Another part of this work involved reviewing
spatial data in ArcMap to understand the environmental and development context in which
adaptation projects were taking place. Through this recursive analysis, I wanted to understand
how certain groups of codes related to each other, and what this meant for major themes. I
created a grounded theory through situating the major themes in a conceptual diagram to
visualize how their relationships operated.
4.8 Discussion—methodological limitations and ethical concerns
A grounded theory mixed methods approach to studying climate adaptation can elucidate
the local drivers of decision-making. This research set out with a project design to account for the
different conditions that act as drivers to dominant agendas that emerged through
mainstreaming adaptation efforts in Antigua. Through collecting data using different methods,
this research attempts to demonstrate a pluralistic framing of climate adaptation, where
hypotheses can be formulated about the socionatural dynamics that shape local responses to
climate change. Using grounded theory, I did not want to privilege one kind of dataset over the
other, and instead used recursive analysis to see how different aspects of datasets related to each
Remote sensing/GIS
Ethnography
Documents/Corpus
other to formulate a theory on the politics of climate adaptation. In this way, using a concurrent
triangulation research design complemented grounded theory techniques as it is a design
embedded in recursive analysis and constant comparison between qualitative and quantitative
datasets.
At the same time, conducting these methods concurrently was a time-consuming process,
involving strict organization of datasets and findings. ATLAS.ti greatly aided in the organization
and synthetization of disparate data sources. In addition, the memo function of the program
helped organize documentation of critical conceptual patterns. The choice of methods was
influenced by funding constraints. I had limited time and funding to conduct interviews and site
documentation in Antigua, which would limit how long I could, for example, wait for a
policymaker to return my request for an interview---which would also be severely limited if the
individual was off island. The quantitative analysis of the formal climate financing process
helped fill in for this gap, which also unexpectedly showed a new way of using mixed methods
research to study the mainstreaming adaptation process.
This research design attempted to fill in an analytical gap within critical adaptation
studies. Typically, these studies relied on ethnographic datasets and content analysis in which to
understand how the values and biases of development discourses were embedded within
adaptation decision-making processes in developing countries. In many ways, this research did
set out to unpack the influence of development discourses as a driver to adaptation
decisionmaking in Antigua due to my initial findings which indicated their efforts were majorly
focused on economic growth and the greater incorporation of non-state expertise in decision-
making. However, I wanted to attend to the nuances of how this process operated from the
perspective of various interest groups. Obtaining data to represent these varying perspectives also
meant accounting for the physical environment in which the identity and meaning of
vulnerability was produced to attain climate financing. This promoted a research design that
required not only ethnographic datasets, but other datasets such as spatial data that could
elucidate the knowledge production processes about local biophysical processes.
Although this research collected multiple forms of data, it could never account for a full
picture of the dynamics of mainstreaming adaptation processes. According to Donna Haraway’s
account on situated knowledges, each form of data collection represents a particular way of
conceptualizing a social phenomenon (Haraway, 2007). While I made use of different sources of
data (ethnographic, spatial and text), it couldn’t provide a complete picture of the kinds of
political dynamics that affect decision-making. For instance, my accounting of socionatural
processes were limited to the biophysical conditions communicated through my datasets, which
included mostly flood-based risks at the core of most conflicts. There are other kinds of
biophysical conditions that affect coping strategies with environmental change, but I was focused
on the dominant conditions that emerged through data. In addition, who I was able to interview
within the communities and government also influenced which forms of environmental change
were prominent.
Arranging semi-structured interviews with local government officials was one of the most
challenging aspects of fieldwork— which demonstrated the contentious position I had as a
foreign researcher, and the political sensitivity surrounding discussions on the relationship
between development and climate risk. Through conducting previous academic work on the
island over the past decade, I had formal contacts within government who could be interviewed
or arrange to be interviewed in formal places such as offices or in informal places. However, the
contacts that I had no personal relation to, took a lot more effort to arrange time to meet with. My
current formal contacts were able to arrange meetings with these persons as my connection to
them showed a kind of legitimacy and trust. In conducting these interviews, several challenges
existed as well. Most responses to my initial questions would address laws and regulations that
constitute their justification for adaptation efforts. I would then switch the conversation to talking
about their perception of risk and how it related to their decisions in mainstreaming adaptation. It
is within this vein of responses I noticed some respondents were open and candid about
development challenges within the adaptation process, but there were also some respondents who
would always represent a favorable position on development decisions within the Mckinnon’s
and Christian Valley communities. It was difficult to probe alternative views from these persons
on what kinds of development challenges they saw if any as these kinds of decisions in Antigua
have always been a contested process between government and communities. However, their
lack of response to challenges were valuable contributions to research as studying discourses is
not only about what is said, but also what is left out of conversations.
Another challenging aspect of my fieldwork was catching community engagements on
mainstreaming adaptation by government. Oftentimes, these meetings would be announced last
minute through social media and I would either not be on island that time or I had another
meeting arranged. As a result, I was able to attend one meeting in person in the Bolan’s
neighborhood of Christian Valley. However, I was able to account for other meetings due to
video recordings the government made available on their social media sites.
Performing semi-structured interviews with local community members provided some
challenges to this research as well. Again, my positionality as a foreign researcher reflected some
of this challenge. Most community members were open to talking about development and
environmental risk in their area and was a topic most felt passionate about. However, some
responses were influenced by their favoritism for political parties on the island, which would
influence their favorability of certain development decisions. In this way, as someone not from
the community, I had to be sensitive to avoid questions relating to certain developments up taken
by particular political administrations.
The main ethical issues of this research were gaining consent from participants to be
interviewed. I gained Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval from my home institution
before undertaking fieldwork with human subjects. Each participant was informed of the goals of
the research and how interviewee data would be anonymized in data reports. While many
researchers use audio recordings to record interviews, I did not choose this path and instead
opted to keep handwritten notes. Again, this is due to the fact that I was asking questions to
responses on climate risk and development, and I know from previous experience, these are
sensitive issues, so I did not want respondents to feel there would be some sort of political
retaliation for their views. In terms of language barriers, these were minimal as the primary
language is English. However, some participants in household interviews spoke a local pidgin
dialect or Antiguan English Creole, of which I was able to mostly understand.
4.9 Conclusion
Unpacking the complex relationship between climate adaptation and development
requires understanding the multiple perspectives which drive the direction of decision-making.
Through a mixed methods research design, this chapter attempts to present a methodological
framework in which to evaluate the socionatural dynamics that shape the conceptualization and
design of adaptation efforts. This research is situated within a case study of the Caribbean island
of Antigua’s efforts to integrate or mainstream adaptation into current development practices.
While this research follows the general construction of critical adaptation studies, which attempt
to account for the influence of development discourses in local adaptation efforts, the study does
not begin with this preconceived theoretical construct. Instead, this research uses grounded
theory to construct theory based on the collection and analysis of data. This research design
demonstrates a way to “ground” the politics of climate adaptation within local development
discourses. In this way, this research attempts to elucidate the nuances of challenges in
implementing adaptation programs into current development practices.
Mixing methods played a critical role in the collection of various forms of data. This is
supported by socionatural research which attempts to understand the pluralistic qualities of
adaptation, specifically, investigating the different ways critical adaptation scholarship can know
adaptation needs. Using grounded theory and mixed methods allowed this research inquiry to be
embedded in the positionalities of actors involved in the mainstreaming process, to evaluate the
emergence, conceptualization and organization of interests, values and knowledge concerning the
continuous integration of adaptation actions into development planning. This kind of analysis
allows for an investigation into the interplay between the macro-scale climate policymaking
politics and micro-scale development planning conflicts. In using this methodological approach,
this dissertation situates discourses and socio-political processes as critical dynamics to account
for, where actor interactions with the environment and institutions affect their positions on
livelihood improvement, climate adaptation and the environment, which in turn shape the
management of resources. In order to situate climate adaptation efforts within Antigua’s
development context, this research used qualitative and quantitative methods to attain various
forms of data to understand how different interest groups conceptualize development, climate
and environmental change. Coding of datasets allowed for triangulation—performing
comparisons of their content and to formulate major themes that could inform a grounded theory
of the politics of mainstreaming adaptation.
In many ways this chapter is a response to calls within current critical adaptation
scholarship to use mixed methods to understand the politicization of climate adaptation
(Nightingale et al. 2020). This research demonstrates a research design that attempts to carry out
this kind of study. However, mixed methods research cannot fully account for all dynamics that
influence adaptation decision-making. As this chapter contends, each method represents a partial
view of how to understand the world, and therefore we will never attain a full understanding of
complex dynamics. Future research in critical adaptation should still make efforts for mixed
methods research, as it is a critical analytical gap in this field as most studies currently rely on
ethnographic datasets and content analysis in which to interpret data. The research design
presented in this chapter can act as a way to provide a framework for future research that
combines ethnographic data, statistical methods and spatial datasets.
CHAPTER FIVE
The shaping of mainstreaming adaptation language: evaluating the power of
prodevelopment discourses in setting a Caribbean SIDS national adaptation agenda
Chapters 2-4 addressed how this dissertation answers the first research question of how
we can enhance ways to account for the power and politics of development discourses that
mediate SIDS responses to global environmental change. The theoretical framework proposed to
answer this question by discerning gaps across the critical adaptation and Caribbean SIDS
mainstreaming adaptation scholarship. It was determined that pro-development ideology plays a
significant role in determining the shape of mainstreaming adaptation policies and practice by
prioritizing economic growth strategies, but upon closer examination of mainstreaming practices,
the translation of this ideology is not entirely top-down, and instead involving negotiation and
contestation between different interest groups. Subsequently, this dissertation determined there
was a critical gap in that the Caribbean SIDS critical adaptation literature which mostly evaluated
the role of this ideology within the context of macro-scale processes of climate policy
formulation— missing micro-political struggles over adaptation planning that determine the
scope of climate change meaning around adaptation needs. In response to this gap, this
dissertation proposed a pluralistic research agenda to examine the interplay between macro-scale
climate politics and micro-scale planning politics to understand the socio-political processes
driving the direction of adaptation needs in Antigua within the context of mainstreaming
practices. In doing so, this research approach assumes pro-development discourses to be dynamic
as it moves from the global to local context. This chapter and chapters 6-7 will provide results
and a discussion to answer, how do established development discourses and agendas shape
emerging adaptation processes, and in what ways do these relations act to reinforce the drivers of
SIDS vulnerability?
Chapter 5 will present the first part of the results, which attempts to characterize formal
aspects of the mainstreaming adaptation process, specifically involving the institutionalization of
climate financing conditions into development planning practices. The goal of this chapter is to
understand the formulation of language and ideas surrounding mainstreaming and explain how
this discourse is being used as a tool to conceptualize the continuous integration of adaptation
financing, policies and programs into development planning. In articulating the way the nation is
attempting to conceptualize and operationalize adaptation financing ideology into development
planning processes, will fulfill part of this dissertation’s socionatural inquiry into how climate
change governance becomes enrolled in other political processes (Nightingale, 2017). By
combining corpus linguistics with critical discourse analysis, this chapter illustrates an analysis
of voluminous textual data to account for how adaptation financing ideology is being shaped and
re-shaped to accommodate for national and local development planning priorities. This form of
analysis provides one part of this dissertation’s efforts to articulate discursive foundations of the
mainstreaming adaptation process to be that of adaptation economy practices.
The format of this chapter continues with that of a publishable paper format. It presents a
corpus-assisted discourse analysis that traces the formulations of ideas around the emergence of
mainstreaming adaptation which attempt to address the tensions between climate change science
and country’s desire to increase economic development. A statistical-based analysis is conducted
to identify significant patterns in language across three large groups of documents (corpora),
adaptation financing, national plans and hazard and vulnerability assessments that discourse
analysis alone could not fully accomplish. Analysis of the keywords that emerge from these
corpora are combined with critical discourse analysis, where I closely analyze the context in
which the language is being used. Critical discourse analysis is used to evaluate the power
dynamics of pro-development discourses that might be permeating through ideas surrounding
mainstreaming adaptation. These interpretations are also supplemented by interviews with
policymakers who have knowledge of adaptation and development planning on island.
5.1 Introduction
Integrating or mainstreaming adaptation into national development planning is a process
spanning the involvement of different actors at multiple scales. Mainstreaming adaptation has
been found to be a political or contested process including conflict between these actors over the
negotiation of language regarding which biophysical processes count as environmental change
and what kinds of subsequent loss and damages are expected to affect the socio-economic
development of developing countries (Scoville-Simonds et al., 2020; Thomas, 2019). Language
is understood to play a significant role in these climate negotiations as it reveals power dynamics
about who is defining the conditions under which climate financing is received for adaptation,
and who eventually gets to define the language used to describe vulnerability. Scholarship on
climate and development has attended to the way this process reveals the power of global
political interests in defining and shaping conditions—revealing how long-established
development ideology on economic growth, free market access and technological solutions
dominate framings of global environmental change, climate financing and subsequent on the
ground adaptation practices (Ford, 2007; Lemos & Boyd, 2010). Specifically, these studies have
critically examined how mainstreaming adaptation efforts are further shaped on the ground by
local political authorities to advance certain socio-political agendas (Nagoda, 2015; Weisser et
al., 2014). However, many of these studies have studied the relationship between these power
dynamics and development ideology using critical discourse analysis, a method relying on
abstractions as defined by the researcher, rather than interpretation that is grounded from the
language patterns that actually exist in their textual data.
Critical discourse analysis presents methodological challenges since studying how
mainstreaming adaptation is shaped on the ground in a specific country entails going through
voluminous amounts of documents. This is due to mainstreaming being a formal process that
occurs at the national scale, embedded in financing proposals, risk assessment reports and
legislative and policy proceedings. This presents a significant challenge in performing discourse
analysis alone on these texts as this is a large volume of textual data, in which a quicker or more
efficient way of denoting particular patterns in language usage would create more accessibility
for researchers studying unknown aspects of this planning process. The use of corpus-assisted
discourse analysis is emerging within climate change studies to bring computational analysis into
the fore by performing discourse analysis on large volumes of text—although these studies have
mostly applied this form of data analysis to study biases and values surrounding the use of terms
related to climate change in the media (Bohr, 2020; Carvalho, 2008; Koteyko et al., 2013).
Corpus assisted-discourse analysis is a mixed methods approach that involves the quantitative
analysis of keyword frequencies combined with the qualitative techniques of studying keywords
used within context. Extending this method to study the power of pro-development discourses in
mainstreaming adaptation texts can bring forth a more comprehensive methodology to evaluate
the problem framings of environmental change within the adaptation planning context.
In this study, I use a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to focus on textual data that is
based on the conceptualization and design of a mainstreaming adaptation program on the
Caribbean small island developing state of Antigua. The chapter will be organized as follows.
The next section will conduct a background on the significance of studying development as
discourse and what impacts it has for understanding the prioritization of issues in adaptation
efforts. The following section will provide a brief overview of mainstreaming efforts in Antigua
and why it is a significant case study in which to study the influence of development discourses
in national adaptation planning. Proceeding this section will be an overview of the methods and a
rationale as to why combining corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis can overcome
methodological gaps in critical adaptation research. The sections following this part will
demonstrate the findings from keyword frequency analysis, word collocation statistics and word
concordance. A discussion follows that organizes the findings into categories to synthesize ideas
about the ways we see development discourses emerge in adaptation plans. A conclusion ends
this chapter with summarizing findings and ways forward in future research.
5.2 Study focus: Understanding development as discourse within the context of
mainstreaming adaptation
In the last 10 years, the field of critical adaptation has sought to understand the role of the
global political economy in shaping the identification of climate change subjects (who and what
is vulnerable to climate change) and the role of individual positions, knowledge and
subjectivities in determining adaptation needs (Grove, 2014;Eriksen et al. 2016). Most studies
have focused on how these dynamics shape mainstreaming adaptation programs, and in what
ways these programs perpetuate the uneven distribution of benefits within developing countries
(See Beckman, 2011; Cannon & Müller-Mahn, 2010; Marino & Ribot, 2012; Tanner & Allouche,
2011). Typically, this field studies development as discourse—illustrating the ways related sets of
values and biases on economic growth and technological solutions form a position of how one
interprets climate change issues (Fairclough, 2010; Ireland & McKinnon, 2013). Studying
development as discourse examines how previous forms of development interventions through
aid programs based on ideas of modernization, economic growth and free market access have
subsequently limited the amount of financial and environmental resources that are available
(Escobar, 2007) —begging for serious inquiry into how these political-economic conditions have
exacerbated developing countries and SIDS to climate change (Baptiste & Rhiney 2016). It is
argued that these conditions form the root drivers of vulnerability for many developing countries,
where their capacities to cope with environmental change have been limited by the amount of
financial and environmental resources they have access to, and the uneven power structures that
limit the ways they can access these resources (Pelling & Dill, 2010; Ribot, 2013, 2014). Within
the same vein, scholars have critically questioned the role of resilience-thinking in perpetuating
pro-development discourses by prioritizing technical-economic solutions to maintain
development-as-usual practices (Cannon & Müller-Mahn, 2010; De Roeck, 2019). The critical
adaptation field has extended these understandings to evaluate the ways the development sector
continues to play a dominant role in setting the agendas for climate adaptation efforts in
developing countries by defining the conditions to receive resources (Lemos & Boyd, 2010),
which can marginalize other local needs. Through studying specific social practices, such as
mainstreaming climate adaptation efforts (e.g., policies, projects, financing) we can see how
climate adaptation is articulated within language and ideas surrounding development ideology,
and in what ways this informs positions on adaptation responses.
Studying development as discourse has been commonly studied within mainstreaming
adaptation contexts, as it is a process entailing the interaction between global sets of actors from
climate financing agencies and the development sector and state national actors as they negotiate
and struggle over the meaning of adaptation within the context of development. The
incorporation of different interest groups in this decision-making process provides an interesting
context in which to study how subjectivities on adaptation are articulated in relation to
development (Klepp & Chavez-Rodriguez, 2018; Mikulewicz, 2018). The subjectivities of
climate adaptation are understood to position certain sectors and populations as vulnerable to
environmental change, which in turn influences which populations and what kinds of issues
appear as state government priorities in their climate policies (Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling,
2015; Mikulewicz, 2020; Rudiak-Gould, 2012).
Within critical adaptation research in the Caribbean, it has been found that development
discourses have power over defining the framings of climate risk and adaptation responses in the
region and on the national scale due to the global financial institutions (e.g., the World Bank, the
Overseas Development Institute, the Green Climate Fund) that control access to climate
financing (Grove, 2010). Within this context, it has also been found that these institutions shape
local knowledge on environmental change by controlling the creation and dissemination of
climate science and positioning themselves as experts to be needed by the developing countries
to carry out adaptation policies and programs (Saxena et al., 2018). Tracing how knowledge and
discourses are produced from the global to local scale in the Caribbean demonstrates how
national adaptation planning is the by-product of these power dynamics between different actors
at different scales (Popke et al., 2016), which can ultimately influence the plans to integrate
adaptation actions into development planning (Butcher-Gollach, 2015).
5.3 The context of Mainstreaming Adaptation in Antigua
This study focuses on Antigua, an Eastern Caribbean island nation, to perform a case
study that observes the power of development discourses through mainstreaming adaptation
efforts. The island is a rich case study for this as they have a long history of participating in
Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) trainings on climate policy integration
to increase their capacity to engage in adaptation planning, support mainstreaming adaptation
into policy processes, and begin implementation of adaptation measures (Medeiros et al., 2011, p.
4). Over the past 10 years, this has included financial commitments from multilateral agreements
through the financial mechanisms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) for climate adaptation financing and institutional building capacity to
manage climate adaptation projects. This has resulted in a rich collection of documents that are
publicly available that details the ways the country has applied for climate financing, and what
kinds of issues the national government prioritizes for financing.
In 2015, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda introduced the Environmental
Protection and Management Act to align with the conditions of climate financing to demonstrate
they have the institutional and administrative capacity to manage funds for adaptation, and to
also monitor and evaluate the progress of adaptation efforts. This led to the formal establishment
of the Department of Environment and an articulation of its role as an intermediary between the
national government and climate financing institutions, central authority over climate adaptation
activities across all statutory government agencies, and management of environmental resources.
Most significantly, the Sustainable Island Resource Fund (SIRF) was introduced through this
legislation, to formally instate a national funding entity that was able to produce sustainable
financing for local adaptation measures. The goal of the fund is to “manage international and
domestic climate change funding and to help mainstream programs and projects into national
development strategies and plans at the country level” (Smith et al., 2011, p. 997). The fund was
created to demonstrate that the island has the capacity to oversee the way climate financing is
being used, and how the island intends to make a return on these investments.
5.4 Research Approach and Methodology: A corpus linguistics analysis of discourse
This chapter combines corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis in order to
understand how adaptation is articulated in relation to development, and what kinds of priorities
are dominating national responses to environmental change. Studying the influence of
development ideology in adaptation responses entails a critical discourse analysis (CDA) that
evaluates the way elements of text are created within certain political contexts that shape the way
meaning is produced through language (Paterson et al., 2019). There is no specific approach to
CDA, but a majority of critical adaptation research has used this approach by combining critical
social theory and qualitative analysis of ethnographic datasets to illustrate the ways
mainstreaming adaptation perpetuates structural forms of inequality through language and
discourse (Lin, 2014; Manuel-Navarrete et al., 2011). Within these studies, researchers have used
case studies of state government discourses on adaptation to elucidate how state government
actors— and the external institutions they interact with including the development sector, and
intergovernmental organizations— choose to frame problems related to climate change and
development (Artur & Hilhorst, 2012; Farbotko & Lazrus, 2012; Yates, 2012).
One of the biggest critiques of CDA is that it is limited by qualitative approaches from
content analysis, which mostly relies on analyzing a small collection of documents and the
arbitrary selection of dominant themes across text (Gabrielatos & Baker, 2008). According to
Koteyko et al. (2013, p. 760), this type of content analysis “recruits a set of concepts defined by
the analyst rather than participants themselves, and also involves classifying statements for what
they are rather than what they do”. In some ways, this achieves the opposite goal of climate and
development research that has sought to understand how development operates as a discourse in
order to define the core drivers behind what these positions are trying to achieve (what they do)
as opposed to taking their language at face value (what they are).
In order to make up for the weakness of the CDA approach, researchers have used mixed
methods to combine corpus-based approaches with CDA to ground their analysis within actual
data, and closely investigate points of interest within these datasets (Grundmann &
Krishnamurthy, 2010). Corpus-based approaches or corpus linguistics (CL) is a computer-aided
method of analyzing an electronic database of documents referred to as a corpus. It relies on
quantitative approaches through word frequency counts and statistical analysis of significant
word associations, and qualitative approaches through word concordance to understand how
significant words operate within specific contexts. In other ways, CL has been critiqued for its
weakness in qualitative forms of analyses by relying mostly on numeric data, which often omits
inquiry into important political drivers of the social phenomenon in question (Baker et al., 2008).
In this way, the researcher’s interpretation of meaning from the numeric data is greatly benefitted
by using the CDA approach. Ultimately, mixing CDA and CL helps accommodate for each
other’s weaknesses by creating a critical analysis of language based on empirical approaches to
identify significant patterns in language, which can help describe and explain the drivers of
certain problem framings (Baker, 2004).
The quantitative tools to be demonstrated in this chapter include keyword frequency and
word collocation statistics. Keyword frequency relies on producing numeric data of the most
frequently used words within a corpus. Frequently used keyword lists can be produced through
computer aided qualitative data analysis (CAQDA) software or text analysis software. It is the
first part of conducing a bottom-up corpus assisted discourse analysis by producing word lists
that form the basis to compare the language varieties of different sets of text (Partington, 2008).
According to Baker, keywords do not “reveal discourses but will direct the researcher to
important concepts in a text (in relation to other texts) that may help to highlight the existence of
types of (embedded) discourse or ideology” (Baker, 2004, p. 347).
Word collocation statistics of the keywords follows this stage, in which I make use of text
analysis software, CasualConc, which performs statistical analyses to understand co-occurrence
trends between keywords and significant context words. This type of analysis relies on statistics
that measure how two or more words exist as lexical units by measuring their co-occurrence
within text (Pollach, 2012). This research relied on z-score testing to evaluate this relationship.
The z-score was chosen because it relies on measuring the closeness between words, and I
wanted to focus on key technical terms used to describe environmental change or development
due to the strong scientifically informed part of the mainstreaming process, and also a majority of
solutions are based in economic or technological framings. Other statistical measures used by
researchers such as t-score proved to not be valuable for this study as it relied too much on
measuring frequency of context terms— benefitting higher frequency articles such as “the “and
“a”. In addition, t-score produces context words that would appear very far from the keyword in
lines of text, and barely related to each other in context. Word concordance is a critical part that
follows word collocation statistics as it allows the researcher to do a more refined analysis of
how the keywords are used in context. This uses the keyword in context (KWIC) function in
CasualConc, where I can search the keyword with its context word to see how the words relate to
each other in specific lines of text. Overall this process allows a quicker way of analyzing and
reducing textual data into manageable units of analysis.
The findings across the textual data are complemented by interpretations made from
critical discourse analysis of the textual content and semi-structured interviews with 14
individuals involved in various aspects of adaptation programming, environmental management
and development planning in Antigua. During the interviews, participants were asked about
varying aspects related to their positions on climate change and development, and the ways in
which the nation was attempting to relieve these tensions through management and planning. In
comparing both sets of content, language is examined to discern the relatedness of the text and
interviews in a way to illustrate the social circumstances under which they are produced because
“[in] political discourse, words are at the service of transferring the power or ideologies of one
group or nation to the other” (Mahdiyan et al., 2013, p. 36). But in the context of this research,
the goal is to use these comparisons to demonstrate the dynamic processes of shifts in knowledge
about climate change and development, and to what extent these shifts are representative of
resilience-thinking.
5.5 Keyword frequency analysis
5.5.1 Data preparation and collection
In order to understand how adaptation was being conceptualized and designed by the state
government as a form of development through mainstreaming, I collected documents pertaining
to adaptation financing, hazard and vulnerability assessments and action plans to address
development and environmental change problems. Document collection was mostly collated
from online databases from the Antigua and Barbuda Department of Environment, climate
financing and policy action websites (e.g., UNFCCC, the Green Climate Fund, adaptation fund)
and the regional clearinghouse database from the Caribbean Community
Climate Change Centre (CCCCC). Each document was reviewed to see if it was pertinent to my
line of inquiry for this study. A total of 139 documents were collected for the corpus-based
discourse analysis.
Each topic served as a corpus group, creating a total of three corpus groups. The
adaptation financing corpus (n=69) included proposals by the state movement to apply for
climate financing and other related documents pertaining to plans to implement climate financing
into current development plans for adaptation. The hazard and vulnerability assessments (n=40)
were a collection of documents that addressed different aspects of changes observed in local
biophysical processes, specifically noting the human and non-human causes of different kinds of
environmental change on island. Most documents were authored by local scientific experts on the
island with assistance from intergovernmental agencies such as the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP), or the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
However, there were also a collection of documents solely authored by outside agencies such as
the United States Agency for International Development (US AID) and not-for profit regional
partnerships such as CARIBSAVE. The action plan corpus (n=30) included a variety of
documents authored by the Antiguan state government that set forth agendas on how to preserve
aspects of Antigua’s sensitive biodiversity, physical action plans for redevelopment of certain
areas on island to promote sustainability and economic development and other documents and
proposal related to mapping out their mainstreaming adaptation plans. Similarly, these documents
also showed a certain extent of collaboration or requirements set forth by outside actors and their
agencies such as the UNFCCC, UNEP and GEF.
5.5.2 Analysis
Keyword lists for each corpus was produced using ATLAS.ti, a CAQDA Software. The
program allows the user to produce words lists that can exported to Microsoft excel for further
analysis. A word STOP list was used to exclude commonly used pronouns (e.g., that, they),
conjunctions (e.g., and, but) and articles (e.g., a, an, the), which can skew the keyword list as
these are frequently used words and I wanted to examine specific terms that described aspects of
the social phenomenon in question. The top 10 words from each keyword frequency list were
selected for each corpus to produce a robust analysis of the kinds of topics that commonly were
written about. There is no agreed upon number of keywords one should analyze, and it is variable
across corpus linguistics literature as it depends on the researcher’s motives behind their study
(Baker et al. 2008).
As table 5.1 demonstrates, there are many similarities in language used across each
corpus group, but the frequency in which these words are used vary between the groups. For
instance, the term water is a frequently used term within each corpus group but the order in
which it appears varies. It is the number one keyword for the hazard and vulnerability corpus and
action corpus, but it appears as the sixth most frequently used keyword in the adaptation
financing corpus. Initial assumptions from these results would be related to who authored the
documents and for what purpose they were written for. The text of the hazard and vulnerability
assessments, and action plan corpuses compared analysis of past climate patterns and measurable
observations of Antigua’s fresh water supply to conclude that extended periods of drought were
one of the major vulnerabilities for the island. Specifically, both corpora noted that the water
cycle is an integral biophysical process that was being threatened by anthropogenic climate
change on the global level, which was affecting water supply on the local level. Subsequently, the
action corpus demonstrates this concern and the government’s attempts to ameliorate the stress
on their local fresh water supply.
Table 5.1: Top 10 keywords from each corpus in descending order of their frequency count.
Adaptation Financing
Corpus
(N=69 documents; n=14,809
words)
Hazard and Vulnerability
Assessment Corpus (N=40
documents; n=29,921
words)
Action Plan Corpus (N=30
documents; n=11,540
words)
1. climate water water
2. adaptation development management
3. national climate development
4. management tourism climate
5. development beach land
6. water management areas
7. sector environmental environmental
8. financing risk sector
9. community vulnerability resources
10. energy public data
The adaptation financing corpus also noted similar concerns with water as the other two
corpora but was not an immediate priority as compared to attaining the financing in which to
ameliorate this issue. For instance, the terms national and management ranked higher than
biophysical processes such as the water cycle due to the climate financing’s focus on creating the
institutional capacity to receive and manage financing, rather than a focus on the actual
biophysical processes of concern (Mori et al., 2019). Upon further review of national using the
word concordance function in CasualConc, a word concordance software, it seems some
language was devoted to adaptation planning and strategy building, a part of the capacity
building methods that seems to dominate problem framings of adaptation and development
(Figure 5.1). In addition, this financing has certain biophysical processes that count as climate
risk that contributes to the island vulnerability, and further analysis is needed to understand how
the water cycle is framed within the context of climate risk. As such, keyword analysis initially
demonstrates the kind of biases that exist across the text groups, depending on the purposes for
which the documents are written for, but further analysis is needed to ascertain how these terms
are used within the text.
N Keyword in Context (KWIC) Line File Name
Figure 5.1: Concordance analysis of the term national in the adaptation financing corpus.
5.6 Word collocation
The word collocation analysis helped this research understand the context in which the
keywords were being used. Subsequently, the statistical functions within CasualConc were used
to perform a z-score analysis on the keywords. The program allows the user to enter in the
keyword and perform a z-score analysis, which outputs the z-score for the context word, and
other data on frequency count such as how many times it appears on the left and/or right of the
keyword. The top 5 context words based on their z-score significance was chosen to perform
further word concordance analysis. A z-score above 3 indicates that the occurrence of the
collocate is not due to chance. Forming lists of collocates for each keyword helped narrow down
the lines of text to analyze through keyword in context (KWIC), and to gain a better
understanding of how adaptation and development are discursively framed together. Each
subsection below details the statistical results for the three corpora.
5.6.1 Collocates of Adaptation financing corpus keywords
The z-scores helped highlight technical terms, including compounds and fixed phrases
within the adaptation financing corpus. Table 5.2 demonstrates the top 5 collocates according to
their z-score in relation to each keyword. In combining the collocates for climate and
adaptation, we can further observe how climate adaptation is being conceptualized. Collocates
such as proofing, interventions, window and financing demonstrated the potential that economic
framings were dominating the conceptualization of adaptation approaches. Typically, these terms
have been found to be related to the broader ideology of development, which seeks to find
opportunities for which the development sector to ‘intervene’ with drastic actions to improve the
economic status of a developing country (Webber, 2016). Upon performing word concordance of
these collocates, we can see the detailed ways economic framings of adaptation appear, where the
terms alluded to the way the country was setting up a national funding entity, the SIRF fund, to
create financial opportunities or windows, for different sectors to take out loans or have access to
grants to pay for adaptation measures.
Collocates for national provides insights into how mainstreaming adaptation is being
designed. Combining their collocates, terms such as plan, priorities, and policies, allude to
attempts at incorporating adaptation at the national scale, which is indicative of mainstreaming
adaptation ideas that promote integrating adaptation practices into national scale planning
processes. Upon further examination of the collocates for management using word concordance,
I gained a more detailed picture on how the government envisioned this downscaling to the
management level, specifically where they were concerned with environmental, disaster and
watershed management. These collocates were significant in that it homed in on legislative
changes the island was making to their environmental protection and management act to establish
the rules and frameworks for integrating adaptation into national development planning. For
example, in their readiness inception document for the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the
government states:
The Department of Environment, as the government-appointed NDA for the GCF, has
over the past few years succeeded in establishing an enabling environment in Antigua and
Barbuda for climate investment and low-carbon, resilient development. Notable
achievements include the passage of the Environmental Protection and Management Act
of 2015, a comprehensive legislation that provides for implementation of multilateral
environmental agreements3. The legislation also established a financing mechanism, the
Sustainable Island Resource Framework Fund (SIRF Fund), as the primary means for
implementing Antigua and Barbuda’s ambitious climate action targets. (Antigua and
Barbuda Department of Environment, 2016, p. 2)
The above quote is a demonstration of many lines of text that attempted to situate the role
of government entities in relation to the adaptation financing process. It also illustrates the
significant role of financing as the vehicle in which adaptation is integrated into government
management of resources. As communicated by one policymaker, the government is “making
sure the national adaptation plan (NAP) is a useable document [by] looking at the finance sector
with regards to adaptation” (Participant E03). This participant’s description of the nation’s
adaptation plans is indicative of the broader goals of the national government, which is to build a
form of climate resilient development, where economic growth is minimally affected by climate
change impacts. This resilience-thinking is elaborated by analyzing the context of word
collocates for sector and financing keywords. This analysis demonstrated that the mainstreaming
adaptation process is a multi-actor effort, which includes heavy involvement of international
actors—furthering the expansion of outside actors in day-to-day development planning. And in
the integration process, multiple sectors such as private, public, tourism, fisheries and energy
have to be involved in taking part in adaptation financing practices. As relayed by participant
E03 and this text, this is due to the fact that these are critical economic sectors and contribute key
roles in improving the economic development of the country.
Table 5.2: Collocates (as measured by their z-score) of keywords from the adaptation financing
corpus.
Keyword Collocates (z-score in order of decreasing significance)
climate
change (235.15), impacts (72.80), resilient (59.31), variability (51.13),
proofing (48.80)
adaptation
interventions (102.32), window (59.92), financing (49.55), mitigation
(47.22), measures (51.31)
national
plan (34.78), priorities (33.80), regional (27.11), development (24.70),
policies (24.65)
management
environmental (69.88), disaster (35.10), plan (34.67), watershed (34.42),
project (31.56)
development
sustainable (65.10), control (45.81), bank (40.59), planning (30.10),
resilient (28.97)
water
supply (71.93), fresh (51.10), storage (50.82), surface (47.93), desalination
(52.56)
sector
private (157.99), public (45.80), tourism (35.86), fisheries (28.71), energy
(25.45)
financing
innovative (137.93), mechanisms (119.88), co (92.20), sustainable (32.80),
accessing (24.45)
community
groups (61.01), ngos (40.81), members (38.92), awarded (32.23), resilience
(30.88)
energy
renewable (164.72), efficiency (90.23), efficient (54.07), solar (53.56),
technologies (27.91)
Through analyzing the collocates of water and energy, key issues that the country sought
to address included addressing the lack of freshwater supply and lack of renewable energy
options. Performing word concordance on the collocates demonstrated the technical character of
adaptation, where infrastructure projects play a significant role as solutions to environmental
change issues. In addition, examination of collocates of community, showed that these projects
were to benefit communities to a certain extent, and at the same time, they would also have
access to some of the financing to implement specialized adaptation measures on the household
level.
5.6.2 Collocates of Vulnerability and hazard assessments corpus keywords
The hazard and vulnerability assessment corpus was significantly different in its language
usage. Due to the nature of these assessments being based on measurable changes in the
environment, there was more detail about what kinds of environmental change Antigua has gone
through and will be projected to go through. As table 5.3 demonstrates, the language of this
corpus is characterized by technical or scientific phrases and terms. As mentioned in section
5.5.2, water was a significant keyword in this corpus. Upon further examination of this
keyword’s collocates in conjunction with word concordance, the language of the corpus alluded
to the island’s limited supply of freshwater resources. In the text, the authors attributed it to the
island’s extended drought season, and the mismanagement of water resources such as not
promoting conservation of water.
Table 5.3: Collocates (as measured by their z-score) of keywords from the vulnerability and
hazard assessment corpus.
