Paper short abstract:

Climate adaptation has no option but to navigate the complex storm of secular and spiritual communities, overlain by powerful individual agencies, in which the moral compass furiously spins. We need to adopt new tools, rules, and qualities to engage with this distributed leadership.

Paper long abstract:

While climate change per se is largely characterised geographically, acceptance, mitigation, and adaptation, span many communities. These may be defined geographically too (the default position particularly among politicians), however other characteristics (such as religious affiliation) do not. Practitioners recognise that the needs, expectations, capacities and capabilities of each community must be embraced for a solution to be effective. Tools of choice generally involve stakeholder identification/mapping. Mistaken assumptions in this methodology undermine problem solving and complex decision making processes. Obvious examples include; homogeneity of the community; the varying significance of adopted, appointed, inherited, elected and divinely-inspired representation; the personal significance of individuals drawing on these sources of authority; personal influence of spokespeople and leaders, shaped by personality and experience; and the relative balance of highly individual cognitive, emotional, and spiritual drivers. Time, too, substantially affects the impact of individuals and communities; and there are plenty of external catalysts (election of a new Pope, for instance) - some predictable and many not.

Not contemplated a decade ago, operating overtly, covertly, intentionally, and unintentionally, and woven among this, are informal, ad hoc, loosely or un-organised, players with tools that effect opinion change, who do not conform to moral, political or cultural stereotypes. Citizen journalism since the nineties provides simple evidence of this.

Collectively, this is distributed leadership, and we must engage it in developing complex solutions to critical, climate-related problems. Drawing on case studies from the UK and India, we explore the tools, rules, and jewels to do so.