ABSTRACT
This chapter takes on board the challenge of connecting the concepts of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), analysing these two broad areas of scientific, political and cultural tension using a critical lens capable of opening up a dialogue both with a more traditional and positivist, and a more alternative and constructivist perspective. In spite of extensive literature written on the topic and the calls for inter-and transdisciplinarity, the major disruption to the political and epistemological project of reducing CCA to a branch of DRR, is that marked differences remain among scholars, practitioners, and institutions belonging to those two broad areas. Following the publication of the highly criticised IPCC report, recent debates seem to have generated a number of interesting connections and convergences between the DRR and CCA policy communities. The chapter interrogates the reasons and the political motivation behind the main epistemic and political communities producing, working with and using concepts of DRR and CCA.
