Book Description

Climate resilient development is emerging as a key global policy agenda that integrates climate adaptation and mitigation into sustainable development decisions. For small island developing states (SIDS), development-driven climate agendas have shown to be underscored by neoliberal development paradigms that structure the management and governance of adaptation around financial imperatives from the global climate finance sector. Critical adaptation literature argues that climate financial priorities overcome other concerns for underlying sources of climate vulnerability in governmental decision-making. Yet, there are few studies that document the form and function of climate resilient development within national planning processes-- leaving critical gaps in understanding what these financialized practices mean for how climate vulnerability is defined and managed. To address this gap, this paper connects critical analyses of climate resilient development to the emergence of a new adaptation economy in Antigua and Barbuda, an Eastern Caribbean SIDS. The results illustrate how the function of the adaptation economy is to fix climate vulnerable sites to be targets for investment and development. In Antigua, this produced a national climate agenda that focused on forming climate resilient watershed development through (1) framing already-existing hazards within climate financing-driven narratives on climate vulnerability; (2) defining the economic value of climate vulnerable environmental resources; and (3) re-organizing development planning to focus on growing investments within climate vulnerable areas. Based on these findings, this paper argues that some climate resilient development agendas are seeking to produce new economic models that can profit from adapting to the uncertainties of climate risk, rather than address exploitative development practices that contribute to vulnerability.