Scientific reports, political directives and national plans follow one after another, urging regions to adapt to new climate realities. Yet, one question remains: how do adaptation initiatives among local communities and businesses actually unfold on the ground. While announcements of public or government-backed projects or regulatory frameworks often take centre stage, other, far more discreet grassroots forms of action or reorganisation are at work, which can be grouped under the term “silent adaptation”.
Behind this term lie numerous individual, corporate or collective initiatives, which, while not specifically designated or labelled as “adaptation”, are nevertheless gradually transforming organisations and regions. Taking these dynamics into account and gaining a better understanding of their nature could prove crucial in ensuring that public policies do not overlook aspects of the reality experienced on the ground by local communities and businesses.
Adaptation: a concept still seeking meaning in its practical application
Faced with a steady decline in his harvests, which are suffering from persistent mildew caused by erratic weather patterns, a winegrower based in France’s Aude department has been benefiting since 2021 from data collected by local weather stations. This, thanks to a technician working for the departmental Chamber of Agriculture. This valuable data enables him to anticipate adverse weather conditions as effectively as possible while awaiting INRAE’s (the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, a public scientific agency) approval of new grape varieties that are more disease-resistant, which are being tested as part of a collaborative project.
Yet at no point does this winegrower refer to these measures as ‘actions for adapting to climate change’, even though they are helping his vineyard cope and keep up with the accelerating pace of new climate realities.
Long regarded as the “poor relation” of international and national climate policy agendas, adaptation to climate change is now becoming one of the most prominent terms. This is evidenced by the proliferation of national climate change adaptation plans, adaptation awards and the boom in scientific and media publications on the subject.
However, despite its stated priority in public climate policies, adaptation still faces several challenges when it comes to its operational implementation, not least of which is being recognised as such. For example, an artisan chocolatier who has no choice but to diversify and find new sources of cocoa following disastrous harvests affecting their usual supplier in Côte d’Ivoire is unlikely to describe their approach as adapting to climate change.
For many professionals working in the emerging field of climate change resilience, adaptation is often nothing more than an update to “Risk Management 3.0”, bolstered by new technical tools for forecasting, which are gradually being supplemented by regenerative AI. Colour-coded maps featuring statistical data derived from increasingly sophisticated climate models are then presented as the basis for the client to develop an action plan.
However, this “top-down” approach was questioned as early as 2004 by researchers
Suraje Dessai and Mike Hulme regarding its relevance in terms of operationalising adaptation. Consequently, despite the stated paradox of “transformation”, the objective is clear: to increase the resilience of ways of life that have been established over several generations in order to cope with a France that is 4°C warmer by around 2100.
But at local level, a different story is unfolding amongst communities who are increasingly facing severe weather events. For instance, at a French clinic in the Grand Est region (France), a circular confirmed that working hours could be adjusted during now-recurring heatwaves to protect staff and patients. At the same time, discussions are taking place at management level to assess the possibility of providing more suitable uniforms for care staff.
These are all measures that embody new practices, though the term “adaptation” is not used when speaking to those involved. The fact is that, in order to ensure the continuity of their services and long-term business viability, local authorities and businesses have very little room for manoeuvre: in practical terms, this means, above all, having to improvise in the face of mounting financial, technical or administrative constraints. Many local stakeholders are thus working quietly, off the radar of the administrative bodies that track, recognise or highlight the “top performers” in the field of adaptation.
Silent adaptation: standing apart from official guidelines
To describe the phenomenon that has regularly emerged from interviews and observations carried out over the last two decades with practitioners in the field, I have chosen the term “silent adaptation”, drawing on the work of the French philosopher François Jullien. To describe the continuous changes that lie at the heart of life – such as ageing or the evolution of feelings – François Jullien used the term “silent transformations” as early as 2009, a term he also applies to climate change: “what is climate change if not silent transformations, arising from an indefinite interplay of factors occurring infinitesimally and continuously on a global scale?”.
In turn, when viewed as a silent transformation, adaptation can thus be perceived as a process of continuous reorganisation through which system restructure themselves in response to climate change in order to ensure their viability.
Linking “adaptation” with “silent” also highlights a reality: many stakeholders make little use – whether intentionally or not – of the vocabulary associated with adaptation measures advocated in policy directives. Here, people do not communicate using terms such as “vulnerability assessments”, “exposures to hazards” or sensitivity factors”. They monitor the weather on a day-to-day basis and take action according to the resources at hand by changing sowing dates, postponing construction work or clearing the banks of the nearby river.
The aim is then to operate within a time frame that will allow the activity to continue, maintain a good relationship with clients or mitigate the impact of the impending rainfall. The temporal horizon ranges from the day before to the day after right up to “next time”. The spatial horizon, meanwhile, is on the scale of 120m2 of the north wall of the 14th-century church, which is suffering from severe clay shrinkage and swelling; the scale of the four municipal staff members tasked with clearing the undergrowth on the western outskirts of the village. This string of successive initiatives put in place “to cope with such erratic weather” is unfolding across the area and forms part of the adaptation process.
In practical terms, these overlooked reorganisation efforts are all processes not explicitly designated as adaptations to climate change, which reveal themselves through practice rather than decree: fearing another summer “like last year’s”, the estate agents’ office is trialling new opening hours during the summer months to ensure staff are offered thermal comfort.
For researchers surveying the field, these forms of action are more widespread than one might think. They differ from public action across several characteristics, including the absence of any official designation, maximum decentralisation and the optimisation of step-by-step learning: unable to reach the weekly market due to flooded roads, the mobile butcher for instance, makes enquiries about other markets by calling on his network to draw up a new annual schedule that takes recurring weather-related obstacles into account.
Adapting also means listening to what is taking shape quietly, often behind the scenes.
The illusion lies in believing that the tangibility of high-profile adaptation offers a sense of security. Yet silence also has the potential to build on our resilience to inhabit the world and this is gradually happening each day before our very eyes. In its pursuit of efficiency, public policy could gain a great deal from ceasing to regard local actors as passive recipients of master plans they have devised for them.
Comments are closed.