Abstract
Appeals to the importance of place are limited in the adaptation literature. While place has been acknowledged to contribute to individual and collective identity, its broader role representing meaningful connection between people and location has not been sufficiently developed or acknowledged in this literature, and is largely absent from key IPCC documents. As climate change disconnects people from their surroundings, it can compromise their sense of place. The loss of connection with one’s environs generates difficulties, not only in that under such conditions it is harder to find food, water, and shelter, but also in that under such conditions one is unable to recognize what choices and options are available. This paper contends that these choices and options are vital for human flourishing. Relying on the capabilities approach, according to which human flourishing should be understood not in terms of whether some state has been achieved, but whether an individual has the capacity to bring about certain chosen and endorsed states of being, this paper argues that place and place-making are central to human flourishing and should play a significant role in our adaptation strategies.
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Notes
For example, Feitelson (1991) addresses the attachment to space as part of a framework for considering how geographic scale affects the management of environmental problems; Adger et al. (2011) consider the impacts of climate change on sense of place, and how such impacts undermine meaning and identity; Fresque-Baxter and Armitage (2012) outline the role of place identity theory in climate change adaptation; Devine-Wright (2013) explore the relation between place attachments and climate change through a multidisciplinary lens; Tschakert et al. (2017) investigate the relation between values and places in the context of the UNFCCC approach to loss and damage; Yee et al. (2022) study the importance of place for populations that resist climate change relocation; similarly, Tschakert and Neef (2022) consider the importance of place attachment in their development of a heuristic for understanding the complex decision-making faced by populations deciding whether or not to relocate as they adapt to a changing climate.
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Shockley, K. Adaptation, flourishing, and the importance of place. Reg Environ Change 23, 99 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02089-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-023-02089-0