Adaptation: Reducing Vulnerability or Redistributing it?

This research paper examines whether climate change adaptation efforts inadvertently shift risks and vulnerabilities between different people and places, concluding that such redistribution is largely ignored in practice and empirical research.

• The authors conclude that practitioners give only sparse and superficial attention to the possibility that adaptation measures might redistribute risk or vulnerability. While terms like "maladaptation" are occasionally mentioned, they do not meaningfully impact how international funds, project planners, or policy-makers evaluate or make adaptation choices.
• There is a lack of empirical literature regarding the distributional impacts of real-world adaptation activities, despite existing conceptual work on maladaptation. The authors argue this gap undermines the current knowledge base on adaptation and is concerning because global adaptation efforts are likely to shift risks toward already marginalized and vulnerable communities.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2017). Adaptation: Reducing Vulnerability or Redistributing it? https://www.sei.org/publications/adaptation-reducing-vulnerability-or-redistributing/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Adaptation: Reducing Vulnerability or Redistributing it? 2017. https://www.sei.org/publications/adaptation-reducing-vulnerability-or-redistributing/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Adaptation: Reducing Vulnerability or Redistributing it? |date=30 October 2017 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/adaptation-reducing-vulnerability-or-redistributing/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2017adaptation, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Adaptation: Reducing Vulnerability or Redistributing it?}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2017}, month = oct, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/adaptation-reducing-vulnerability-or-redistributing/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }