Paper short abstract:

In this paper, we ask how are climate hazards, local knowledge, affects and political forms assembled and generated by adaptation planning? Additionally, we ask how climate change preparedness comes to articulate and embody social imaginaries of the future and the governance arrangements these call forth.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we ask how are climate hazards, local knowledge, affects and political forms assembled and generated by adaptation planning? Additionally, we ask how climate change preparedness comes to articulate and embody social imaginaries of the future and the governance arrangements these call forth. Using a case study of a community-based adaptation planning process in 5 coastal communities of the province of New Brunswick, Canada, we demonstrate how community-based adaptation planning is an instance of local knowledge co-production enlisting new entities, organizational forms and identities. We argue furthermore, that in the process of adaptation planning, the material dynamics of climate change impacts and local knowledge co-production must be understood as constitutive of the formation of a "climate adaptation public" in the Deweyan sense. Drawing upon the notion of 'material participation' developed by Noortje Marres (2012), we argue that attending to the specificity and contingency of social-material co-production of local knowledge gives rise to specific governance challenges. Current governance arrangements may not be adequate to the task of empowering and coordinating emerging climate adaptation publics, and keeping different levels of climate adaptation decision-making transparent, adaptive and accountable. We sketch how more experimental forms of governance could be designed to support climate adaptation publics in New Brunswick and derive insights from this case study to inform climate adaptation governance more generally.