Intervention: The invisible labor of climate change adaptation

Abstract

While adapting to the impacts of climate change will require massive human efforts across landscapes, economies, and everyday social life, adaptation is rarely conceptualized as work conducted by laboring people. In this intervention, we suggest that the conditions under which this largely invisible adaptation labor is currently carried out – in which workers are frequently underpaid, unpaid or unfree - should become a key concern for scholars and advocates of climate justice and just transitions. We propose an inclusive definition of climate adaptation labor and mobilize it to examine how the conditions of life under climate change are being produced and reproduced, by whom, and for whose benefit. Drawing from diverse cases across 12 countries in both Global South/Majority World and Global North/Minority World contexts, we investigate the institutions and labor regimes through which adaptation labor is currently organized and (under)remunerated. We highlight how social difference and power entwine to devalue this work, particularly through idioms of “participation” and “contribution”, and draw attention to the agency, autonomy, and claims-making power of adaptation laborers. Crucially, we suggest theoretical and practical approaches for transforming adaptation labor into a vehicle for redistribution and just transition.