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Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation into Development in the Gambia: A Window of Opportunity for Transformative Processes?

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Innovation in Climate Change Adaptation

Part of the book series: Climate Change Management ((CCM))

Abstract

Climate change adaptation (CCA) has emerged as a new paradigm of development politics. As adaptation has turned out to be less tangible than mitigation, controversies about the meaning and implementation have come up.

This paper is based on empirical research in The Gambia analyzing how CCA is mainstreamed into development strategies.

There is much political activism noticeable for translating the international idea of CCA to the local realities of The Gambia. These political efforts offer windows of opportunities for transformative processes. Many of these, however, are not seized due to country-specific and external factors. Despite this, some pragmatic and creative, approaches from the Gambian climate change network provide some adaptation and development co-benefits.

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Acknowledgement

The study was conducted for the West African Service Center for Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (www.wascal.org) and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Special thanks are due to Prof. Müller-Mahn from the University of Bonn for supervision, as well to interview partners and the staff of the National Environmental Agency of The Gambia for their support and kind hospitality.

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Correspondence to Hannes Lauer .

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Lauer, H., Eguavoen, I. (2016). Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation into Development in the Gambia: A Window of Opportunity for Transformative Processes?. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Innovation in Climate Change Adaptation. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25814-0_7

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