Most contemporary adaptation initiatives are predicated on the assumption that the purpose of adaptation is to preserve the existing systems and practices in the face of escalating risks from familiar hazards (droughts, storms, floods, heat extremes, etc.). However, climate change will drive radical transformations in our physical environment that make many existing systems and practices unviable.

Past episodes of rapid and severe climate change hold lessons about how societies respond to transformational changes in the physical environment that can help us navigate 21st century climate change. Examination of these episodes can provide physical analogues for potential future changes, for example a collapse of the North Atlantic ocean circulation, or of terrestrial ecosystems such as occurred during the desertification of the Sahara. They can illuminate how human responses to such changes can lead to the emergence of new forms of social organisation. Critically, they can help us address one of the fundamental barriers to meaningful action on climate change – our failure to imagine a climate changed world that is radically different to the one we inhabit today.

This module uses examples from the recent and distant past to interrogate how climatic and environmental transformations require ‘transformational adaptation,’ and to ask what this might look like. From the last ice age, through the emergence of the earliest cities and states, to the 21st century and beyond, we look at past and potential future transformations and ask what these mean for adaptation.

Key questions addressed in this module include:

• How climate change can make existing systems and practices impossible
• How people have responded to rapid and severe climate change throughout (pre)history
• What future ‘climate surprises’ have analogues in the past
• How climatic and environmental change can shape how societies are organised
• How adaptation to large environmental changes can make societies more unequal
• What patterns are repeated in time and space when people adapt to large changes?
• What are the lessons from the past for adaptation today?

This module can be integrated into tailored versions of our Adaptation Literacy and Adapting to Climate Change courses, or run as a stand-alone seminar, webinar or workshop. Please contact us if you are interested in this module.