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Climate variability has increased the frequency of disasters and affected the livelihood of the people to a greater extent. Therefore, livelihood vulnerability assessment assumes greater significance for understanding the interlinkages between climate variability induced disasters and livelihood pattern. In this paper, an attempt has been made to trace knowledge gaps, examine trends of research, and suggest future direction. We first collected 191 papers in the domain from Web of Science and Google scholar search engines from 1999 to 2019. Descriptive and thematic attributes of these papers were reviewed for identifying the missing links between climate variability and livelihood vulnerability and recommending future research action. Findings revealed that most of the studies were conducted at the local and regional level where the agricultural sector has taken dominance over other sectors. There is limited interdisciplinary coordination on the subject leading to limited cross‐scale interactions. Geographically, more studies were carried out in the plains. Future research should focus on mountains and coastal areas. Forest, aquaculture, and dairy farming should accord priority in such ecosystems. Empirical studies with an interdisciplinary approach need to be carried out for livelihood vulnerability assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When young people engage with climate change education, they are often left feeling disempowered and daunted. But past research has shown that there are ways to design and deliver climate change education that can be empowering and enabling. The delivery of climate change education was further challenged in 2020 by the shift to online learning driven by the COVID‐19 pandemic restrictions. However, the challenges of the pandemic context also offered an opportunity to engage new audiences and establish new collaborations in climate change education. In this paper, we explore how the shift to online research, collaboration and education can also be harnessed to develop interdisciplinary coastal adaptation training for young people interested in better understanding the complexities of our coastal environments. The resulting 'More than Maps' framework draws on qualitative and quantitative data collected over a two‐year programme focused on the design and delivery of an international climate change research capacity building workshop series, across the United Kingdom, Ghana, Jamaica and Australia. Carried out by an interdisciplinary team of early career researchers and established academics, 15 workshops were developed on coastal adaptation research methods, targeting a range of 'young' audiences who are and will continue to be impacted by climate change. Building on reflections from the workshops' design and delivery, we developed a scalable framework to aid researchers in sharing open‐access, replicable methods for studying climate change mitigation and adaptation. This work demonstrates that our workshop participants had increased confidence, sought to apply learned methods to other contexts, and wanted to share this knowledge with others. We conclude that the COVID‐19 online workspace facilitated rather than hindered the international collaboration and delivery of these coastal adaptation research methods workshops, and we provide best practice tips to researchers delivering climate change education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That climate change is a major disruptor of rural livelihoods in the low‐ and middle‐income countries, including sub‐Saharan Africa, has been a key narrative for the continent's development for at least a decade. And while the severity of climate impacts on African development should not be underestimated, in this paper I argue that the vulnerability of smallholders in São Tomé and Príncipe should be considered in the broader political economic and historical context of progressing depeasantisation and proletarianisation of global agricultural labour. Moreover, I posit that certain smallholders' vulnerability can actually increase as a result of both autonomous and externally planned adaptation strategies, the latter most commonly promoted by governments and their international development partners. To substantiate these arguments, the paper combines theoretical insights from labour geography and critical adaptation studies with ethnographic data collected in Liberdade – a village in the small island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe – which participated in a nationwide climate change adaptation project. I trace local smallholders' vulnerability back to the country's political economic history and complement this by an investigation of the changing labour relations at the community level. Here, I analyse the autonomous adaptation strategies pursued by the residents and critically assess the localised effects of planned adaptation embodied by the project, with a specific focus on how they affect local labour relations. I conclude by providing some reflections on addressing the current pitfalls of planned adaptation. In this paper I argue that the vulnerability of smallholders in São Tomé and Príncipe should be considered in the broader political economic and historical context of progressing depeasantisation and proletarianisation of global agricultural labour. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the country, I also critically analyse rural labour relations as they are affected by autonomous and planned adaptation strategies pursued in the village of Liberdade, which participated in a nationwide climate change adaptation project by the government and a large development organisation. I conclude by summarising the argument and providing some reflections on addressing the current pitfalls of planned adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last ten years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a prominent new paradigm in environmental politics in developing countries in general and in Africa in particular. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in Rwanda presented in this paper indicates. The paper analyses why forced resettlement of farmers is considered an innovative action among the climate change adaptation efforts and argues that the concept of adaptation to climate change is a travelling idea that is constantly translated and used politically to frame environmental and developmental interventions in concrete places that heavily impact the everyday lives of rural dwellers. Drawing on actor-network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by providing a critical assessment of the linkages between global climate change governance and concrete local adaptation measures, revealing that adaptation to climate change does not always have positive effects on people's livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the view that the poorer agricultural populations in developing countries will be at the forefront of negative consequences due to environmental change is widely accepted, this perspective must become considerably more nuanced in order to recognise and take advantage of emerging opportunities for realistic