The political aims of adaptation

This article exposes the highly political aims that can be obscured behind the label of climate change adaptation. It therefore warns against uncritical approaches to adaptation by scholars, practitioners and policy-makers. There is growing literature of the political nature of adaptation, and this article contributes a striking example of sedentarization policies in Vietnam cast as adaptation. The sedentarizations targeted marginal Sampan boat-dwellers, moving these households onto land to secure them from annual typhoons. While outcomes of the settlements were mixed, affected residents were often positive about the intervention, which provided increased physical security, access to services and greater social cohesion.

Yet presenting sedentarizations as novel adaptation initiatives ignores underlying political goals. Since reunification in 1975, the communist government of Vietnam has moved millions of people to redistribute the population after the war, secure border areas, and integrate marginal groups into state-led development. Sampan dwellers have also been targeted in these historical programs, which sought to assimilate and educate them. The ‘adaptation’ programs the article examines do much the same. They move later generations of the same populations previously targeted, and officials describe how, by moving Sampan boat-dwellers onto land, these residents can be educated and better follow government policies.

Labeling new sedentarizations as adaptation has been powerfully depoliticizing. The article illustrates this with a UN in Vietnam report and scholarly article on the recent settlements that overlook the problematic history and the ongoing political goals behind sedentarizations as adaptation. The article therefore concludes that the label of ‘adaptation’ can be misleading. It obscures how existing political goals and programs are repackaged as a climate change response. This depoliticizes and averts critical engagement with purported adaptation policies and programs.