Publications
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Taylor, Marcus; Eriksen, Siri Ellen Hallstrøm; Vincent, Katharine; Scoville-Simonds, Morgan; Brooks, Nick & Schipper, E. Lisa F.
(2025).
Integrating power, justice and reflexivity into transformative climate change adaptation.
Global Environmental Change.
ISSN 0959-3780.
91.
doi:
10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2025.102981.
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Transformative adaptation requires transformation among those who fund, plan, implement and evaluate interventions. In response, we emphasise the need for donor and implementing organisations to self-reform to create the necessary space and support for adaptation projects that embrace a transformative ethos. We argue that projects can appropriately centre justice as the primary goal of transformative adaptation by (1) confronting power relations, (2) embracing knowledge pluralism, (3) fostering bottom-up coalitions, and (4) recognizing trade-offs and unexpected outcomes. At the heart of this reflexive approach is the foregrounding of Learning processes targeted towards shifting knowledge and power that is critical to avoid adaptive outcomes that exacerbate the vulnerability and exclusion of already marginalised groups.
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Köppel, Jonas & Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2024).
What should “we” do? Subjects and scales in the double-bind between energy transition and lithium extraction.
The Extractive Industries and Society.
ISSN 2214-790X.
17,
p. 1–9.
doi:
10.1016/j.exis.2023.101376.
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Lorca, Mauricio; Andrade, Manuel Olivera; Escosteguy, Melisa; Köppel, Jonas; Scoville-Simonds, Morgan & Hufty, Marc
(2022).
Mining indigenous territories: Consensus, tensions and ambivalences in the Salar de Atacama.
The Extractive Industries and Society.
ISSN 2214-790X.
9.
doi:
10.1016/j.exis.2022.101047.
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Lithium mining in Chile’s Salar de Atacama (SdA) has a relatively long and controversial history, especially when
it comes to the local Indigenous peoples. In this context, this paper looks at the ways mining activities, and
different visions of territory and indigeneity co-produce each other in the particular context of the SdA. For this,
we use historical and ethnographic methods and draw on studies in anthropology and geography. We aim to
escape simplistic images of Indigenous peoples’ reactions to mining as reflecting victimhood, resistance, or
strategic pragmatism, and show instead how individuals and groups organize and express themselves in
ambivalent ways, maintaining complex relationships with both mining and the territory. According to our local
interlocutors, struggles around territory in the SdA mainly concern water scarcity, the survival of this unique
ecosystem’s biological diversity, as well as continuity and change in local lifeways. While recent agreements
between mining companies and local communities may benefit some individuals, they are also generating inter-
and intra- community tensions over these issues. We find that mining shapes what ’indigenous’ means and who
can claim this identity, while Indigenous mobilization in turn shapes how mining is perceived and carried out.
Together, mining and Indigenous mobilization produce a particular kind of territory, pervaded by diverse lines of
both consensus and tension. Rather than contradictions, the ambivalent positions Indigenous peoples maintain
become comprehensible when considering, ethnographically and historically, the particular places and life-
worlds they inhabit, and the asymmetrical patterns of constraint and opportunity they face. More broadly, the
paper raises questions about the implications of a global transition to renewable energy based on lithium battery
technologies, and ethical responses to the climate crisis.
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Eriksen, Siri; Schipper, E Lisa F; Scoville-Simonds, Morgan; Vincent, Katharine; Adam, Hans Nicolai & Brooks, Nick
[Show all 20 contributors for this article]
(2021).
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries: Help, hindrance or irrelevance?
World Development.
ISSN 0305-750X.
141.
doi:
10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105383.
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This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of ‘local’ vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with ‘vulnerable’ populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan; Jamali, Hameed & Hufty, Marc
(2020).
The Hazards of Mainstreaming: Climate change adaptation politics in three dimensions.
World Development.
ISSN 0305-750X.
125.
doi:
10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104683.
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Under the threat of climate change and with disproportional impacts expected for the world’s poorest, the adaptation imperative confers renewed justification to development aid transfers, while the urgency of the problem lends itself to the uncritical application of existing solutions. Yet, an emerging body of work has raised critical questions about how adaptation is being conceived and implemented in the global South. We systematize and contribute to this critical scholarship by distinguishing three fundamental political dimensions of the adaptation problem, related to differential responsibility, the global uneven production of vulnerability, and unequal relations of power in adaptation decision-making itself. Further, based on research from across the global South, the paper suggests that the current program of ‘mainstreaming’ adaptation into existing development logics and structures perpetuates an anti-politics machine, obscuring and depoliticizing rather than addressing the political dimensions of the adaptation problem. Mainstreaming risks not only reproducing development-as-usual, but in fact reinforcing technocratic patterns of control. The three-dimensional view of the politics of climate change adaptation is offered as an analytical perspective to sharpen and systematize future critical adaptation scholarship. In the conclusion, we highlight avenues toward enhanced attention to power and justice in climate change research and practice.
