Shelly Eriksen
Biographic Data
| ID | 120997 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shelly Eriksen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shelly |
| FAMILY NAME | Eriksen |
| SIGNATURE | ERIKSEN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Norwegian University of Life Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6594-2758 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1043 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Between a rock and a hard place
This paper examines disability and climate injustice among rural livelihoods in Kenya and Uganda, foregrounding the importance of understanding, respecting and embedding the lived experiences of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in climate adaptation practice. Previous studies have highlighted the need to approach transformative adaptation through interventions that address the unjust knowledge and power relations that create vulnerability. Social…
Integrating power, justice and reflexivity into transformative climate change adaptation
Provides strong normative grounding for the idea and practice of transformative adaptation. • Contends that transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who implement interventions. • Presents four vectors of transformative adaptation as a reflexive form of organisational learning. • Highlights the importance of power, knowledge, coalitions and tradeoffs within programming. • Provides a clear guide to existing literature on trans…
Pathways for urgent action towards climate resilient development
Dynamics of knowledge creation and use for disaster management in Chokwe district, Mozambique
Purpose Disaster management practices depend on societies' knowledge. As climate change rapidly reshapes knowledge, questions arise about how knowledge for disaster management is produced and (re)shaped in modern world and how effective it is to withstand the ever-growing frequency and magnitude of disasters. This paper discusses the dynamics of knowledge creation and its use for disaster management in Chokwe district, southern Mozambique. Design…
Beyond the Single Story of Climate Vulnerability
Health. Disability. Vulnerability. These words are often used when discussing the risks of climate disruption. These discussions warn of the potential for climate impacts to “undermine 50 years of gains in public health” (as stated by the Lancet Countdown on Climate Change). Increasingly, such discussions also acknowledge climate injustice, examining who will benefit or lose out from climate change, how and why. The embodied vulnerability of disa…
Ipcc, 2023
The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Synthesis Report (SYR) of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a component of the SYR which provides a policy-relevant but policy-neutral summary of the SYR. It is consistent with the Sections of the SYR and is approved line by line by the Governments at a plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Ipcc, 2023
The Synthesis Report (SYR) is a stand-alone synthesis of the most policy-relevant evidence from the scientific, technical, and socio-economic literature assessed in the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The SYR distils and integrates the main findings of the three reports of the Working Groups of the IPCC during the AR6, and the three AR6 Special Reports into a concise document. It consists of …
Adapting to climate change among transitioning Maasai pastoralists in southern Kenya
With increasingly fragmented rangelands, restricted mobility and climatic stress, diversification has accelerated among East African pastoralists. Diversification is also promoted as a climate change adaptation strategy to reduce climatic exposure. Through a study of a Maasai communal land in southern Kenya, we analyze how pastoralists navigate changing access to key productive resources that are linked to diversification processes, social differ…
Transforming environmental governance
Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how system…
Is my vulnerability so different from your’s? A call for compassionate climate change research
Current conceptualizations of vulnerability have so far served to describe—and reproduce—social difference, setting people apart at local and global scales. Yet vulnerability is fundamental to the connectedness in social relations critical to understanding and acting on climate change. A more compassionate type of research is urgently required; that is, one that goes beyond the material and political dimensions to investigate the deeply personal.…
Turbulent transformation
COVID-19 has triggered major upheavals to life as we know it in every corner of the planet. The governance response has been deep and far-reaching, albeit variable and contradictory. Disruptions like the pandemic inspire new perspectives on climate resilient development, especially with respect to the role of governance in navigating transformations. We reflect on what reactions and responses to COVID-19 around the world suggest about society’s a…
Affective adaptation = effective transformation? Shifting the politics of climate change adaptation and transformation from the status quo
Alarming rates of environmental change have catalyzed scholars to call for fundamental transformations in social‐political and economic relations. Yet cautionary tales about how power and politics are constitutive of these efforts fill the literature. We show how a relational framing of adaptation and transformation demands a political, cross‐scalar, and socionatural analysis to probe the affects and effects of climate change and better grasp how…
The politics of forest governance in a changing climate
In this paper, we explore the interactions between political, social and environmental changes and forest governance in Kenya, through a study of Mukogodo forest in Laikipia county. Drawing on findings from key informant and group interviews as well as analysis of policy documents, we argue that political reform processes – including devolution and changing land and forest policies – combined with “green militarisation” and socio-environmental ch…
