Climate Adaptation
Climate change has already become an everyday reality. Communities, businesses, and nations are already being battered by destructive storms, crop failures, unprecedented heat waves, floods, and wildfires. The ramifications of climate destabilization today pose serious questions not just for science, but for global cultures, societies, political institutions, and economies. Climate Adaptation explores who we become, socially and culturally, as our places, livelihoods, and communities are reshaped by a changing climate. It establishes a thought-provoking body of work drawing from the humanities, social sciences, arts, and other knowledge systems, particularly from Indigenous scholarship. It considers a wide range of perspectives on the diversity of ways in which human collectives currently and may, in the future, respond to immediate climate change impacts utilizing transdisciplinary perspectives to explore what can be learnt from past societies and cultures and how questions of equity and justice can be addressed in present-day adaptation.
General Editor
Janet Stephenson
Research Professor
University of Otago, New Zealand
Janet Stephenson is a research professor at the Centre for Sustainability, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago, New Zealand. She has degrees in sociology, planning, and cultural geography, and her broad social science perspective is further enriched by extensive experience in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.
She has led or co-led major interdisciplinary research programmes on climate adaptation, energy transitions, and the relationships between people and place. She has a global profile for her development of cultural theory and the application of cultural analysis to energy, climate change, and other contemporary issues. Her Cultures Framework is used internationally, enabling new understandings of the role of culture in sustainability transitions.
She has led three research projects (2017-2024) on climate adaptation and had a major role in a further 5-year programme. These projects have involved collaboration with local communities, Māori, and councils. The findings have informed national policy, assisted council engagement with at-risk communities, and shared Indigenous innovations in climate adaptation.
Advisory Board
Debra Davidson
Professor of Environmental Sociology
University of Alberta, Canada
Cristiane Derani
Professor of International Economic and Environmental Law
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil
Anahí Urquiza Gómez
Professor of Anthropology
University of Chile, Chile
Adeline Johns-Putra
Professor of English Literature
Queens University, Canada and Monash University, Malaysia
Workineh Kelbessa
Professor of Philosophy
Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Taciano Milfont
Professor of Psychology
University of Waikato, New Zealand
Philani Moyo
Professor of Development Sociology
University of Fort Hare, South Africa
Gwen Robbins Schug
Professor of Biology
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Joyashree Roy
Bangabandhu Chair Professor
Asian Institute of Technology, India
Mathias Thaler
Professor of Political Theory
University of Edinburgh, UK
Sara Wilkinson
Professor of Property
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
