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Regional Adaptation to shocks
Key Points
•Challenges of Climate Change: questions of
managing uncertainty
•Risk management approach: questions of
strategies to manage risk
Catharina Williams
Risk, uncertainty,
vulnerability, adaptability
• Attitudes to risk are based on values, culture and institutional/
individual long term goal (BRS 2006)
Uncertainty
Unknown
Known
probability
Vulnerability
Exposure to
a
threat
Risk
Random
event
Adaptability/
resilience
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Inter-related research:
Risk, vulnerability and adaptability
• Regional and industrial base analysis of existing climate
stresses and natural disasters provide basis for identifying future
risks
• Analysis of the past adaptation/experience in various industries
dealing with shocks provide insights into dealing with future risks
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Focus on Regions Series
BITRE works to understand regions:
touches on vulnerability and adaptation
from an economic perspective
Understanding Regional Adaptation
• E.g. Western Australia’s wheat-belt:
Aggregate Real Taxable Income (ARTI) model for small
regions shows impacts of shocks such as drought, flood and
commodity price crashes (BTRE 2005, Focus on Region 3)
• Adaptation varies depending on structure of region, its
governance dynamics, human and social capital
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Focus of presentations
• Structural adjustment in the Australian farm sector
• Industry and Community Adaptation to Climate Change
• Do communities recover well from disaster?
References
• BITRE, 2005a, 2005b, 2004, 2003, Focus on Region (various reports)
• Bureau of Rural Science 2006, Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture
• Devereux, S., 2001, Livelihood Insecurity and Social Protection, World Policy Review 2001,19 (4):
507-519
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