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
The politics of disaster vulnerability
This paper uses governance of water infrastructure in two settlements of Baltistan as an entry point to examine the co-production of power and vulnerability. Access to water and irrigated land is a critical factor in determining how the effects of disasters, such as flooding, are socially distributed within a community. At the same time, the governance of water is intimately linked to the longer-term politics of disaster vulnerability. We examine…
Advancing the research agenda on food systems governance and transformation
Asking the right questions in adaptation research and practice
Adaptation research and practice too often overlooks the wider social context within which climate change is experienced. Mainstream approaches frame adaptation problems in terms of the consequences that flow from biophysical impacts and as a result, we argue, ask the wrong questions. A complementary approach gaining ground in the field, foregrounding the social, economic and political context, reveals differentiation in adaptation need, and how …
Beyond Technical Fixes
Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established…
Introduction
Climate change introduces new challenges for humanitarian aid through changing hazard patterns. The linkages between climate change and humanitarian aid are complex. While humanitarian organisations deal directly with vulnerable opulations, interventions and actions also form part of global politics and development pathways that are currentlygenerating climate change, inequities and vulnerability.This IDS Bulletin represents a call for increasing…
What Does Climate Change Adaptation Mean for Humanitarian Assistance? Guiding Principles for Policymakers and Practitioners
Vulnerability to climate change is the result of complex interactions of various social, political, economic and environmental conditions. Humanitarian actions, while often having short-term and ‘neutral’ intentions, necessarily influence the development pathways that define people’s vulnerability to climate change. On the one hand, humanitarian interventions risk reinforcing existing vulnerability patterns by increasing the gap between those who…
Addressing the risk of maladaptation to climate change
This paper reviews the current theoretical scholarship on maladaptation and provides some specific case studies-in the Maldives, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh-to advance the field by offering an improved conceptual understanding and more practice-oriented insights. It notably highlights four main dimensions to assess the risk of maladaptation, that is, process, multiple drivers, temporal scales, and spatial scales. It also describes thre…
Responding to climate variability and change in dryland Kenya
Reframing adaptation
When not every response to climate change is a good one
Climate adaptation has become a pressing issue. Yet little attention has been paid to the consequences of adaptation policies and practices for sustainability. Recognition that not every adaptation to climate change is a good one has drawn attention to the need for sustainable adaptation strategies and measures that contribute to social justice and environmental integrity. This article presents four normative principles to guide responses to clim…
Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin
This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors - and the interaction between the two - affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Ou…
Reframing adaptation
Beyond Technical Fixes
Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established…
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
The dynamics of vulnerability
We investigate how smallholder farmers at two sites in Kenya and Tanzania cope with climate stress and how constraints and opportunities shape variations in coping strategies between households and over time during a drought. On the basis of this analysis, we draw out implications for adaptation and adaptive policy. We find that households where an individual was able to specialize in one favoured activity, such as employment or charcoal burning,…
Addressing the risk of maladaptation to climate change
This paper reviews the current theoretical scholarship on maladaptation and provides some specific case studies-in the Maldives, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh-to advance the field by offering an improved conceptual understanding and more practice-oriented insights. It notably highlights four main dimensions to assess the risk of maladaptation, that is, process, multiple drivers, temporal scales, and spatial scales. It also describes thre…
Institutional adaptation to climate change
Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin
This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors - and the interaction between the two - affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Ou…
Affective adaptation = effective transformation? Shifting the politics of climate change adaptation and transformation from the status quo
Alarming rates of environmental change have catalyzed scholars to call for fundamental transformations in social‐political and economic relations. Yet cautionary tales about how power and politics are constitutive of these efforts fill the literature. We show how a relational framing of adaptation and transformation demands a political, cross‐scalar, and socionatural analysis to probe the affects and effects of climate change and better grasp how…
Is my vulnerability so different from your’s? A call for compassionate climate change research
Current conceptualizations of vulnerability have so far served to describe—and reproduce—social difference, setting people apart at local and global scales. Yet vulnerability is fundamental to the connectedness in social relations critical to understanding and acting on climate change. A more compassionate type of research is urgently required; that is, one that goes beyond the material and political dimensions to investigate the deeply personal.…
