ABSTRACT
Maladaptive actions and processes do not succeed in reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts; instead, they increase it (McCarthy et al. 2001) and/ or reduce the capacity to cope with the negative effects of climate change. Maladaptation may deliver short-term benefits (e.g. financial profit) but will lead to harmful consequences in the medium- and long-term perspective (Lim et al. 2004). It may be evident that maladaptation should be avoided, but this can be more difficult than one might imagine. It is important to understand what maladaptation is and how it can be caused. According to the IPCC (2001), maladaptation is adaptation that “does not succeed in reducing vulnerability but increases it instead”. Later publications have extended this definition to include the following actions (Nelson et al. 2007, Prutsch et al. 2010, Barnett & O’Neill 2010):
Actions that increase vulnerability, or through which the capacity to cope with the negative effects of climate change is decreased (e.g. adaptation that is ineffective or may reduce short-term vulnerability but increases vulnerability in the longer term, or increases vulnerability elsewhere, such as hard flood prevention measures in one area that increase risks for downstream systems).
Actions that increase greenhouse gas emissions and thus conflict with mitigation (e.g. the installation of energy-intensive air conditioners).
Actions that use resources unsustainably (e.g. using groundwater for irrigation in dry regions, resulting in an unsustainably decreasing level of groundwater).
Actions that distribute the benefits of adaptation unequally across society or that disproportionally burden the most vulnerable (e.g. prevention of climate change-induced diseases or inconveniences only for affluent people).
Actions that have high opportunity costs, i.e. the economic, social or environmental costs are high relative to alternatives (e.g. expensive infrastructural investments where behavioural changes with similar effects on vulnerability may be possible — for example, investing in a desalination plant where an increase in the efficiency of water use would also be effective).
Actions that set paths that limit the choices available to future generations (e.g. large investments in particularly vulnerable agricultural practices or flood defences that make future changes more difficult).
