- Title
- Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the Hunter Valley (Australia)
- Creator
- Forino, Giuseppe
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Worldwide, different types of hazards lead to disasters with varying social, environmental and economic impacts. Disasters kill and injure people, destroy homes, alter environmental equilibria, and disrupt markets. To reduce disaster risk, human systems have developed and promoted several approaches to disaster risk reduction (DRR), including policy-making, structural measures, individual and collective soft measures. Climate change has the potential to increase the frequency and intensity of some of these hazards. However, the impacts of climate change on natural hazards are often regional or local and need to be carefully investigated case by case. To cope with climate change, societies enact two main mechanisms, namely, mitigation and adaptation. In particular, climate change adaptation (CCA) allows communities, economies, and the environment to adapt to changes in climate and their short and long-term impacts. Therefore, CCA is a topic under exploration in its potential contribution to DRR. In the last decade, academic scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers have come to better understand the potential connections between climate change and natural hazards and to reflect on the potential contributions of CCA to DRR. It has been noted that the climate change and disaster risk communities have followed parallel paths with limited interactions, separate information silos, and isolated goals. With this realisation, these communities began to reflect on how CCA could be integrated into DRR. While such integration is now recognised, its governance still requires investigation. Such investigation is particularly important given that governments at multiple levels face increasing pressures from non government actors in terms of managing public affairs, including climate change and disaster risk. These governments usually respond to such pressures by enlarging the range of actors involved in CCA, DRR, and their integration. Understanding the roles of these actors, and the mechanisms regulating their interactions, is key for a better understanding of CCA & DRR integration. Against this background, the aim of this work is to explore the governance of CCA & DRR integration as promoted in the Hunter Valley, a hotspot for climate change in Australia. These issues are explored in three local governments (LGs) that have been selected as case studies: Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, and Singleton. Within the selected areas, the case studies will evaluate diverse groups of actors, their roles, and their interactions within governance. Specifically, this includes exploring the ways in which governance is promoted by a) the LGs, which are required to provide their own responses to climate change; b) the private sector, which both is affected by and contributes to climate change; and c) local communities, which promote their own responses and often bear the burdens of climate change-related risks. A portrait of such governance will ultimately be proposed to provide a phenomenological, multi-perspective, and exploratory research project. Two complementary qualitative methods are utilised to collect primary data. First, a qualitative content analysis is performed to explore how CCA and DRR are incorporated into official documents by the selected LGs. The LGs promoted the integration of CCA & DRR into land use, the built environment, building standards, and public assets. In addition, the LGs also promote public participation mechanisms by which some residents can contribute to adaptive planning. This analysis establishes the extent to which the LGs understood climate change and related risks and involved non-State actors in CCA & DRR integration. In this way, it provides an initial understanding of the actors involved and their interactions. Next, a phenomenological study will use semi-structured interviews to examine different actors performing their roles in CCA & DRR integration and participating in its governance. Specifically, interviews will examine climate change and related risks as perceived in the selected areas, the roles played by different actors in performing CCA & DRR integration, and the governance mechanisms put into place among these actors to promote such integration. It will be revealed that for some actors, climate change is an important issue and adaptation is important. Meanwhile, other actors did show scepticism or stated that it would be a problem in the future. In addition, both local communities and the private sector enact their own adaptive strategies with different degrees of effectiveness and contextualisation. Interactions occur between actors, for example, between LGs and local communities. However, conflicts also arise among actors, e.g. due to diverging interests, sensitivity to the topic of climate change, and power differences between actors. The aforementioned arguments will be developed through six standalone papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals. The discussion section will synthesise these arguments and highlight the significant governance role of actors in the context of CCA & DRR integration. However, challenges will also emerge to inhibit actors’ potential. The primary significance of this work is in analysing governance on the basis of individual and collective perceptions, experiences, and understandings of CCA & DRR integration by the investigated actors. The research represents a background for future research on governance in the context of CCA & DRR integration, and on the ways that actors perform and interact in the context of such governance.
- Subject
- climate change; adaptation; disaster risk reduction; Hunter Valley; Australia; governance
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1401323
- Identifier
- uon:34891
- Rights
- Copyright 2019 Giuseppe Forino
- Language
- eng
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| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 136 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |