Inserting Ethics into Deliberation on Adaptation and Resilience Policy

This follow-up project aims to integrate into adaptation and resilience policy-making some of the lessons gained through the Why We Disagree About Development (WhyDAR) research project (NE/P01609X/1). WhyDAR aimed to identify different ways in which urban resilience is understood while investigating the role of science, technology, ethics and expertise in the making of resilience strategies in the Global South. It drew out key ethical questions arising from disagreement about conceptions to resilience, and asked what an equitable approach to resilience would look like in the face of this disagreement.

Aiming to integrate these lessons into real-life adaptation and resilience policy, this project will work together with the climate adaptation team at the municipal level in Cape Town, South Africa (upper middle income). South Africa is likely to experience - and, in some cases, have already experienced - the negative effects of climate change, such as droughts and floodings. Unfortunately, access to resilient infrastructures, including housing, health care, and food chains, and representative institutions is highly unequal, inequitable, and inadequate within South Africa. Consequently, especially the poorest and most vulnerable community members are often left out and underrepresented within resilience and adaptation strategies, threatening their lives, health, food security, livelihoods, well-being, and access to crucial services, such as water and energy supply. This situation raises ethical issues of how adaptation and resilience planning within the most climate vulnerable LMICs can become more equal, equitable, and representative of those who are most in need of inclusion, including taking into account the fact that different stakeholders have different conceptions of and aims for resilience.

Working together with the municipal climate adaptation team of Cape Town, the project will develop and implement three procedural methodologies for inserting ethical deliberations into adaptation and resilience planning and policy-making at the local and municipal level:

(i) Stakeholder dialogues bring together representatives of different affected groups, including policy-makers, city council members, service providers, NGOs, businesses, and not members of the local communities. Through dialogue, deliberators will be forced to take into account the interests of other groups, explain and provide justification for their own views.

(ii) Scenario building exercises will encourage deliberators to reflect on the ethical aspects of different resilience scenarios and how they may be resolved. In particular, we will try out an exercise in which the deliberators will be behind a 'veil of ignorance' when considering a scenario and will not know what identity they have within it. Only afterwards will their identities be revealed to them and they will then evaluate whether the solutions that they came up with behind the veil were really fair to all stakeholders.

(iii) Problem-oriented deliberations focus on solving particular, real-life resilience challenges. At different stages during the planning process, the planners will be asked to reflect, with the help of a trained ethicist, on the ethical implications of their plan.

The aims of these exercises will be to test different framework for inserting ethics into resilience planning in Cape Town; to draw lessons and best practices from that, which can be scaled up and implemented in similar LMIC contexts; to identify and co-produce knowledge about the ethical aspects of resilience planning; and to build capacity for taking into account ethics when deliberating on resilience within municipal and local institutions. The project will involve researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Cape Town in collaboration with the City Climate Adaptation Team of Cape Town and the non-governmental organizations Practical Action and Christian Aid.

The main beneficiaries of this project are the partner organizations, namely the municipal climate adaptation team of Cape Town, the Department for International Development, Practical Action, and Christian Aid, and the communities that they work with.

In recent years, Cape Town experienced the negative effects of climate change, including a drought from 2015 to 2018 that threatened the City's water, energy, and food supply and had wide-ranging impacts on the lives, livelihoods, and well-being of its inhabitants. The poorest and most vulnerable communities, especially those living in informal settlements, mainly felt these effects. This has primarily to do with unequal and inequitable access to resilient infrastructures and institutions and a lack of inclusion and representation within resilience and adaptation planning. How can the unequal impact of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable communities be taken into account within adaptation and resilience planning?

This project will benefit both municipal climate adaptation team as well as vulnerable communities in Cape Town by enabling them to avoid unintended negative consequences downstream at the level of implementation by developing and implementing three procedural methodologies for inserting ethical deliberations upstream at the adaptation and resilience planning and policy-making levels. For example, while income inequalities are widely recognized, not taking into account inequalities in terms of gender and disability will further exacerbate inequalities in terms of access to infrastructures at the level of implementation.

In order to achieve these benefits, the project will work both directly with Cape Town's Climate Adaptation Team as well as with governmental and non-governmental organizations working resilience and adaptation efforts within LMICs, including Practical Action and Christian Aid.

Directly, the project will work with authorities and service provides on the municipal level in Cape Town, South Africa (upper middle income) These countries are likely to experience - and, in some cases, have already experienced - the negative effects of climate change. We will develop, implement, and test in practice frameworks, such as stakeholder dialogues, scenario building exercises, and problem-oriented deliberations, for inserting ethics concern into policy deliberations on adaptation and resilience in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) that will be tested in practical exercise with our partners in Cape Town. This process will result in a body of best deliberative practices that will be published as an open access report.

Indirectly, we will further use these lessons and best practices to build capacities within governmental and non-governmental development organizations in order to allow them to implement the lessons of the project within LMICs that are not directly involved in the project. In particular, we will UK Department for International Development as well as Practical Action and Christian Aid. These organizations have a wide reach and existing capacities for working within LMICs to advance adaptation and resilience efforts, promising the opportunity for the successful scaling up of and wider ranging implementation of the project.

In sum, we expect the potential impact of taking into account ethics within adaptation and resilience planning to lead to more equal and equitable infrastructures and institutions within LMICs, enabling them to withstand the most negative effects of climate change. The project has a clear pathway to influence adaptation and resilience planning at a small scale within three cases studies - namely, Cape Town (South Africa) - as well as a pathway to scaling up lessons learned within the three case studies through the leverage of existing collaborations with Practical Action and Christian Aid.