Keyword Collocates (z-score in order of decreasing significance)
Water
quality (74.50), supply (70.43), potable (52.35), resources (50.10), surface
(48.78)
development
marina (81.99), tourism (75.98), residential (49.76), control (46.10),
sustainable (40.43)
Climate
effects (58.21), resilience (53.56), adaptation (48.23), impacts (48.13),
vulnerability (35.88)
Tourism development (75.89), impact (66.10), industry (56.10), agri (31.77)
Beach
Runaway (125.95), erosion (78.68), pond (65.00), siltation (42.33),
extensive (33.90)
management
disaster (72.10), resource (52.10), integrated (48.55), plan (36.86), coastal
(36.54)
environmental
impact (88.98), problems (37.14), awareness (29.22), effective (29.10),
management (27.76)
Risk
reduction (159.63), management (22.56), at (21.61), transfer (19.40),
distress (18.63)
vulnerability reduce (46.54), surge (35.20), zone (33.71), to (33.71), hazard (30.04)
Public
utilities (87.12), private (43.10), sector (52.24), awareness (37.23), health
(35.83)
What distinguished this corpus was its use of the term development, which was a term
typically in reference to tourism, residential or marina developments that were not strictly
regulated by the national government. The impacts of these developments were further illustrated
by collocates for the keywords beach, management, environment, risk, and vulnerability. When
analyzing these words through content analysis to evaluate ideas around these terms and
speaking with policymakers with a technical background, it was found that vulnerability and
hazard assessments commonly noted the deleterious effects of coastal tourism development
included extensive coastal erosion and siltation of coastal waters due to runoff and dredging
operations of salt ponds and wetland areas by tourist developers. For instance, one technical
policymaker noted that the Department of Environment struggles with the interests of politicians
and developers where “accommodations are the problem…[and] not a lot of consultation with
other agencies and only after it is done, people ask what was done” (Participant E02). Based on
one development planning policymaker’s position, the crux of this issue lies in how development
is practiced within the context of climate change by expressing that there is “a lot of
unpredictability with climate change models and so it is hard to tell a developer to push back 15
more feet based on a 100-year projection. To me it doesn’t make sense and the project should be
okay” (Participant E13). This was supplanted by another technical policymaker’s view in that
“priority is given to foreign investors for land development” (Participant E10).
In conjunction with policymaker discussions of hazards, the text also spoke of worsening
the effects of storm surge from hurricanes and sea level rise. In this way, upon further
investigation of disaster management through word concordance, disaster prevention and
mitigation were communicated in the corpora as a priority solution to lessen the effects of these
flood-based hazards. It was also evident throughout this corpus, that disaster management was
evident of a broader pattern of impacts-based approaches that affected how the authors defined
vulnerability. For instance, by observing the way vulnerability is used in relation to reduce, the
authors demonstrated that dealing with hazards is a major priority as it affects both the economy
and local populations (Figure 5.2). Within this context, vulnerability was defined as the coping
capacities of the island to withstand slower-onset hazards such as drought, and seasonal hazards
brought by hurricanes in the form of catastrophic flooding and wind damage.
N Keyword in Context (KWIC) Line File Name
Figure 5.2: Word concordance of vulnerability in the context of reduce.
There is also see evidence of the idea of mainstreaming by the term integrated
management in this corpus. Upon further examination, this phrase referred to ideas of
institutional capacity building, as one local consulting group found was lacking for watershed
management, noting:
Although a number of agencies in [Antigua and Barbuda] are involved with the
management of natural resources within catchment basins, it is fair to say that there is no
systematic integrated management framework currently in place for managing such
watersheds. Minimal intervention, such as ad hoc cleaning of sediment from ponds,
reservoirs and stream- beds, are undertaken but, generally, these systems are left to
function on their own. There is a critical need for all stakeholders to better understand the
“inter-dependent” nature of watershed ecosystems and to coordinate efforts to effectively
manage the resources. (Environmental Solutions Antigua Limited, 2008, p. 7)
Through this example, integration is a term used to articulate the lack of coordination within
government that oversaw the resource management of watersheds. We can also tell this is a
significant management issue due to watershed being the fourth most significant collocate of the
keyword, management. As this quote demonstrates and is also evident across the documents of
authored by local consultants, the statements on solutions are supported by claims about the
scientific understandings of local biophysical processes.
Where ideas of integrated management start to differ, are within documents authored by
development sector agencies such as USAID, which frame integration as a mainstreaming
process that needs to be connected to sustainable or reliable forms of financing to carry out such
management activities. For instance, USAID stated that,
Based on the assessment team’s findings in interviews with key informants, focus group
meetings, and literature review, the following shortcomings in the institutional and legal
frameworks for environmental protection exacerbate Antigua and Barbuda’s vulnerability
to climate change: (1) lack of sufficient and sustainable funding mechanisms for climate
change management; (2) lack of capacity in government organizations to carry out
climate change management; (3) absence of an institutionalized, integrated coastal zone
management framework; (4) no existing indicators to monitor impacts of climate change
nor adaptive capacity at the national level; and (5) no evidence of existing systems for
monitoring and evaluating climate change-related threats. (USAID, 2013, p. 49)
In this manner, USAID frames solutions to integrated management as a financial and technical
issue, which is evident of broader ideas on how the development sector frames climate change
problems. This differed from local consultant framings of management which did not really refer
to the lack of financing or technology as the reason why the coastal zones were in a deleterious
state, and instead focus on decisions relating to tourism development.
5.6.3 Collocates of Action Plans corpus keywords
Through analysis of the Action plan keyword collocates, it was evident that this corpus
contained a combination of ideas from the adaptation financing and vulnerability and hazard
assessment corpora (Table 5.4). Specifically, this corpus reflects how the national government is
attempting to design a coordinated way to manage the priorities of economic growth and coping
with various aspects of environmental change. For instance, the term water sector, shows
thinking about the island freshwater supply issues as a broader problem related to development,
where water demand from other industries such as agriculture and tourism combined with
household consumption, is straining the island’s freshwater supply.
Table 5.4: Collocates (as measured by their z-score) of keywords from the action plan corpus.
Keyword Collocates (z-score)
water
sector (79.27), demand (48.58), supply (42.58), surface (41.21), resources
(38.14)
management
resource (92.23), sustainable (84.95), integrated (53.76), waste (28.32),
watershed (25.44)
development
control (49.55), economic (34.81), spatial (29.64), sustainable (22.12),
physical (19.16)
climate
change (204.04), adaptation (31.76), impacts (31.35), variability (24.02),
resilience (19.85)
land
use (91.87), degradation (75.78), tenure (37.53), reclamation (29.23),
clearing (16.62)
areas
protected (67.11), sensitive (23.0), in (22.67), prone (22.54), expansion
(21.64)
environmental
variability (32.16), protection (28.73), management (22.53), social (14.07),
agreements (12.99)
sector
private (61.18), entities (16.43), ngos (15.44), tourism (14.75), agricultural
(14.07)
resources
natural (48.03), marine (37.41), human (23.22), ecosystem (20.83), coastal
(19.74)
data
errors (49.27), collection (44.19), available (37.23), collected (28.33),
baseline (24.51)
The specific mechanisms in which the island proposes to deal with the sensitivity of the
water sector has to deal with land use. This is made evident by performing concordance on
collocates of other keywords that describe land use management. For instance, using word
concordance to examine phrases associated with land such as land degradation, we can see
through word concordance that drought is a key form of environmental change associated with
the country’s water supply (Figure 5.3). In further connecting ideas of land use management with
drought, one non-governmental agency actor, emphasized that “A lot of poor people build in the
waterways. It may look dry because of drought but someone living there all their life would say
hey this floods a lot” (Participant E06).
N Keyword in Context (KWIC) Line File Name
Figure 5.3: Word concordance of land in the context of degradation.
In aligning with the NGO actor’s position on land use issues, the documents demonstrated
that management of land use is a priority as land degradation is decreasing the ability of
watersheds to contain freshwater supplies. As such, in observance of the context in which the
keyword areas was used, there was strong reference to maintaining protected and improving
environmentally sensitive areas that are subject to erosion. If more settlements are occurring in
flood prone areas, managing these areas appear to be emerging as an adaptation need. According
to the Sustainable Island Resource Management Zoning Plan (SIRMZP) for Antigua and
Barbuda:
One of the benefits of protected areas is to contain settlement development and prevent
sprawl in areas that would be best left natural or used for other purposes than housing and
industry. (Genivar et al., 2011, p. 100)
The SIRZMP is a significant document as it is commonly referenced within documents of
the adaptation financing corpus as it lays out a policy vision by the national government on how
to protect “critical ecosystem functions” while at the same time promote economic growth
through the rezoning of sensitive areas as economic growth and employment centers. The above
quote is representative of a wider trend within the corpus where the national government partially
frames current environmental problems as a household decision-making issue where
homeowners are settling in ecologically sensitive areas. The text connects to a broader
positionality of national policymakers concerning homeowners and their choices for building,
with one environmental policymaker expressing:
local views of land management are tied to the legacy of colonialism which adds another
dynamic to decision-making… All of this contributed to land degradation and these
views stemmed from the long-term occupation of the colonial population in which they
controlled all the land, and now that they finally own it, they feel they have the right to
manage how they want to. (Participant E11)
This observation is supporting by finding text that emphasizes the use of phrases such as
development control, where the government is seeking to halt fragmented land use practices and
create zones that have specific uses.
Finally, analysis of the documents demonstrates attempts to shift from management to
governance of resources to coordinate management of the island’s environmental resources while
also trying to improve economic development that is in accordance with international protocols.
This was most prominent by observing the collocates for keywords including management and
environmental. For instance, the proposed National Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan
(NASAP) for the water sector describes plans to consolidate powers within government by
shifting parts of water management regulation to the Department of
Environment, which is a government entity in charge of overseeing bi-lateral and multilateral
environmental agreements and flows of climate financing. This is one of several documents in
the corpus that articulates the Department of Environment being the central actor that oversees
all aspects of climate adaptation. This positioning of power is further demonstrated by legislation
including the Environmental and Protection Management Act 2015, which aligns their
regulations with the over 10+ multilateral environmental agreements they signed onto
(Department of Enviornment, 2015). This is further supported by the legislation’s use of the term
integrated to establish their central role in coordinating all environmental activities on the island.
Further examining how the phrase climate adaptation was used within the corpora, the
government and the development sector support the increasing reliance on outside actors for
expertise and training for adaptation. For example, the NASAP notes:
Capacity building must be an integral component of any climate change adaptation
strategy due to existing uncertainty within the climate models, particularly at local and
national levels. Local institutions (both formal and informal) play an important role in
building resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change. They are also the principal
vehicle through which external support for adaptation (e.g., training and capacity building,
etc.) is and will increasingly be delivered. (Environment Solutions Ltd., 2014, p. 193)
This plan demonstrates mainstreaming ideas by creating a form of governance over the water
sector through use of international expertise and standards and improving technical and
institutional capacity to manage water resources and watershed areas. For instance, in observing
the use of data within the context of collection, it is expressed that data collection is essential to
mainstreaming climate adaptation as it serves to inform risk assessments and adaptation plans for
each economic sector. In this way, further analysis of the keyword sector demonstrates economic
growth as a priority for climate adaptation in that the state government is approaching adaptation
using identification of vulnerable economic industries and hazard impacts to formulate strategies
under a national adaptation plan (NAP Global Support Programme, 2017).
5.7 Discussion—illustrating the discursive strategies of state government
Corpus linguistics allowed this research to perform a robust analysis of how the Antigua
and Barbuda national government conceptualized and designed climate adaptation in relation to
development. Performing word collocation of keywords in conjunction with word concordance
evaluated the nuanced ways in which the values and biases of development ideology affected the
government’s responses to environmental change. In comparing these findings with policymaker
interviews, it became evident this ideology was predominantly based in resilience-thinking which
was problematizing climate change vulnerability within the context of economic growth.
Further, content analysis of the formal documents demonstrated how mainstreaming adaptation is
an interplay between national decision maker positions on climate changed and development and
climate financing institutions. Specifically, this analysis found that knowledge of local
environmental change —as demonstrated in the vulnerability and hazard assessment corpus and
interviews with technical expert policymakers—was reshaped within pro-economic growth
framings of adaptation financing to produce knowledge on who and what is subject to climate
change risk.
Through using word concordance to compare the usage of phrases and terms across the
corpora, contradictions emerge between the corpora in regard to problem framings and causes of
environmental change. This is made evident by performing a critical discourse analysis of
interviews and the key phrases and terms from across the corpora to understand how
resiliencethinking took shape as a discursive strategy. In order to organize these findings, I
grouped observations from my recursive analysis under the following categories: problem
framing, rationality, adaptation strategy, and subjects of adaptation responses. This typology is in
line with other scholars who have organized their discourse analysis of positions on climate
change using discursive strategy groupings (See Bäckstrand & Lövbrand, 2019; Koteyko et al.,
2013). Table 5.5 summarizes these findings across the corpora with interpretations elaborated by
critical discourse analysis of text and interviews.
By performing word concordance of the technical phrases used, the hazard and
vulnerability assessments demonstrated extensive use of scientific measurements and numeric
data to make interpretations about the state of the local environment. It also forms part of the
basis to understand how different framings affect understanding and responses to environmental
change (Nightingale, 2016). The authors of these assessments varied in authorship from
academic scholars, technical experts, not-for-profit organizations and the development sector.
