2022 was a summer of climate extremes across the globe. Multiple heat events simmered across China and Europe, also in regions that are not “supposed to be this hot,” such as the United Kingdom. The western United States also baked in unusual heat, but perhaps the most damaging episode of the season occurred when extreme precipitation caused major flooding in Jackson, Mississippi. This untimely deluge exacerbated a pre-existing water infrastructure crisis in that city, leaving its 150,000, predominately black, residents without access to safe water for days. 

Western Europe and the United States were not alone in experiencing the effects of climate extremes. In China’s Qinghai Province on August 17, 2022, farmers and herders in Datong Hui and Tu autonomous counties were surprised at night when massive downpours caused flash floods and landslides. More than 6,000 people in the mountainous region were affected.

Extreme events such as these expose the complexity of adaptation, which requires actions at multiple levels and scales and involve a broader range of stakeholders. Yet, although an explicit focus on climate change adaptation might be a relatively new development when compared to traditional public problems (e.g., health, infrastructure, transportation), societal and cultural responses to climate change have taken place in the past, such as in traditional Chinese architecture. 

Indeed, with intensifying natural hazard events, behavioral adaptations and existing adaptation policy efforts that often focus on infrastructure, urban planning, and techno-managerial approaches will not be enough. Besides the need to reconcile different governmental responsibilities and plans, addressing adaptation head-on will depend on fighting inequality and considering a different politics of redistribution.

“Half a person deep”

The human cost of August’s Datong County mountain flood disaster was high, impacting 1,517 households and 6,245 people in six villages and two townships. 17 people were killed and 36 reported missing. 

What factors contributed to the disaster? It is a mix of geophysical aspects, local agricultural decision-making, and rural livelihood decisions, which all are linked to extra-local processes. From May to September, village farmers typically take their cattle and sheep into the mountains to graze, with some bringing their children along to help. Because of the long distance from the villages, some farmers live in mobile homes, which are vulnerable to flood-induced landslides.

Herding cattle and sheep is a major source of income in this area. One herdsman reported he lost 45 cows in the flood — which would have brought his family more than 300,000 yuan of annual income. Other Qinghai residents shared sobering stories of how the surprising speed and force of mountain torrents engulfed them in waters that were “half a person deep” and left them little time to escape. 

China’s 2022 flooding suggests there is more at stake than simply adjusting to a changing environment. The Mississippi case raises a similar question. The catastrophe in Jackson was long in the making and clearly exhibits problematic political-economic vulnerability, in which a regional legacy of industrial environmental pollution comes into confluence with weak environmental regulations, a fraudulent credit-rating system that limited the city’s ability to refinance infrastructure, and various forms of environmental racism. 

Both cataclysmic events offer a chance to reflect on a key question: Who has access to what type of public resources to be able to adapt and thrive?

Political responses and community adaptation strategies

Despite the significant commonalities between Qinghai and Mississippi’s extreme events, there are differences. One key variation is awareness of the issue. 

Mississippi’s approach is rooted in the state’s politically motivated climate skepticism, where outdated multi-hazard mitigation plans are the political norm. Yet Chinese policymakers have long recognized the impacts of climate change on Qinghai Province. Moreover, Chinese authorities are well-trained and have standard procedures to react quickly to disaster events.

Over the past two decades, the Qinghai Provincial Meteorological Department has carried out dedicated adaptation measures to meet the goal of establishing an ecological civilization highland. These targeted adaptation measures include improved resource utilization, climate change capacity building, public education programs, and returning farmland to forest. The Qinghai provincial authorities also have implemented initiatives to refine monitoring and evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions and the impact of climate change across different regions. Improving early warning mechanisms for disasters is also on their agenda. 

Layered on top of these provincial responses, China’s central government is demanding more ambitious climate adaptation action. In 2022, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued a Notice on Issuing the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy 2035, which guides provincial climate change adaptation action plans and proposes better interagency coordination.

Prior to the political planning and strategies, farmers in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau had already adopted a wide array of adaptation strategies, including adjusting the farming season, planting artificial grass, and reducing livestock.

Climate change adaptation: A cross-cutting issue 

The actions taken by all levels of Qinghai society and government reflect the importance of varied and combined responses. Because climate change adaptation is a complex problem, adaptive responses must be undertaken at multiple levels – local, regional, national, and global. Both public and private actors across multiple sectors (agriculture, education, health, transportation, water) are bringing a variety of approaches (e.g., behavioral, ecosystem-based, financial, social, technological) at different temporal scales (incremental and reactive, longterm, and anticipatory). 

Yet, one crucial aspect remains untouched: addressing uneven vulnerability risk within society and between different groups. In essence, adapting to climate change also means addressing some factors that leave some groups within a society more exposed to extreme climate effects than others. 

Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its Sixth Assessment Report, which, for the first time, stressed the need to address inequality as part of climate change adaptation. And quite in line with the Qinghai experience, the report emphasized the need to pay more attention to the widening inequalities in agricultural adaptation and the loss of rural smallholder livelihoods.

Intersectional vulnerability with political origins

Aside from the need to examine widening inequality of small-scale farmers, the Datong disaster points to the various layers of vulnerability.

One layer persists in dominant nature-society relations and the choices we make in how we sustain our livelihoods. Another layer, however, consists of the deep entanglement between ongoing and past political processes (such as land-use or infrastructural policies) and local livelihoods. Overarching political and economic processes critically impact the daily environments in which we respond to a changing climate. These links need to be explored in greater detail. 

For instance, a lack of life-sustaining resources such as fresh water, or a growing dependence on government subsidies can become systemic. Mississippi offers a clear example of this in the failure of its unresponsive political system to address visible and longstanding issues. 

To address some of the inequities related to climate change, adaptation practitioners and political strategies in other political contexts have pivoted to identifying “vulnerable groups.” Yet while we have become more adept in framing and identifying who is vulnerable, we continue to fall short in conducting a more systemic investigation of who has access to what kind of resources (and privileges) and why. This is a necessary step in creating and engaging in a politics aimed at redistribution.

Indeed, if certain power dynamics are not taken into consideration when identifying who is “vulnerable,” we run the risk of worsening the situation for affected populations through stigma and disempowering their autonomy. Not everyone is equally entitled in making vulnerability claims, which can have important implications for the policy process. And the strong focus on recognition politics may divert attention away from the important issues of redistribution. 

Uneven exposure to climate change — in China or the United States or anywhere else in the world — is inherently political. We must begin treating it as such.