ABSTRACT
Adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience are seen today as essential in framing and developing responses to climate change, despite debates over their overall value. This chapter begins with a consideration of the use of the concepts of adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience in the framing of the challenges of climate change. It deals with the way adaptation has been used in anthropological research in general, followed by an analysis of its use in the study of climate change effects. The chapter considers the transformation of the concept of adaptation into a policy instrument in climate change governance and practice. It examines the subsidiary concepts of vulnerability and resilience in terms of their salience in understanding climate change impacts and their practical and policy implications for adaptation projects. Since it has recently been concluded that climate change will produce effects for which no adaptation is deemed possible, the question of the limits of adaptation is considered for its conceptual, practical, and ethical problems.