Overall, based on the interviews and these texts, these actors reached the same conclusion that a
major issue in Antigua is their limited water supply, degrading coastal and wetland ecosystems
that was affecting community livelihoods, and lack of government capacity to coordinate
resource management. As one technical policymaker noted, their view was that, “Drought [is]
more devastating than flooding for economy with impact on ecosystem [and] more deleterious
than period of flooding [leading to] long-term permanent impacts” (Participant E09). This notion
was supported by the hazard and vulnerability assessment corpus documentation of past
development and environmental pressures that have worsened the state of the coastal and wetland
ecosystems and have increased flood risk for communities. The proposed strategies to deal with
these issues in the context of climate change, entailed integrating disaster risk reduction into
climate adaptation where there is an impacts-based approach that identifies hazards, their sources
and regulates all forms of physical development. This included the involvement of technical
experts that could assess hazards and creating public awareness about disaster risk through
engaging with public interest groups and vulnerable populations.
Table 5.5: Summary of findings within the context of discursive framings.
Corpora Problem Framing Rationality Adaptation
Strategy
Subjects of
adaptation
responses
Hazard and
Vulnerability
Assessments
•Water supply is
extremely
vulnerable to
climate change.
•Coastal
ecosystems and
adjacent
communities are
vulnerable to
climate change
Development and
environmental
pressures:
• Destructive
development
practices in
conjunction with
drought
conditions have
deteriorated
•Hazard
identification/
impacts based
•Regulating/pr
ohibiting
development
•Integrating
disaster risk
reduction into
Technical
experts,
public
interest
groups,
vulnerable
populations
watershed
function
• Dredging
practices of
development
have eroded
coastlines and
increased
flooding
climate
adaptation
Adaptation
Financing
• There is a lack of
financial
resources to
adapt to
environmental
change
Equating
environmental
change coping
capacities with
economic resilience:
•Increasing
economic
destruction
projected from
climate change
•The water cycle
is becoming
increasingly
unpredictable
(limited water
supply/ intense
periods of
precipitation)
Technical and
economic
interventions:
•National
funding entity
for sustainable
forms of
financing
•Risk
assessments
•Desalination
plants
•Infrastructure
improvement
(cleaning of
drainage,
renewable
energy)
Governme
nt
ministries,
internation
al scientific
expertise,
NGOs,
vulnerable
communiti
es, private
sector
Action Plans •
•
There is a lack of
regulatory
oversight over
resource
management and
land use
The water sector
is most
vulnerable to
climate change
and affects other
local industries
Climate change is a
cross-cutting issue:
•Current ad-hoc
solutions do not
coordinate
actions between
government
departments and
economic sectors
•Decisions need
to account for
interactions
between human
and natural
Mainstream
climate change
adaptation across
sectors:
•Legislating
governance
over
environmental
resources and
adaptation
•Creating
zones for
economic
centers and
Critical
economic
sectors
(tourism,
agricultural
, private
entities),
governmen
t ministries
systems
(feedbacks)
residential
development
Within the adaptation financing corpus, different problem framings emerge. Specifically,
the national government’s position is that they lack the finances to effectively adapt to climate
change. In contrast to the hazard and vulnerability assessment corpus, an understanding of
biophysical processes is not the starting point for the problem framing. This has been commonly
found across literature on critical adaptation, which has noted the dominant focus on financing
over other general development concerns (Alam et al., 2011). Instead, the rationality behind this
position is that coping with environmental change is equated to building economic resilience, or
the capacity to withstand financial disaster from climate change risks. In this way, understandings
of local environmental change are focused mostly on the water cycle, as indicated in the
vulnerability and hazard assessments, but is conceptualized as separate from past development
decisions that have contributed to these conditions. This position influenced the kinds of
adaptation strategies that are proposed, as expressed by policymakers, which are in the form of
technical and economic interventions that seek to build sustainable forms of financing from
climate financing institutions and the development sector through their SIRF fund that pay for
infrastructure projects and also supply loans and grants to vulnerable communities, particularly in
degrading watershed areas. In this way, there is evidence of an expansion of the private sector
and international actors in national decision-making in the form of paying into the
SIRF fund and also providing expertise to the national government.
The Action Plan corpus reflected problem framings of environmental change as a
regulatory oversight issue of land use. Pro-development economic rationalities dominate this
corpus as well, with reference to sector or economic industries that are most vulnerable to
climate change, most notably the water sector as it serves many industries, they depend on for
economic growth such as tourism. In this way, these regulatory documents, and plans, most of
which were written to be in line with multilateral environmental agreements, reflect
environmental policymaker positions that climate change is a cross-cutting issue, which requires
cohesive policies and legislation that regulates decision-making across different industries. It is
important to note that the lack of policy regulation is understood as a regional issue by adaptation
planning scholars in the Caribbean, which contend that many countries lack formal rules and
processes that integrate climate risk into day-to-day decision-making (Bizikova et al., 2018;
Scobie, 2016; Thomas & Benjamin, 2018). In this way, mainstreaming adaptation establishes a
way to unite government decision making on environmental change under one legislative
framework (Bizikova, Metternicht, & Yarde, 2015), which is the Environmental Protection and
Management Act 2015. In conjunction with other development plans proposed, this also entailed
formal establishment of specific economic zones to control land use for economic use and
settlement development. As such, the target actors for these plans include the different economic
sectors and various government ministries to coordinate development planning that takes into
account climate risk and other forms of environmental changes.
Through observing the changes in language across the corpora, the national government’s
positioning on environmental change and adaptation was one that was eventually molded under
economic rationalities---demonstrating that knowledge is flexible and dynamic under adaptation
financing discourses. Subsequently, problem framings of environmental change affect the kinds
of solutions that are pursued. As Schipper (2007) notes, this is typical of mainstreaming
adaptation responses, where initial problem framings that establish economic growth as the
problem, mute other concerns such as vulnerability reduction approaches that address the core
issues of development and hazards. This is of notable concern within critical adaptation
scholarship in the Caribbean, which contend that approaches to adaptation should instead take a
climate justice perspective to improve community livelihoods in the long-term by evaluating and
challenging the current development paradigm that molds the uneven power relations between
the development sector and Caribbean SIDS (Bishop & Payne, 2012; Rhiney & Baptiste, 2019;
Sealey-Huggins, 2017).
Ultimately, discourses shape how actors identify and ascribe meaning to climate change,
which affects how local responses take shape (Ojha et al., 2016). In tracing the choice of
language across the corpora and the language used by policymakers, it becomes evident that
producing knowledge on climate change risk is affected by resilience-thinking based
development discourses on pursuing economic growth and using technological interventions and
economic frameworks to climate-proof this growth. On one hand, tracing the choice of lexical
units used within hazard assessments versus the financing process compared to the eventual
policy responses, shows how the mainstreaming process puts dominant focus on economic
growth, while sidelining issues related to past physical development decisions. On the other
hand, this method also shows the nuances of translating adaptation within local development
contexts. Specifically, this text indicated a commonly observed phenomenon of mainstreaming
adaptation practices where there are tensions between different understandings of development
and adaptation (Suckall et al., 2014) that ultimately affects how the process was conceived and
implemented (Gebauer & Doevenspeck, 2015; Weisser et al., 2014). For instance, this
corpusassisted discourse analysis shows that adaptation financing proposals and eventual climate
policies made use of language from the vulnerability and hazard assessments by focusing on the
vulnerability of their water supply but reshaped it to be an economic issue as it is in high demand
from other economic sectors. Based on interviews, this marginalized concerns of technical
experts over lack of conservation of water resources and controlling the development of
degrading watersheds. This illuminates how in the arena of responses to climate change, the
terminology actors or institutions choose “gives a preference to a particular vision or ideological
stance, while marginalizing others” (Jaworska, 2018, p. 203).
5.8 Conclusion
This chapter demonstrated the use of combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis with
ethnographic work from interviews to study how adaptation is conceptualized and designed
alongside development planning. Through focusing on mainstreaming adaptation efforts in
Antigua, I attempted to demonstrate how the language used by the national government
prioritized economic issues within their adaptation planning. This inquiry was driven by previous
research on critical adaptation, which has critiqued that development discourses informed by
global political interests, prioritize pro-economic growth framings over vulnerability reduction
through development sector led mainstreaming adaptation programs. However, most of these
studies relied on discourse analysis to make general findings on language used, missing the
nuances of how mainstreaming adaptation is a dynamic or constantly changing process where
language and ideas shift to form certain positions on policy responses. The use of corpus-assisted
discourse analysis attempted to ameliorate this methodological gap in this field by combining the
quantitative analysis of text through corpus linguistics techniques, keyword frequency and word
collocate statistics, combined with the qualitative analysis of word concordance to describe the
ways development discourses take hold in the mainstreaming adaptation process.
Corpus linguistics helped this study develop lines of inquiry to understand the process of
framing climate adaptation within development using a corpus or specific groupings of
documents organized within an electronic database. This research established three groupings of
documents to trace how different problem framings of environmental change affect subsequent
recommendations to ameliorate identified issues. I organized documents under a vulnerability
and hazard assessment corpus that described and measured environmental change. This was used
as the basis to compare claims made in the adaptation financing corpus, which contained
documents that demonstrate attempts to obtain financing for adaptation measures to improve
technical and financial capacity to cope with disaster, which demonstrated how local
environmental change problems were conceptualized. Finally, the action plans corpus was the
third prong of this analysis as it demonstrated how the national government would ultimately
design a mainstreamed adaptation program. Performing interviews with environmental, technical
and development policymakers, helped articulate the emergence and conceptualization of this
process from the point of view of Antigua’s national government, where I could see the ways
values and biases of development discourses shaped the meaning of particular forms of
environmental change on the island such as their limited freshwater supply. This involved
playing close attention to what was mentioned and what was omitted from interviews, and
discerning if these similar gaps emerged within the text. Using corpus linguistics to perform
comparisons between different groups of documents allowed this research to track these changes
and demonstrate how language changes to accommodate how one positions themselves in
relation to certain issues. Through performing critical discourse analysis of these findings, I was
able to describe the objectives of each corpus and what kinds of ideologies formed positions they
held on adaptation and development. Ultimately, the findings reflected that development
ideologies mostly dominated mainstreaming adaptation conceptualization and design through
prioritizing financing mechanisms and involving outside actors in day-to-day decision making,
but there were particularities in how this translated from conceptualization to policy design,
where local issues had to be shaped within this ideology.
Although this study demonstrated an in-depth look at the language of mainstreaming
adaptation, there still remains room for future improvement. This study was limited by my search
and selection of documents due to my previous knowledge on the kinds of actors involved in this
process. In this way, my researcher bias potentially limited other documents in the search,
perhaps not pertaining to the island that could have been of relevance. In addition, this study only
represents the use of text, which represents a partial view on a social phenomenon. Further
studies, as represented in the next chapter of this dissertation, demonstrate how corpus-assisted
discourse analysis is greatly benefitted by the use of interviews with actors involved in the
adaptation process to add context to my findings. Incorporating further interviews with
communities to contextualize the text can also potentially illustrate how actor experiences with
environmental change and personal interactions affect how they identify problems and create
meaning out of climate change.
CHAPTER SIX
Putting mainstreaming adaptation into operation: evaluating the integration of climate
adaptation into the national development planning practices of a Caribbean SIDS
Chapter 5 introduced one part of this dissertation’s results which was to articulate the
macro-scale climate policymaking processes shaping mainstreaming adaptation practice in
Antigua. In combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis of documents that represent the formal
process of mainstreaming adaptation with interviews of policymakers involved in various aspects
of environmental management, adaptation and development, a picture started to emerge of how
resilience-thinking conceptualizing development planning practice. First, the country’s water
supply represented a key adaptation need to be addressed through mainstreaming, where this
identification was based in risk and hazard assessments of environmental and coastal degradation
within the island’s watersheds that was worsening the island’s position in protecting its water
supply. Second, under adaptation financing frameworks, water supply was conceptualized as a
critical economic sector that needed to be climate-proofed, as it was used by residents and other
forms of development involving agriculture and tourism. Tourism and large-sale forms of
development financed foreign developers were expressed as being a difficult issue for the
Department of Environment to control, as the institution has to grapple with local politicians’
desire to develop and what climate change science is telling them about the island’s risk to
extreme rainfall and exacerbated drought conditions. Overall, based on interviews and
sustainable development plans proposed, there appeared to be a hesitancy in regulating luxury
residency and resort development in coastal flood-prone areas as it is a point of conflict between
technical experts and politicians. Instead, the nation’s position on key adaptation needs entailed
improving development planning in a way that regulated residential development in flood-prone
areas of watersheds.
