Shifting Sands: Adapting to Climate Change in Everyday Life

Abstract

Climate change is no longer a future worry–gradually shifting the landscape around us punctuated by sudden, devastating disasters. Though sociologists study the outcomes of disasters and long-term demographic trends in response to environmental hazards, we know very little about how individuals manage climate change in their daily lives. In places with limited institutional responses to climate change, people facing climate stressors must manage on their own based on their risk perceptions, resources, and overall resilience. This dissertation examines the everyday management of climate change impacts. I ask two central questions: How are people adapting to climate change in everyday life? And, how do social and institutional contexts influence microlevel adaptation? I present three case studies in climate stressed communities: rural Colombia, coastal North Carolina, and the informal settlements in the megacity of Lagos I combine ethnographic field work, in-depth interviews, and archival data to paint a nuanced picture of individual and contextual responses to global climate change. Using archival data from all three sites including planning for physical adaptation projects, resilience and adaptation policy documents, and ethnographic data on social infrastructure, I develop the concept of the “Climate Safety Net” – a combination of physical resilience (built environment/engineering), social infrastructure, and policy relief. I argue that the climate safety net is what enables continued settlement in zones of climate stress. I then empirically analyze everyday adaptation using ethnographic data from coastal North Carolina, rural Colombia, and Lagos, Nigeria to offer a descriptive picture of how individuals and households adapt to climate change in their daily lives in different institutional contexts. This dissertation shows how climate change is increasing inequality by leaving communities to adapt either outside of, or in tension with, institutional adaptation actions. Individuals manage climate change through both adaptation in place and migration. The climate safety net allows for some continued settlement in climate stressed locations, but communities marginalized by historical legacies of power are those who slip through the holes in the net and are displaced by climate hazards rather than strategically relocating through adaptive migrations or managed retreat.