COPE Socials: Maladaptation - When adaptation to climate change goes very wrong

The Copenhagen Center for Disaster Research (COPE) is continuing its networking events, this time on Zoom. For each meeting, we invite an expert to talk for approximately 30 minutes, followed by a 15 minute Q&A.

The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report underlines the perceived funding ‘gap’ for adaptation to climate change, echoing many calls for increased funding. But studies are showing that adaptation to climate change very often ends up in maladaptation, where people instead become more vulnerable to climate change as a result of project activities. What is maladaptation, and why aren’t we better at detecting it before it happens? In this talk, Dr Lisa Schipper will blend the policy context with on-the-ground experiences to try to unpack whether we are at a standstill on understanding maladaptation and how we can address it.

Dr Lisa Schipper is an Environmental Social Science Research Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on adaptation to climate change in developing countries, and looks at gender, religion and culture to understand what drives vulnerability.