View article

A key criterion of successful adaptation to climate change is that it avoids potential inequalities arising from climate impacts or from adaptation strategies themselves. Recent research on adaptation in developing and developed countries argues that the measures of such fairness cannot be captured by standard metrics of vulnerability and should be situated in the milieu of people’s daily lives and temporalities. Yet there is little empirical evidence to support this theoretical argument. This chapter describes a method, and presents findings from research that aimed to understand and classify the lived values of four marginal rural communities at risk of sea-level rise in Australia to inform adaptation planning and implementation. Our research finds that there are at least five types of primary residents and second home-owners attached to these four low-lying coastal communities. Some of these residents are more likely to …