Effects of anthropogenic climate change are increasingly evident, and climate change adaptation policies, programs and activities are being enacted in response. Political authorities – including government officials, NGOs, donors and international organizations – frame adaptation as programs of improvement, securing society against disruptive and damaging climate change impacts. This mainstream framing presents adaptation as a universal, non-political endeavor to be rolled out across the globe.
In this dissertation, I challenge the mainstream framing of adaptation, contrasting it with the highly political, situated and historical nature of climate change adaptation initiatives in Vietnam. Through four cases of adaptation initiatives in Central Vietnam, I document how political authorities use adaptation to order socio-environments as well as respond to environmental change. I find that water management infrastructure, (re)settlements, and climate change trainings described as adaptation are linked to pre-existing political goals, structures and practices. Through these initiatives, governance actors exercise and reinstantiate their authority.
The dissertation takes its point of departure in critical literature on climate change and adaptation, and employs scholarship on political authority for its analysis. Specifically, it takes an ‘activity of government’ approach, which draws on governmentality literature and examines the exercise of political authority. This entails consideration of the knowledge, goals, programs and practices according to which governance is formulated and implemented and takes a wide view of the actors involved. Empirically, it draws on a brief village stay; institutional mapping; semi-structured interviews of key sub-national government officials, other governance actors and affected households; and document and policy analysis.
Based on the dissertation’s findings, I argue that adaptation should be viewed as a political arena rather than a self-evident endeavor. Viewing it as a political arena highlights its constructed framing, the limitations this entails for the activities and targets of adaptation, and its highly political nature. This perspective provides a counterpoint to the majority of adaptation literature, which supports the mainstream adaptation framing, as well as critical adaptation scholarship that problematizes the methods or outcomes of adaptation without reflecting on the limitations of the concept itself. Ultimately, I argue that adaptation should not be used uncritically as an academic concept. Doing so precludes debate on its conceptual underpinnings and the politics of its practice.