Linking ICTs and climate change adaptation: a conceptual framework for e-resilience and e-adaptation

This document asserts that resilience increasingly entails finding innovative solutions, with the help of tools such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), that enable vulnerable contexts to learn, adapt and possible transform in face of the uncertainties posed by the changing climate. It further asserts that given the impacts of extended periods of drought, heat waves, extreme storms or slow-changing climate trends continue to intensify, so will the need for developing countries to build resilience, a complex concept that goes well-beyond ‘bouncing back’ in the aftermath of a climate-related event.

By drawing key principles from recognised conceptual approaches of the social sciences, the paper seeks to foster a more in-depth understanding of both the potential and the challenges associated with the use of ICTs within contexts vulnerable to climate change, while identifying the main concepts and systemic feedback that need to be considered in this analysis.

The proposed framework is developed in progressive, interrelated stages throughout the paper. The first section presents the conceptual underpinnings of livelihood systems’ vulnerability to the potential effects of climate change.

Section 2 introduces the concept of resilience as a system property, arguing that, through a set of dynamic subproperties, it plays an important role in enhancing the adaptive capacity of livelihood systems.

Section 3 develops the last component of the conceptual framework by exploring the potential of ICTs with respect to the subproperties of resilience, introducing the concept of eresilience and analysing the potential of ICT tools as enablers of adaptive processes within contexts vulnerable to climate change.

This document targets an audience of development strategists, academics and practitioners working in the fields of ICTs for development (ICT4D), climate change and/or related areas, interested in conducting more rigorous analysis of the linkages between ICTs and adaptation processes in developing countries.