The effects of land tenure change on sustainability
The vulnerability context of a savanna area in Mozambique
Asking the right questions in adaptation research and practice
Adaptation research and practice too often overlooks the wider social context within which climate change is experienced. Mainstream approaches frame adaptation problems in terms of the consequences that flow from biophysical impacts and as a result, we argue, ask the wrong questions. A complementary approach gaining ground in the field, foregrounding the social, economic and political context, reveals differentiation in adaptation need, and how …
Adapting to climate change among transitioning Maasai pastoralists in southern Kenya
With increasingly fragmented rangelands, restricted mobility and climatic stress, diversification has accelerated among East African pastoralists. Diversification is also promoted as a climate change adaptation strategy to reduce climatic exposure. Through a study of a Maasai communal land in southern Kenya, we analyze how pastoralists navigate changing access to key productive resources that are linked to diversification processes, social differ…
Questioning Complacency
Most European assessments of climate change impacts have been carried out on sectors and ecosystems, providing a narrow understanding of what climate change really means for society. Furthermore, the main focus has been on technological adaptations, with less attention paid to the process of climate change adaptation. In this article, we present and analyze findings from recent studies on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in N…
Advancing the research agenda on food systems governance and transformation
Responding to climate variability and change in dryland Kenya
Integrating power, justice and reflexivity into transformative climate change adaptation
Provides strong normative grounding for the idea and practice of transformative adaptation. • Contends that transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who implement interventions. • Presents four vectors of transformative adaptation as a reflexive form of organisational learning. • Highlights the importance of power, knowledge, coalitions and tradeoffs within programming. • Provides a clear guide to existing literature on trans…
Transforming environmental governance
Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how system…
The dynamic context of southern African savannas
Beyond the Single Story of Climate Vulnerability
Health. Disability. Vulnerability. These words are often used when discussing the risks of climate disruption. These discussions warn of the potential for climate impacts to “undermine 50 years of gains in public health” (as stated by the Lancet Countdown on Climate Change). Increasingly, such discussions also acknowledge climate injustice, examining who will benefit or lose out from climate change, how and why. The embodied vulnerability of disa…
The politics of forest governance in a changing climate
In this paper, we explore the interactions between political, social and environmental changes and forest governance in Kenya, through a study of Mukogodo forest in Laikipia county. Drawing on findings from key informant and group interviews as well as analysis of policy documents, we argue that political reform processes – including devolution and changing land and forest policies – combined with “green militarisation” and socio-environmental ch…
The politics of disaster vulnerability
This paper uses governance of water infrastructure in two settlements of Baltistan as an entry point to examine the co-production of power and vulnerability. Access to water and irrigated land is a critical factor in determining how the effects of disasters, such as flooding, are socially distributed within a community. At the same time, the governance of water is intimately linked to the longer-term politics of disaster vulnerability. We examine…
Introduction
Climate change introduces new challenges for humanitarian aid through changing hazard patterns. The linkages between climate change and humanitarian aid are complex. While humanitarian organisations deal directly with vulnerable opulations, interventions and actions also form part of global politics and development pathways that are currentlygenerating climate change, inequities and vulnerability.This IDS Bulletin represents a call for increasing…
What Does Climate Change Adaptation Mean for Humanitarian Assistance? Guiding Principles for Policymakers and Practitioners
Vulnerability to climate change is the result of complex interactions of various social, political, economic and environmental conditions. Humanitarian actions, while often having short-term and ‘neutral’ intentions, necessarily influence the development pathways that define people’s vulnerability to climate change. On the one hand, humanitarian interventions risk reinforcing existing vulnerability patterns by increasing the gap between those who…
Adapting to Climate Change in a Dryland Mountain Environment in Kenya
Global warming is likely to lead to a variety of changes in local climatic conditions, including potential increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events such as drought, floods, and storms. Present capacity to respond to and manage climatic variability, including extreme events, is an important component of adjustments to climatic changes. In particular, identifying and addressing constraints on local adaptation mechanisms—w…
Institutional adaptation to climate change
Special Reviewers
The dynamics of vulnerability
We investigate how smallholder farmers at two sites in Kenya and Tanzania cope with climate stress and how constraints and opportunities shape variations in coping strategies between households and over time during a drought. On the basis of this analysis, we draw out implications for adaptation and adaptive policy. We find that households where an individual was able to specialize in one favoured activity, such as employment or charcoal burning,…