Chapter 6 builds on the previous chapter by demonstrating a comprehensive view of how
this macro-scale climate policymaking process is operationalized into the micro-scale politics of
development planning by unpacking the process from the positionalities and knowledge of
interest groups involved in mainstreaming. Specifically, this chapter will elaborate on these
findings within the context of the Mckinnon’s watershed and Christian Valley watershed, where
mainstreaming adaptation practices are being piloted. The goal of this chapter is to illustrate the
relations between knowledge, institutions and development practices—placing critical focus on
the socio-environmental struggles between different interest groups that are shaping the scope of
adaptation needs. Findings from this chapter intend to demonstrate how mainstreaming
adaptation promotes a form of resilience-thinking that is flexible to local socio-political contexts.
In doing so, my findings illustrate how an adaptation economy practice is emerging to
climateproof the nation’s development planning, where the country’s environmental and
development policymakers are attempting to extract economic value from climate change
vulnerability to demonstrate their adaptation needs to receive financing. Findings follow the
pluralistic framework on the socionatural realities of climate change as presented in chapters 2-3
to define how particular problem framings of climate change become authoritative, and whose
values and interests count in mainstreaming adaptation decision-making spaces.
Lastly, in answering the second question of this dissertation—how do established
development discourses and agendas shape emerging adaptation processes, and in what ways do
these relations act to reinforce the drivers of SIDS vulnerability— this chapter demonstrates the
usage of grounded theory with mixed methods to facilitate theory building that describes and
explains the drivers behind adaptation decisions from the perspective of local framings, which
can account for challenges that a theoretically driven or objective based analysis might have
overlooked. As mentioned earlier in chapter 2, mainstreaming adaptation should to be observed
as a dialectic between the political dynamics which from the subjects of climate change and the
changing discursive constructions which define development. This chapter articulates this
dialectic by examining three key discursive aspects of the adaptation economy practice:1)
producing knowledge on climate risk, 2) building financial and institutional capacity, and 3)
identifying causal drivers of loss and damages. These findings illustrate the interplay between
discursive framings of mainstreaming and material planning practices. In addition, some part of
the research design section will repeat concepts from the methods chapter as each chapter is
fashioned as a stand-alone paper for publication.
6.1 Introduction
Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been heavily involved in
mainstreaming adaptation efforts over the past 20 years through different international and
regional trainings on how to design adaptation plans and climate policies that can be
continuously integrated into national development policies and planning (Rhiney & Baptiste,
2019; Thomas et al., 2019). These trainings have been typically funded and implemented by
organizations with significant connection to the development sector such as the Global
Environmental Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the Climate Investment Fund (CIF) and the
Inter-American Development Bank (The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre 2020).
This has brought into question the role of development ideology in shaping the definition of
climate and environmental change for developing countries, and subsequent adaptation responses
to these issues (Cannon & Müller-Mahn, 2010; Ireland & McKinnon, 2013; Schipper, 2007).
Specifically, it has been found that development ideology shapes values and biases (discourses)
around adaptation which primarily frame climate change issues as an economic and
technological problem—potentially marginalizing underlying drivers of vulnerabilityin
developing countries including uneven development (e.g., access and distribution of financial
and environmental resources) (Mikulewicz & Taylor, 2020; Ojha et al., 2016). Therefore, the
pursuits of mainstreaming adaptation have been mainly observed as state governments
attempting to align understandings of climate risk with economic growth priorities (See Alam et
al., 2011; Barrett, 2014; Denton, 2010; Scoville-Simonds et al., 2020). While there is a rich
literature from critical adaptation studies that documents these on the ground processes, scholars
still lack an understanding of how these uneven power dynamics operate and shape development
trajectories (Eriksen et al., 2015).
Current approaches within critical adaptation studies primarily rely upon rich narratives
to describe how state governments integrate development sector driven understandings of
adaptation into national development planning—which commonly tend to miss explanations of
how and why specific issues become prioritized through development agendas (Sherman et al.,
2016). This chapter contends that these explanations are missing due to using pre-conceived
theories that can limit the kinds of data collected, and assumptions about findings in local
settings. Using grounded theory and mixed methods, this chapter attempts to theorize about the
operational aspects of power dynamics within mainstreaming adaptation efforts grounded in the
perspective of actors involved in the process, which include community members with a stake in
the mainstreaming planning process and state government individuals who are involved in
creating policies or plans involving environmental management and development planning.
Drawing from qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques, I contend that understanding
the particularities of power struggles are embedded in elucidating the pluralism of mainstreaming
adaptation decisions, where the positions and knowledge of different interest groups shape whose
values, interests and agendas count in planning. Through this analysis, the chapter argues that
mainstreaming adaptation is being realized as an adaptation economy practice, where the practice
of development planning under mainstreaming adaptation entails extracting economic value from
vulnerability in a way that sustains the flow of climate financing for adaptation projects.
In this study, I theorize about how the adaptation economy paradigm is conceptualized
alongside development planning practices through mainstreaming adaptation efforts in the
Eastern Caribbean country of Antigua and Barbuda. This chapter will be organized as follows.
The following section will review the political economic context of Caribbean SIDS and the state
of adaptation practices. This will be preceded by a brief overview of Antigua’s mainstreaming
efforts and the case study communities this chapter will be focusing on. The fourth section will
review the methodological approaches and provide a description of the data analysis. The fifth
section will present the results of the mixed method approaches. The sixth section will discuss
the results and provide an explanation of a grounded theory based on comparison of major
patterns from results. The final section will provide a summary of findings and future gaps to
address in research.
6.2 Study focus: Situating mainstreaming adaptation practices within Caribbean SIDS
development trajectories
It is understood that national responses to environmental change are embedded in
conflicts over the identification of who and what is considered vulnerable to climate change and
the meaning of adaptation needs (Manuel-Navarrete & Pelling, 2015; Mills-Novoa & Liverman,
2019). Within the context of SIDS, critical adaptation scholarship has demonstrated that these
politics are predominantly shaped by pro-development discourses (development sector interests
that exert power and control over problem framings of environmental change within SIDS) that
promote resilience-thinking rationalities which equate problems of climate change to their
‘islandness’ conditions (limited knowledge, ecological, financial and technical resources) that
limit their capacity to build their economies in a way that is resilient or could bounce back from
frequent and more intense extreme weather events (Kelman, 2018; Klepp & Chavez-Rodriguez,
2018). In turn, these rationalities affect the kinds of adaptation strategies countries choose, and
who is subject to be involved (Grove, 2010; Saxena et al., 2018). These discourses of
development exert power and control over SIDS as a majority of adaptation programs that
provide trainings and financing are funded or implemented by the development sector, which
promote the view that SIDS need to prioritize economic growth and technological modernization
in order to cope with environmental change (Pascoe et al., 2019; Webber, 2015). This is
significant as it has shown that these discourses tend to mute other issues of concern such as
socio-economic inequality and conflicts over resources, which tend to be the underlying drivers
that affects a SIDS ability to cope with environmental change (Bordner et al., 2020; Petzold &
Ratter, 2019).
Literature on the underlying drivers of uneven development in Caribbean SIDS has noted
post-colonialism or the influence of colonial legacies, where country assets and resources
continue to be externally controlled by powerful countries and institutional actors (Bishop &
Payne, 2012). Specifically, these legacies have been driven by development sector interventions
on economic restructuring which perpetuated sovereign control over former colonies by
reinforcing that economic interventions are needed for SIDS to compete in the global free market
due to their inability to pursue industrial forms of development as in other developing countries
(Lee et al., 2015). Subsequently, this established a development trajectory for many islands in the
Caribbean where transitions from monoculture to coastal tourism was the optimal way to pursue
economic growth. (Baldacchino, 2006, 2010; Campling, 2006; Pugh, 2018; Read, 2018).
As an examination of critical development literature in general, and Caribbean SIDS
more specifically in chapters 2-3 would suggest, pro-development ideologies which promote
resilience-thinking under mainstreaming adaptation practices form the power and politics which
underscore the definition of adaptation needs. At the same time, these macro-scale processes
cannot be considered in a vacuum. Considering the development context of Caribbean SIDS, it
would also suggest that micro-scale processes involving socio-environmental struggles play an
equally important role in shaping what policymakers assert as the country’s adaptation needs.
While studies of adaptation planning thus far in the Caribbean have shown that countries
minimally address the structural drivers of vulnerability by focusing on economic or
technological interventions (Dulal et al., 2009; Howard, 2018; Popke et al., 2016; Robinson &
Wren, 2020) —there remains a gap in understanding how vulnerabilities and inequities tied to
these post-colonial development trajectories (and their discourses) influence the identification of
climate change subjects (Rhiney & Baptiste 2019). In response, this chapter uses a socionatural
theoretical framing to conceptualize how adaptation needs emerge from an interplay between
mainstreaming adaptation processes and socio-environmental conflicts. This framing views
adaptation from a pluralistic perspective—contending that an individual’s understanding of
environmental biophysical changes is embedded in socio-political conflicts which shape how
they ascribe meaning to climate change (Castree and Braun 2001). Therefore, the competition
between different knowledge, values and interests shape the meaning of adaptation and its
material practices (Eriksen et al. 2021). As such, this chapter will closely analyze the conflicts
between different interest groups, and how these power dynamics determine whose positions
count in defining adaptation needs for mainstreaming.
6.3 Case Study: Mckinnon’s and Christian Valley watershed communities of Antigua
Antigua is a two-island nation state with its sister island Barbuda (Figure 6.1), where a
large concentration of communities and economic activity is located in low-lying coastal zones
prone to frequent flooding. The country introduced its Climate Change Transformational
program in 2020 to build resilience to extreme weather events. The goal of the program is to
design, sustain and implement interventions and continuously financing this process through
mainstreaming, where adaptation financing and knowledge is to be continuously integrated into
all facets of development planning. The impetus behind establishing this mainstreaming
adaptation program lies in the country’s economic positioning globally and the scope of hazards
they face, where the Antigua and Barbuda government contends that:
Antigua and Barbuda is ranked 152nd in the world for access to finance compared to
other countries11. The country has just coped with a three-year drought during which
time the percentage of water generated by desalination had to be increased from 40% to
80% in just a few short years and Barbuda was completely decimated by Category 5
Hurricane Irma in September 2017. This has placed a strain on the country since access to
capital and credit is challenging. It is difficult for the country to maintain its economic
growth if it were to face another hurricane or other natural disaster. The likelihood of
these disasters has increased due to climate change caused by GHG emissions polluting
our shared atmosphere, a problem to which the country has contributed very little.
(Government of Antigua and Barbuda, 2020)
This situates mainstreaming adaptation as an economic need, where due to the lack of the
country’s access to development-aid because of its categorization as a middle-high income
country, equates to needing other sources of funding for development priorities, mitigation
strategies and adaptation solutions (Robinson & Carlson 2021). Leading up to this program, the
government instituted several large-scale changes to their modes of environmental governance
and management of economic resources to finance adaptation efforts. In 2015, the Government
of Antigua and Barbuda introduced the Environmental Protection and Management Act to
establish the Department of Environment and its roles in governance over climate adaptation
activities and management of environmental resources. The Sustainable Island Resource Fund
(SIRF) was introduced through this legislation to “manage international and domestic climate
change funding and to help mainstream programmes and projects into national development
strategies and plans at the country level” (Smith et al., 2011, p. 997).
In order to test how the program will work for the whole country, the government is
piloting its mainstreaming adaptation efforts for communities located in the Mckinnon’s
watershed and Christian Valley watershed located on the Northwestern and Western side,
respectively. Projects in the Mckinnon’s watershed have focused on how to implement SIRF
financing mechanisms for household loans for adaptation, improve drainage to minimize
flooding, and building of disaster shelters. While a majority of the watershed is devoted to
residential land use, resort development dominates the northeastern part of the watershed, and oil
refinery development covers the western part of the watershed. Both of these kinds of
developments have heavily degraded the area by removing extensive swaths of wetlands and
mangrove systems, which has been a key point of conflicts between the watershed’s communities
and the government (de Albuquerque & McElroy, 1994). Limited data exists on the income of
the residents in the area, but according to a recent report for the Adaptation Fund that assessed
who could be eligible for low-interest loans in Mckinnon’s watershed from the fund, low-income
households are located along the waterway that feeds into Mckinnon’s Pond
(Nicholson et al., 2016).