adaptation. This paper presents a case from Madagascar that suggests adaptation opportunities involve more than looking for alternatives to what are presently perceived to be negative socio-ecologic processes. In Madagascar the severe erosion occurring on the deforested central plateau actually appears to create, over time, opportunities for increased food security and environmental management compared with uneroded portions of the same landscape. The paper proposes that while concern and action are needed to attend to the problems that the poor of the developing world will face due to impacts from environmental change, the repercussions of such change on agricultural systems also need to be looked at in ways that involve recognising the local and aggregate potential opportunities that they may present in certain systems, in order to realise the prospects for adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machines that provide people with nearby sources of outdoor warmth have become increasingly popular in the UK as a crop of mushroom-shaped technologies has started to spring up outside many public houses and private homes in this country. Yet this development has also received considerable condemnation from advocates of sustainable consumption, who have seemingly been disgusted by the societal self-indulgence that they see in these devices. Moving away from these more immediate forms of outrage, this paper enriches our understanding of their arrival by considering these heaters in terms of cultural conventions of thermal adaptation and the changing geographies that can be attached to them. Through these means, it is argued that a more nuanced understanding of why these technologies have become prevalent is produced and that an existing disciplinary interest in embodied outdoor experience is taken towards some important new spaces for study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has profound implications for the geography of work. As the papers in this special section aim to show, changes to the climate – both long and short term – are not experienced directly but through the lens of working life. Those experiencing climate change are not atomistic entities, but connected agents, deeply embedded within global systems: as market traders or factory workers; rural farmers or civil servants. The changing climate does not therefore mean changing weather, but changing terms of work. What was once sufficient for personal and family needs may no longer be so in a new environment, meaning reduced quality of livelihoods, longer working hours, and a greater vulnerability to exploitation by employers. This special section brings together insights from a range of contexts to explore this situated experience of climate change, highlighting how life and work within global production networks combine to determine its experience. Climate change has profound implications for the geography of work. This special section brings together insights from a range of contexts to explore this situated experience of climate change, highlighting how life and work within global production networks combine to determine its experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing international recognition of the need for practical guidance on evaluating risks and adapting freshwaters to climate change, drawing on both field and model evidence. This special section of Area demonstrates the varied ways in which geographers, environmental and social scientists, engineers and resource managers are beginning to address these urgent needs. This editorial considers the long history of field experimentation and measurement that has informed professional practice in catchment and water quality management. We assert that comparable levels of investment and commitment are now needed to guide adaptations to climate change. The research within the special section reflects two contrasting perspectives: (i) top-down, macro-scale, climatic and non-climatic risk assessments for freshwaters and (ii) bottom-up, micro-scale experimentation, involving adaptation measures at the river reach and habitat level. We emphasise that greater efforts are required to integrate the results of research at these contrasting scales to deliver benefits that are robust to the large uncertainty associated with climate projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change will have a major impact on freshwater environments globally. The management of these ecosystems is one of the key challenges currently facing environmental policymakers and producing well-informed climate change adaptation strategies is a priority. Links between climate, hydrology and ecology are poorly understood, and relatively little study has taken place on conservation of standing freshwaters, particularly with respect to landscape context and connectivity in a changing environment. Scotland's lakes (termed lochs in Scotland) contain more than 90% of Great Britain's total freshwater resource. They are distributed across the country, occurring in a wide variety of types and sizes, together providing habitats of international importance for numerous species. There is a pressing need across all geographic scales to conserve these environments in the face of changing water body, catchment and global pressures, including climate change in particular. Here, we introduce a new conceptual framework ( ESVRA), designed to inform climate change adaptation strategies for standing freshwaters at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Adaptation actions will be contingent on the nature and scale of the climate changes, the sensitivity of different lake types to change and the resilience of the specific conservation interests involved. As such, potential adaptation actions are situated within current debates in conservation management surrounding priority species and habitats, threats from multiple stressors, invasive non-native species and the potential benefits of catchment-scale management. Following the ESVRA framework, we present an analysis of climate projections for Scotland; discuss potential climate impacts on the physico-chemical, hydromorphological and ecological processes within lakes; offer a spatial risk assessment for the conservation of Scottish lakes; and advance the adaptation discussion, moving from broad adaptation principles to specific adaptation actions protecting the conservation interests of individual lakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geographers working within political-cultural ecology and biogeography have often used a framework, or the general concept, of adaptation. The use of this blanket term, however, was and remains especially problematic for cultural-political ecology research, which tends to focus on a different scale of time–space analysis, while placing greater emphasis on the fine and coarse influences of political economy. To refine our understanding of daily activities that may lead towards adaptation, the concepts of ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’ can bridge shorter-term phenomena that do not require the leap of scale implied by the loose use and implementation of the term adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]