Questioning Complacency
Most European assessments of climate change impacts have been carried out on sectors and ecosystems, providing a narrow understanding of what climate change really means for society. Furthermore, the main focus has been on technological adaptations, with less attention paid to the process of climate change adaptation. In this article, we present and analyze findings from recent studies on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in N…
Portfolio screening to support the mainstreaming of adaptation to climate change into development assistance
Vulnerability, poverty and the need for sustainable adaptation measures
The need to address both poverty and vulnerability to climate change can be considered two of the major challenges facing human society in the 21st century. While the two concepts are closely interconnected, they are nonetheless distinct. A conceptual understanding of the relationship between vulnerability and poverty is presented, and the types of responses that can address both of these challenges are identified. An empirical example from Kenya…
Why different interpretations of vulnerability matter in climate change discourses
In this article, we discuss how two interpretations of vulnerability in the climate change literature are manifestations of different discourses and framings of the climate change problem. The two differing interpretations, conceptualized here as ‘outcome vulnerability’ and ‘contextual vulnerability’, are linked respectively to a scientific framing and a human-security framing. Each framing prioritizes the production of different types of knowled…
The sustainability of southern African savannas
The vulnerability context of a savanna area in Mozambique
The dynamic context of southern African savannas
The effects of land tenure change on sustainability
Weathering Risk in Rural Mexico
Adaptation as a Political Process
Double exposure in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin
This paper examines how double exposure to economic and environmental stressors - and the interaction between the two - affect smallholder farmers in Mozambique's Limpopo River Basin. Studying two case study villages we find that people, in general, are resilient to environmental stressors. However, most households show less resilience to the socioeconomic stressors and shocks that have been introduced or intensified by economic globalisation. Ou…
When not every response to climate change is a good one
Climate adaptation has become a pressing issue. Yet little attention has been paid to the consequences of adaptation policies and practices for sustainability. Recognition that not every adaptation to climate change is a good one has drawn attention to the need for sustainable adaptation strategies and measures that contribute to social justice and environmental integrity. This article presents four normative principles to guide responses to clim…
Responding to climate variability and change in dryland Kenya
Reframing adaptation
Addressing the risk of maladaptation to climate change
This paper reviews the current theoretical scholarship on maladaptation and provides some specific case studies-in the Maldives, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh-to advance the field by offering an improved conceptual understanding and more practice-oriented insights. It notably highlights four main dimensions to assess the risk of maladaptation, that is, process, multiple drivers, temporal scales, and spatial scales. It also describes thre…
Introduction
Climate change introduces new challenges for humanitarian aid through changing hazard patterns. The linkages between climate change and humanitarian aid are complex. While humanitarian organisations deal directly with vulnerable opulations, interventions and actions also form part of global politics and development pathways that are currentlygenerating climate change, inequities and vulnerability.This IDS Bulletin represents a call for increasing…
What Does Climate Change Adaptation Mean for Humanitarian Assistance? Guiding Principles for Policymakers and Practitioners
Vulnerability to climate change is the result of complex interactions of various social, political, economic and environmental conditions. Humanitarian actions, while often having short-term and ‘neutral’ intentions, necessarily influence the development pathways that define people’s vulnerability to climate change. On the one hand, humanitarian interventions risk reinforcing existing vulnerability patterns by increasing the gap between those who…
Advancing the research agenda on food systems governance and transformation
Asking the right questions in adaptation research and practice
Adaptation research and practice too often overlooks the wider social context within which climate change is experienced. Mainstream approaches frame adaptation problems in terms of the consequences that flow from biophysical impacts and as a result, we argue, ask the wrong questions. A complementary approach gaining ground in the field, foregrounding the social, economic and political context, reveals differentiation in adaptation need, and how …
Beyond Technical Fixes
Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established…
The politics of disaster vulnerability
This paper uses governance of water infrastructure in two settlements of Baltistan as an entry point to examine the co-production of power and vulnerability. Access to water and irrigated land is a critical factor in determining how the effects of disasters, such as flooding, are socially distributed within a community. At the same time, the governance of water is intimately linked to the longer-term politics of disaster vulnerability. We examine…
Climate change (25 works) · Geography (24 works) · Political science (23 works) · Economics (19 works) · Environmental resource management (19 works) · Climate change impacts on agriculture (15 works) · Ecology (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Psychology (12 works)