Asia in Depth | Kimberley Thomas | “Taking Climate Vulnerability to Market”
For decades, climate change negotiations and responses have prioritized mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) over adaptation (minimizing negative climate impacts). However, this balance is beginning to shift, as evidenced by recent depictions of adaptation in developing countries as an “untapped opportunity.” Yet, while finance industry insiders eagerly anticipate a multi-trillion-dollar adaptation market, Thomas examines the work required to reconfigure some groups’ vulnerability to climate change as profitable investments. My project focuses on the production of farm, forest, and aquaculture products—what she terms adaptive commodities—as a market-based approach to climate vulnerability in Asia and beyond. Case studies from Vietnam, India, and Indonesia indicate that the promotion of adaptive commodities as triple-bottom line solutions amounts to little more than the commodification of climate vulnerability itself.
Kimberley Anh Thomas is an environmental social scientist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. She takes a political ecology approach to questions about environmental justice, human vulnerability to hazards, and the multi-scalar politics of resource governance in South and Southeast Asia. Her research appears in peer-reviewed journals including Global Environmental Change, Climate and Development, Political Geography, and Development and Change and has been funded by the Fulbright Program, Council of Overseas American Research Centers, and the Institute for Human Geography.