Beyond unintentionality: considering climate maladaptation as cyclical

Sameer H. Shah (), Jamie A. Haverkamp, Celina Balderas Guzmán, Megan Mills-Novoa and Meagan Carmack
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Sameer H. Shah: University of Washington
Jamie A. Haverkamp: Bates College
Celina Balderas Guzmán: University of Washington
Megan Mills-Novoa: University of California, Berkeley
Meagan Carmack: University of Washington

Climatic Change, 2025, vol. 178, issue 4, No 19, 19 pages

Abstract: Abstract Climate adaptation is imperative; however, instances of maladaptation are increasingly documented in sectors and locations around the world. Despite the prevalence of maladaptation, researchers and intergovernmental actors, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, consistently frame it as “unintentional.” Drawing from environmental injustice, critical development studies, critical race theory, and coloniality scholarship, we argue the impossibility of characterizing maladaptation—now a global-scale phenomenon—as an unintended consequence of well-intentioned adaptation planning. This paper reframes the (re)production of climate maladaptation as a foreseeable result of the unequal systems of colonial racial capitalism through which adaptation is implemented and refracted. Systems-level change that confronts uneven relations of power, rather than incremental institutional reform, can address the prevalence of maladaptation. Treated as such, tackling climate maladaptation becomes a “political project”— not merely a “planning project.”

Keywords: Climate maladaptation; Climate vulnerability; Transformative adaptation; Longue durée; Colonialism; Injustice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10584-025-03922-7

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