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Fazey, Ioan; Schäpke, Niko; Rosenberg, Milda Nordbø; Caniglia, Guido; O'Brien, Karen & Hodgson, Anthony
[Show all 40 contributors for this article]
(2020).
Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there.
Energy Research & Social Science.
ISSN 2214-6296.
70.
doi:
10.1016/j.erss.2020.101724.
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Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2018).
Climate, the Earth, and God - Entangled narratives of cultural and climatic change in the Peruvian Andes.
World Development.
ISSN 0305-750X.
110,
p. 345–359.
doi:
10.1016/j.worlddev.2018.06.012.
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How different groups perceive climate-related problems and changes is of growing interest in research and practice, especially in relation to the adaptation of vulnerable communities to climate change. However, research on local climate perceptions to date has tended to focus on what changes are perceived, not on how those changes are interpreted in particular socio-cultural contexts and given meaning within local worldviews and systems of values and beliefs. Based on fieldwork in agro-pastoral communities in highland Cusco, Peru, this study examines climate perceptions in terms of how local community members understand and explain changing climatic conditions. Specifically, two local climate narratives are identified and found to relate to Andean re-interpretations of Catholic and Evangelical religious traditions. The Andean practice of ritual offering to the earth (pago a la tierra) is found to play a key role both in the shifting religious identifications encountered at the local level, and in giving meaning to changing climatic conditions. The article further explores how these perspectives are rooted in diverging ontological and epistemological foundations. While in the local Catholic view the earth is conceived of as a non-human sacred/social person (pachamama or Santa Tierra) with whom a relationship of reciprocity must be maintained, the local Evangelical perspective instead conceives of the earth as an object, not a subject, more closely mirroring modernist Nature/Culture dualism. More broadly, the study suggests that how people interpret changing climatic conditions cannot simply be extracted and purified from the contexts of meaning production, and proposes the concept of ‘entangled narratives’ as a way of accounting for the social and cultural embeddedness of climate perceptions. Fulfilling our obligation to address climate change in socially just ways will require deepening our understanding of its human dimensions, including taking seriously what these changes may mean to the impacted groups.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2016).
The Governance of Climate Change Adaptation Finance—An Overview and Critique.
International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Policy.
ISSN 2305-705X.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2025).
Energy transition, critical raw materials, and socio-environmental impacts – current and future research directions.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2023).
De la extracción de litio a la producción de baterías: ¿Cómo estudiar la justicia y la sosteni-bilidad a través de lugares y escalas?” [From lithium extraction to battery production: how to study justice and sustainability across places and scales?].
Full text in Research Archive
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Köppel, Jonas & Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2023).
What should ‘we’ do? Subjects and scales in the double-bind between energy transition and lithium extraction.
Full text in Research Archive
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan & Köppel, Jonas
(2022).
Dreams, realities, or recurring nightmares? Comparing battery socio-technical imaginaries between Latin America and Europe.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2022).
Las encrucijadas del litio: laboratorio ciencia-política-social [Lithium Crossroads: Social – science – policy laboratory].
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Köppel, Jonas & Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2021).
Staying with the double-bind: Narrative Relations Between Energy Transition and Lithium Extraction.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2021).
Reshaping peoples and places: A global political ecology of lithium (Panel chair).
Full text in Research Archive
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Hufty, Marc; Lorca, Mauricio; Andrade, Manuel Olivera; Escosteguy, Melisa; Köppel, Jonas & Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2021).
Mining Indigenous Territories: Consensus, Tensions and Ambivalences in the Salar de Ata-cama.
Full text in Research Archive
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan
(2021).
Sustainability for whom? Climate change, lithium, and the remaking of the global South.
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Scoville-Simonds, Morgan & O'Brien, Karen
(2018).
Vulnerability.
In Castree, Noel; Hulme, Mike & Proctor, James D. (Ed.),
Companion to Environmental Studies.
Routledge.
ISSN 9781138192201.
p. 127–135.
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Published
Apr. 16, 2024 11:40 AM
