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ABSTRACT
Climate change is threatening poverty reduction throughout the global South. One set of arguments found within the environmental change literature is that socio-ecological systems and people must have general development capacities and climate-adaptive capacities if development under climate change will be successful. This combination is known as adaptive development. The objective of this paper is to study if the emergence of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) influences adaptive development in coastal Cambodia. Our findings are as follows: from a systems perspective, we argue that development capacities are being strengthened with SEZ employment as many employees experience an increased, predictable income, even as climate-specific capacities are weak, beyond the changes to climate exposure that people experience through migration. However, even as industrial and migration systems develop, the lack of climate-specific capacities in the urban system is concerning: water supply, land-use planning, and urban governance take little account of climate change adaptation, which may undermine longer-term development in this region. Within households, however, we see differentiation and agency, including farming households that rely on remittances from migratory SEZ labour during droughts, and local fishing households that diversify their livelihoods via nearby SEZ employment.
Acknowledgements
This article has been written as part of the research program Urban Climate Resilience in Southeast Asia (UCRSEA). We thank colleagues in the UCRSEA CAG 2017 Panel for feedback on an earlier version of this paper, and appreciate the insights of team members in Cambodia too. Thanks to Furqan Asif for providing key field introductions and Sina Thor for translation and research support. We also appreciate the insights of two anonymous reviewers.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Jason Horlings is a graduate of the University of Ottawa’s Master of Arts in International Development and Globalization, with a specialization in the environment. He currently supports international development programs related to the environment and climate change.
Melissa Marschke is an Associate Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies, at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her current research interests include unpacking coastal livelihood transitions and understanding working conditions across the seafood sector.