Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation by Mark Pelling

measures and how much damage can be averted by increasing the adaptation effort given a specific climate change scenario. CBA works for individual sectors where costs and benefits can be derived from market prices; it is harder when multiple sectors are included and when market prices are unavailable – for example, in placing a value on human health or wellbeing – and where the items being compared are incommensurable (Adger
et al.
, 2009c). Despite such limitations, some sophisticated methods are emerging which can at least show clearly what is known and provide a logical framework for political judgement. For example, it has been suggested that the range of choices for adapting to heat stress in the UK (though not their social and environmental costs, including potential for maladaptation) is likely to be maximised in future global contexts characterised by active free markets and entrepreneurialism, but more limited if strong environmental regulation becomes the norm (Boyd and Hunt, 2006). CBA has also been used effectively to argue for proactive adaptation through investment in disaster risk reduction as an alternative to managing disaster risk through emergency responseand reconstruction. The World Bank and US Geological Survey calculate that an investment in risk management of US$40 billion could have prevented US$280 billion in losses during the 1990s alone, a CBA ratio of 7:1. In high risk locations advantages of proactive risk reduction are even higher, Oxfam calculates that construction of flood shelters costing US$4,300 saved as much as US$75,000 a ration of 17:1 (DFID, 2004a). These are compelling ratios but do not allow estimation of costs for specific investments before disaster strikes and in this respect their weight in decision-making is limited.
    Given the methodological constraints on economic assessment for the costs and benefits of adaptation options can ethics help? Caney (2006) argues that people have a moral right not to suffer from the adverse effects of climate change. However, a central dilemma for investing in adaptation based on human rights when resources are scare is whose rights to prioritise. What is the basis on which to decide? Is it fairer to target interventions to reduce risk of climate change impacts and aid adaptation amongst the most vulnerable (as Rawls would argue), or aim to generate the maximum collective good (following the utilitarian philosophy of Bentham). The latter approach may well target those who are only marginally vulnerable. It is justified by the assumption that the overall increase in wellbeing would provide a resource for compensating those negatively impacted by this decision. The utilitarian approach is one origin of economic cost–benefit analysis.
    There are many strands to systematic thinking on justice that could inform decision-making for adaptation. The dominance of OECD countries in international policy and the academic literature positions the Western philosophical tradition closer to the existing intellectual core, and the relative potency of justice arguments thus framed. This is not to deny that non-Western philosophies, many perhaps not formalised, will shape local decisions and actions. Indeed their interaction with top-down policy based on Western ideas of justice may be a source of tension or misunderstandings. There are also inspiring and profound differences that can inform questions of sustainability and adaptation from non-Western sources. For example, the Buddhist aim to decrease suffering (including unmet desires) through individual control of the birth of desires (Kolm, 1996) presents a radical departure from dominant Western logics which aim to address perceived need not through individual self-knowledge, chosen restraint and a revelation of happiness, but through the social rights of access, distribution and procedure; or worse through imposed coping and restraint in the worst forms of adaptation. Meeting these Western elements of