Performative Vulnerability: Climate Change Adaptation Policies and Financing in Kiribati

Sophie Webber
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Sophie Webber: Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada

Environment and Planning A, 2013, vol. 45, issue 11, 2717-2733

Abstract: This paper explores some of the perverse effects of climate change adaptation policies and financing in the Republic of Kiribati, a low-lying island nation in the Central Pacific. I examine how encounters between financiers and government officials might produce vulnerability to climate change. I draw throughout from field research conducted in Kiribati, an archetypical ‘vulnerable-to-climate-change’ place, and a preeminent site for experimentation in climate change adaptation. By discussing several instances where Government of Kiribati elites are required to enact vulnerability in order to secure climate change adaptation financing, I demonstrate that such encounters are performative. This research contributes to theories of performativity in showing that the matrix conditioning and compelling such performative enactments of vulnerability is socionatural, consisting of a collective of climate change impacts, adaptation-finance technocrats, and many others. Thus, I demonstrate that vulnerability is not a latent condition, but, rather, an emergent effect of an assemblage of facts, expert actors, and objects.

Keywords: vulnerability; performativity; climate change adaptation; Kiribati (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:11:p:2717-2733

DOI: 10.1068/a45311

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