ABSTRACT
Freire warns us that without a critical awareness, adaptation is hostage to being limited to efforts that promote action to survive better with, rather than seek change to, the social and political structures that shape life chances. Similarly, Clarke (2009: 21) warns that people tend to adapt to poverty by ‘suppressing their wants, hopes and aspirations’ rather than attempting to change the structures that constrain their life chances. Can the same critique be levelled at adaptation to climate change – that efforts are being directed more towards accommodating risk and its root causes rather than at the root causes themselves? The difference is between responding to drought by proving humanitarian relief to alleviate hunger, and identifying distortions in agricultural trade policy and market conditions that prevent food surpluses from moving to meet human need.