The coastal communities of Christian Valley on the Western coast are also incorporated as
part of these projects to expand household access to the SIRF for energy efficiency technology
and other adaptation measures. Experimentation with the SIRF is being conducted in these
communities as they experience frequent flooding and are important watersheds that provide a
majority of the island’s water supply. Limited census data exists within this area as well but
based on mapping and site visits, a tourism enclave which forms the Jolly Harbor (Bolans)
community exists on the eastern side of the watershed, which includes resorts and villa
developments consisting mostly seasonal residents. The remaining land use in the watershed
consists of residential development. Similar to the Mckinnon’s watershed, the Jolly Harbor
development removed extensive mangrove systems, causing contentious relations between the
residents of this watershed and the government over the increased flooding in their area due to
the transformation of the landscape (Baldwin, 2000; Lewsey et al., 2004; Mcelroy & de
Albuquerque, 1997).
Figure 6.1: Situating Antigua within the Caribbean region. Map by author.
6.4 Research Approach and Methodology: a mixed-method grounded theory analysis
6.4.1 Rationale-Merging grounded theory and mixed methods
This research combines grounded theory with mixed methods to understand how
adaptation is integrated into the local development planning context of Antigua based in the
perspectives of interest groups involved in the mainstreaming process. A pluralistic research
agenda guides this research design, which is based on Nightingale’s (2016) call for an
epistemological pluralism to adaptation research where “In order to see adaptation, we need to
probe discourses and perceptions of climate change, political economies, and social and political
struggles, rather than biophysical change per se” (p. 43). It entails using different kinds of data to
discern the socio-political processes which are driving problem framings of climate change and
planning practices which are a response to these problem framings.
Grounded forms of analyses are typically used within critical adaptation studies which
seek to understand how adaptation ideas formed in global settings are shaped within local
political economic settings (Eriksen & Lind, 2009; Fisher, 2015; Mikulewicz & Taylor, 2020;
Weisser et al., 2014). Typically, these studies perform policy analysis combined with content
analysis of ethnographic datasets from interviews, surveys, workshops and/or participant
observation (See for example, Nagoda, 2015; Popke et al., 2016; Robinson, 2019; Vogel &
Henstra, 2015; Warner, 2016). However, most studies have used mixed-methods to vet findings
between different datasets—trying to confirm one set of findings over another. The issue with
using mixed methods in this way, is that it tends to privilege pre-conceived theoretical
frameworks or treat biophysical processes as separate from the social conditions which moderate
these dynamics (Nightingale, 2003). This has translated into a majority of social science research
that has separated climatic drivers from the social conditions in which they occur (Nightingale et
al., 2020). In many ways, relying on pre-conceived theoretical frameworks counteract the goals
of critical adaptation research, which has firmly established that socio-political conditions and
biophysical processes are deeply connected to each other through the power dynamics which
dictate the ways resources are used and distributed (Milman & Arsano, 2014; Ribot, 2014;
Scoones, 2016). As a counter to this critique, this chapter draws from feminist geographic
research that has used mixed methods to draw on different ways of understanding how
environmental change is embedded in social change as opposed to using a pre-conceived theory
as starting point of inquiry (Hesse-Biber, 2012; Knigge & Cope, 2006; Nightingale, 2016;
Whatmore, 2002) Specifically of relevance to this chapter, this field has used mixed methods
combining computer aided qualitative data software (CAQDAS) and Geographical Information
(GIS) software (e.g., ArcMap) to explore different kinds of data analysis that could provide
multiple perspectives on the power dynamics and discourses that shape relations between
biophysical processes and social dynamics (Hurley et al., 2008; Kwan, 2004; Nightingale, 2003).
In order to perform explorative research with a pluralistic design, this study uses
grounded theory to provide a form of analysis that begins with open data collection and
exploration of findings through comparative analysis to yield a theory that is grounded in
different perspectives from the datasets. The goal of this analysis is to generate a theory from
data about the social world to explain how a social phenomenon works in context. Grounded
theory produces sets of related concepts that explain problem problems that are grounded in
participant positionalities and knowledge, where the assumption is that the expression of these
conditions is in relation to broader socio-political structures (Knigge & Cope, 2006). In addition,
a grounded theory approach can facilitate theory building that describes and explains the drivers
behind adaptation decisions from the perspective of local framings—accounting for challenges
that a theoretically driven or objective base analysis might have overlooked (Moser et al., 2019).
In many ways, grounded theory attempts to ameliorate the issue of privileging datasets by
relying on theory building to arise from iterative analysis and multiple cycles of data collection
to identify conceptual patterns (Lingard et al., 2008; Strauss & Corbin, 1994). Key features of
using grounded theory include theoretical sampling (abstractions and generalizations from data
findings until no more findings can be made); comparative data analysis (continuous comparison
of datasets using researcher defined categories to compare commonalities and differences); and
exploration and emergence (conceptual patterns emerge from datasets rather than pre-conceived
frameworks imposed on data) (Walsh, 2015, p. 6). Coding is a critical analytical technique of
grounded theory that connects all of these key features, as it allows the researcher to apply labels
to lines of text and audiovisual data that aids in the organization and sorting of data into relevant
categories and concepts. Grounded theory studies typically rely upon CAQDAS software such as
ATLAS.ti in order to organize data and perform comparative analysis using codes.
6.4.2 Research Design
Figure 6.2 illustrates how this research made use of a grounded theory research design
embedded in mixed-methods data collection and analysis. Theoretical sampling was based in
datasets that could attend to how understandings or knowledge of environmental change is
constructed, which included spatial data, corpus linguistics data and ethnographic data. Each
kind of dataset provides a perspective on what kinds of generalizations can be drawn about the
politics of adaptation— how are issues framed, who is framing these issues, and in what ways do
these processes create conflict (See Artur & Hilhorst, 2012; Goldman et al., 2018; Tanner &
Allouche, 2011; Tschakert et al., 2016).
The first kind of theoretical sampling came from corpus linguistics data of formal policy
proceedings related to mainstreaming adaptation in Antigua, which included 139 documents
grouped into 3 electronic database lists based on adaptation financing, risk and vulnerability
assessments, and action plans to manage environmental change. This technique empirically
determines trends across different sets of text— useful for studying discursive strategies of the
state where theoretical generalizations can be made about the drivers behind state problem
framings of the island’s climate and environment and the rationalities behind subsequent
adaptation strategies (See Chapter 5 of dissertation for more details). Specifically, the research
made use of corpus linguistic techniques that included keyword analysis and word collocation.
Keyword analysis counts words most frequently used in text. This study chose the top 10
keywords from each document group as produced by ATLAS.ti. This was followed by analyzing
word collocation of the keywords to determine which words are most significantly connected to
the keyword using word collocation statistics in CasualConc, an open-source text analysis
software. The z-score was calculated for each keyword to identify the most significant context
words for each keyword. I would also further investigate the significance of these findings by
using the keyword in context function (KWIC) to see how keywords and context words would
exist as lexical units, such as certain phrasings or terms. This would guide the search phrases I
would input into the autocoding function of ATLAS.ti. For this function, I used subcoding labels
to demarcate search phrases, which used the following format, keyword:context word (e.g.,
water: supply).
Figure 6.2: An overview of analysis.
The second kind of theoretical sampling was derived from ethnographic data that
included semi-structured interviews with 46 homeowners in the Christian Valley and Mckinnon’s
watershed area and 18 government officials, NGOs actors and private sector to provide high level
perspectives on the mainstreaming adaptation process. The interviews provide insight into what
kinds of experiences different actors have had with the adaptation process, but also how they
choose to frame problems around environmental change. Participant observation at a community
meeting on adaptation financing and renewable energy and communication materials from media
offered insights on how the government was choosing to communicate the adaptation process to
the target communities, and what kinds of problem framings they were trying to communicate to
wider sets of actors including climate financing institutions. These datasets are useful in making
generalizations on the performative aspects of adaptation, which tries to understand how
vulnerable identities are framed through interactions between different sets of actors (Webber,
2013). These datasets were coded using ATLAS.ti, involving initial coding, which separates
datasets into distinct parts based on preliminary examination; and In
Vivo coding, which uses the exact phrasing from text as a code.
Spatial data provided the third form of theoretical sampling that was derived from 1) 21
georeferenced aerials of the Christian Valley and Mckinnon’s watershed taken by the British
Royal Air Force during 1941, 1958, 1966, and 1968; 2) publicly available spatial datasets of land
use, parcel type, settlement distribution, water courses, water features, land and cover; and 3)
georeferenced features from documents and interviews concerning flooding, special development
zones, watershed boundaries, changes in land use and land cover, and geotagged field photos in
communities of Mckinnon’s and Christian Valley watersheds. Geographic visualization is useful
in exploring claims in the corpus linguistics and the ethnographic datasets. The pan and zoom
function of the GIS software was used to compare features of the watershed areas from these
different spatial datasets. This included comparing different historical aerials, which involved
observing environmental features that changed over time. Understanding processes over time
was a second component to the geographic visualization where historical patterns of settlement
and land cover were compared with present day conditions. This led to the digitization of
changes in features such as settlement patterns, water features and land cover. Focusing and
brushing allowed this study to highlight sets of spatial features such as parcels of land and
structures within flood zones, and watercourse shapefiles overlaid with historical aerials. All
three techniques entailed coordination between ethnographic, corpus linguistics and GIS datasets
where some aspects of the ethnographic data guided digitization of significant spatial features.
Features I felt that were of significance were recorded in the feature class attribute database. The
significance of spatial features was driven by a critical content analysis of the ethnographic and
corpus linguistic data to elucidate power struggles and contradictory forms of planning. 6.4.3
Analysis
Documents were analyzed by reviewing their content in addition to using software to
analyze their conceptual patterns. Coding was used to help organize key conceptual patterns, but
the critical content analysis reviewed the context in which patterns were emerging from. The
coded quotations and attributes produced from the different forms of theoretical sampling was
used to guide comparative analysis between the datasets, which involved merging the datasets
into a single tabular display using Excel. This allowed me to cluster different kinds of data based
on what kinds of topics they covered, and to closely analyzed the way these quotations and
attributes were used by different author perspectives of this content, and in what ways these
clusters represented particular positions on adaptation needs and power dynamics that were
guiding positions. I first organized data based on their type of theoretical sampling
(ethnographic, spatial, or corpus linguistics). Alongside each line of data, I included the author of
the data source. In total, the spreadsheet included 27 spatial data features, 124 ethnography
quotations, and 545 corpus linguistics quotations. In addition, color coding of the theoretical
sampling type and author source was used as a visualization tactic so when I would compare the
different datasets, I could easily visualize the context of the data source and theorize about what
kinds of meaning of environmental change are being demonstrated.
Using axial coding techniques, I analyzed how the datasets could be broken down into
core themes by sorting and labeling content into conceptual categories referring to social or
environmental processes. At the same time, content analysis was used to closely observe how
these categories were grounded in different participant voices. Based on axial coding and content
analysis, the social processes conceptual categories included the topics urban, economic
development, people, technology, financial, institutional roles, and the environmental processes
conceptual category included drainage, beach, drought, flooding, sea-level rise, mangroves,
hurricanes, and watershed. In creating these categories, the multi-stage process of focused
coding was used to investigate commonalities between themes and categories to evaluate critical
relationships that could be formed as significant categories occurring under the social or
environmental processes theme. Content analysis was also heavily used during this step to
closely analyze how these relationships were depicted across the datasets. Through this process, I
analyzed each category and arranged them according to their significance and/or frequency.
Iterative comparison of datasets showed that categories could be based on social conditions,
environmental conditions and strategic responses to cope with environmental change. Based on
combining focus coding and content analysis, I formed major categories based on social
conditions, environmental conditions and adaptation strategy (Table 6.1). The categories under
social conditions are representative of categories that denote human interactions with the
environment. Environmental conditions categorized data that illustrated environmental
conditions in Antigua. The categories represented in the table represent significant categories that
were used to synthesize ideas about how meaning is ascribed to adaptation within the context of
conflicts between different interests, values and agendas.
Table 6.1: Summary of categories resulting from recursive analysis.
Category Definition
Social Conditions
Processes and outcomes of urbanization Refers to urbanization categorized as
exacerbating vulnerability for the island or a
process that is viewed as needing to be
accommodated for adaptation planning
Economic development is vulnerable to
climate change
Refers to ideas that situate the island’s
economy as an asset to be protected from
climate risks
Individual and community vulnerability Ideas and/or physical evidence identifying
individuals and communities in Antigua that
are vulnerable to environmental and/or
climate risk
Institutional capacity for adaptation Ideas and views surrounding the legislative,
policy and governmental capacity to
implement adaptation projects
Environmental Conditions
Improvement of drainage Characterizations of the quality of water flow,
and impediments to current water flow
processes
Quality of coastal ecosystem Characterizations of the coastal ecosystem
such as the threats it faces from environment,
human and climatic forces
Drought conditions Refers to characterizations about Antigua’s
lack of rainfall and/or limited water supply
Flooding conditions Describes kinds of flooding that occurs,
and/or causes of flooding.
Hurricane frequency and severity Characterizations about Antigua’s hurricane
season increasing in magnitude.
Watershed management Characteristics that define watershed features
and aspects of these features that need to be
managed
6.5 Results
This section will present findings that articulate the adaptation economy practice in
Antigua through a close examination of the interplay between knowledge, institutions and
development planning to illustrate the interscalar power and politics that shape adaptation needs.
In the case of Antigua’s mainstreaming adaptation approach, the paradigm which is guiding this
integration is based on extracting economic value from identifying climate change vulnerability.
Each part of the adaptation economy practice demonstrated here (producing knowledge on
climate risk, building financing and institutional capacity and identifying causal drivers of loss
and damages) demonstrates how extracting economic value from climate change vulnerability
relies upon identifying the subjects of climate change within the context of pro-development
discourses to promote a kind of climate resilient development where adaptation projects can be
continually financed. This section demonstrates how the shape of this practice is influenced by
the negotiation and struggle over values, interests and agendas of climate financing institutions,
national government and communities.
6.5.1 Conceptual Pattern 1: Producing knowledge on climate risk
The first major theme explores how knowledge is constructed around vulnerability to
climate risk within the context of mainstreaming adaptation into watershed development
planning (Table 6.2). In particular, the section will detail how knowledge production on climate
risk occurred through interscalar knowledge building activities that included proposal writing for
climate financing and community meeting engagements. Through examining the corpus
linguistics results, it was found that problem framings of environmental change play a critical
role in determining the direction of how to mainstream adaptation into national development
agendas. Performing keyword analysis and word collocation analysis for each corpus group —
adaptation financing, hazard and vulnerability assessments, and action plans to manage
environmental change— demonstrated that the government’s position on environmental change
and adaptation was one predominantly molded under resilience-thinking rationalities of
economic growth.
Table 6.2: Comparison of datasets and code categories for the first conceptual pattern.
Conceptual
Pattern
Data Source Observations Social
Conditions
Environmental
Conditions
Producing
knowledge
on climate
risk
•CL: Economic growth
rationalities shape
understandings of drought and
flooding conditions as
economic issue
•ED: state government
communicating a sense of
urgency among local
vulnerable population to build
political will for adaptation
projects. Connect climate risk
• Individual and
community
vulnerability
•Drought
conditions
•Flooding
conditions
with local experiences of
environmental change.
• SD: Adaptation project site
selection of vulnerable
communities based in
already-existing flood zones
driven by development and
environmental pressures
These findings were further investigated through producing a code matrix in ATLAS.ti
that produced counts of each code group, which was then used to produce a tabular count table in
excel (Figure 6.3). The hazard and vulnerability assessment corpus focuses a majority of its text
to vulnerable aspects of the environment to climate risk such as sea-level rise (n=55) and
hurricane frequency and intensity (n=355), and degrading aspects of Antigua’s environment
related to mangrove destruction (n=15), improvement of drainage (n=49), flooding conditions,
(n=68) quality of coastal environment (n=394) and drought conditions (n=377). The adaptation
financing corpus text mostly focused on renewable energy and energy efficient technology
(n=652), institutional capacity for adaptation (n=188), individual and community vulnerability
(n=621), economic development vulnerable to climate change, (n=926) and creating a supply and
demand for adaptation (n=1532). The aspects of text that relate to the environment include
quality of coastal environment (n=222), hurricane frequency and severity (n=24), flooding
conditions (n=2) and drought conditions (n=232). However, these are mentioned significantly
less than in the vulnerability assessment text. The Action Plans corpus showed greater emphasis
on mangrove conservation and destruction (n=123) and improvement of drainage (n=150) than
both the climate financing corpus and vulnerability corpus.
Discourse analysis of the texts revealed that climate financing institutions play a
significant role in driving economic growth rationalities as they determine the conditions under
which countries receive financing for adaptation efforts (Figure 6.3). Through close analysis of
the content of these documents along with policymaker interviews, it appeared that climate
financing agencies (GEF, GCF, AF) played a central role in resolving the tension between the
national government’s desire to develop and the projections from climate change science.
Specifically, countries have to self-diagnose their vulnerability to extreme weather events by
demonstrating the extreme state of their vulnerability to climate change in order to demonstrate
the need for financing and expertise (Mills-Novoa & Liverman, 2019). As such, problem
framings of environmental change within the adaptation financing context begin with the notion
that there is a lack of financial resources to adapt to environmental change. Using this starting
point, the government has to focus on certain biophysical processes that can visualize this need,
which may marginalize other issues that are the drivers of their vulnerability. A clear example of
this was how the keyword water was used across the three corpus groups. It was the most used
keyword in the hazard and vulnerability assessment and action plan corpus, while it ranked in at
number 6 in the adaptation financing corpus. The hazard and vulnerability corpus focused on the
water supply being extremely vulnerable to climate change due to development (tourism,
dredging) and environmental pressures (drought) that have deteriorated the function of
watersheds to contain freshwater supplies. Subsequently, the authors of these documents contend
that integrating disaster risk reduction into climate adaptation was needed to regulate and
prohibit development projects in sensitive areas. Across the adaptation financing and action plans
corpora we see the idea of water supply highlighted as a major climate change issue for the
island, but within the broader context of the water cycle, where limited water supply and extreme
precipitation events become the core biophysical process that affect their economic growth
through limiting the amount of water needed by different economic industries and flooding
communities. In contrast to the hazard and vulnerability corpus, while action plans on
environmental change produce legislation to mainstream adaptation across different economic
sectors, there is a lack of detail on how to regulate destructive development projects.
WATERSHED MANAGEMENT 292 168 456
URBANIZATION IS A SOURCE OF PROBLEMS AND … 264 267 301
SEA-LEVEL RISE RISK 01 55
RENEWABLE AND ENERGY EFFICIENT TECHNOLOGY 10 652 36
QUALITY OF COASTAL ENVIRONMENT 127 222 394
MANGROVE CONSERVATION AND DESTRUCTION 123 0 15
INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY FOR ADAPTATION 73 188 66
INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY VULNERABILITY 6 621 40
IMPROVEMENT OF DRAINAGE 180 0 49
HURRICANE FREQUENCY AND SEVERITY 024 355
FLOODING CONDITIONS 21 2 68
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IS VULNERABLE TO CLIMATE … 182 926 130
DROUGHT CONDITIONS 286 232 377
CREATING SUPPLY AND DEMAND FOR ADAPTATION … 80 1532 0
Action Plans Corpus Adaptation Financing Corpus Hazard and Vulnerability Assessments Corpus
Figure 6.3: Comparison of code frequency between adaptation financing, action plans and
hazard and vulnerability assessment corpus.
A second key part of this section’s findings is that producing knowledge on climate risk is
also a communication effort between the state government and communities to create a sense of
urgency that would increase political will behind adaptation policies and plans. Building political
will behind adaptation efforts demonstrates the involvement of multiple interest groups in the
mainstreaming adaptation process. Through the mainstreaming process, as opposed with
development sector-driven initiatives of the past, there is a negotiation between the needs and
concerns of different interest groups.
Table 6.3: A selection of quotes from policymakers emphasizing the difficulty of communication
between the state government and communities.
Participant Code Exemplary Quote
E11 The science is easy and that is not what the problem is. The problem is
communication.
E01 How do you communicate the global good to people whose values are
different…how do you communicate that to people who cannot even
withdraw money from the bank?
E02 Local people are not exactly experiencing [the] urgency of climate
change and it affects people’s support of project.
E06 A regular person would not know any of this [legislation].
A lot of policy is written through grants, but it is not focused on
education awareness.
As demonstrated through select quotes from policymakers, communication with
community members about climate risk is an effort to gain support behind government responses
to these efforts (Table 6.3). In this way, as according to participant E06, there needs to be a focus
on education awareness. However, this would also infer in some ways a top-down process of
knowledge transfer where the state communicates their perspectives on environmental change as
the dominant view. This is in line with participant E01’s concern that local values are different
from global views on environmental change and making suggestions from a global point of view
does not take local experiences into consideration. In comparing policymaker positionalities with
the climate financing proposals, it was found that the goal of adaptation financing is devoted to
addressing individual and community vulnerability, therefore the national government had to
make a concerted effort to connect national scale conceptualizations of climate risk with local
scale experiences of hazard. Subsequently, in order to pursue adaptation financing projects in
watershed areas, communication had to connect climate risk with community members’ daily
experiences with flooding. This was most evident through attending a community meeting in
Bolan’s, a community in the Christian Valley watershed and examining video recordings of
community meetings in Yorks, a community in the Mckinnon’s watershed. Representatives from
the department of Environment contextualized climate risk within the context of the Paris
Agreement to demonstrate the rationality behind the benefits of taking out financial loans
through the SIRF fund to cope with climate change. Rather than communicating about specific
climate risk, emphasis was on communicating understandings about how financing for adaptation
works and who are the national and international actors involved.
In this way, mapping played a critical role in exploring how creating knowledge of
climate risk in the Mckinnon’s and Christian Valley watersheds had to connect with
alreadyexisting hazards. In order to explore the context of flooding in these communities, maps
were created to compare the state of land use and where hazard and vulnerability assessments
from
CARIBSAVE and community member participants denoted flooding during interviews (Figure
6.4). Performing pan and zoom functions on these maps allowed me to perform a comparative
analysis where I compared community and institutional positions with spatial representations of
their claims about the state of the biophysical environment. Through comparing spatial data with
ethnographic data, it was emerging that these communities aligned with the extreme vulnerability
narrative of adaptation financing narratives. For instance, in the Bolands community, a
significant majority of the homes have experienced flooding. In the Mckinnon’s community,
many homes by the pond and along the waterway experience frequent flooding events. In some
ways, this would communicate that flooding events would only get worse with climate change;
hence an intervention is needed for these communities. Through closer examination of the
CARISBSAVE vulnerability assessments conducted within these communities, a pattern
emerged where residents would be asked the location of flooding, but not provide an explanation
of why it floods. Instead, the organization provided an impacts-based explanation of why the area
floods, referring to extreme rainfall, and negligence of the past development decisions that
community members expressed through interviews as causing the flooding.
Figure 6.4: Maps comparing flooding experiences in the (a) Christian Valley and (b) Mckinnon’s
watershed communities. Maps by author.
6.5.2 Conceptual Pattern 2: Creating the financial and institutional capacity to cope with
disaster and climate change
The previous section demonstrated how the subjects of climate change vulnerability are
identified (who and what is vulnerable)—offering a partial description of the adaptation economy
practice by illustrating how adaptation is conceptualized within the context of economic growth
pursuits. This process entailed producing knowledge on climate risk embedded in the nation self-
diagnosing their vulnerability as it relates to climate-proofing their economic growth. Here, the
second conceptual pattern evaluates the operationalization of mainstreaming by describing how
the adaptation economy practice prioritizes restructuring financial and institutional arrangements
(Table 6.4). Examination of corpus linguistics results reveals that the outside influence of
adaptation financing institutions and multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) shaped the
country’s transition from environmental management to governance — incorporating the
interests of outside institutions and experts— to coordinate actions and interests between
international and state institutions. Through performing code co-occurrence analysis on phrases
used within the adaptation financing corpus, findings showed a significant correlation between
climate adaptation and setting up the institutional capacity to accommodate financing (Figure
6.5).
Table 6.4: Comparison of datasets and code categories for the second conceptual pattern.
Conceptual
Pattern
Data Source Observations Social
Conditions
Environmental
Conditions
Creating the
financial and
institutional
capacity to
cope with
disaster and
climate change
•CL: state rationality is that
the island’s economy
should be resilient to the
impacts of climate change,
where the economy can
“bounce back” to normal
after disaster
•ED: Institutional capacity
building efforts follow
climate financing donor
interests
•SD: Economic priorities
choose urban expansion in
sensitive watershed areas,
which are also targeted for
adaptation projects
•Processes
and
outcomes of
urbanization
•Economic
development
is vulnerable
to climate
change
•Institutional
capacity for
adaptation
•Watershed
management
•Quality of coastal
ecosystem
Specifically, I illustrated the amount of times phrases such as adaptation interventions,
adaptation measures and adaptation window overlapped with other phrases in the corpus (Figure
6.5). Adaptation phrases strongly correlated with phrases including financing mechanisms (n=
151), and innovative financing (n=167). Upon analyzing the context of these phrases, financing
mechanisms and innovative financing pertain to the island establishing the Sustainable Island
Resource Fund (SIRF), a national funding entity to act as a revolving financing mechanism to
pay for adaptation measures that includes environmental management.
