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Paper short abstract

This paper interrogates projectized adaptation as epistemological violence and advances an alternative grounded in autonomous design. Drawing on work in a Himalayan village, it argues for reorienting adaptation and L&D toward community-led worldmaking.

Paper long abstract

This paper interrogates the “project” as a dominant logic of climate adaptation and argues that projectized adaptation constitutes a form of epistemological violence within contemporary climate governance. Adaptation, institutionalised by the development apparatus, is shaped by the logic of the project: constrained in scope by international funding calls or geopolitics while framed according to institutional timelines and imported expertise. Projectized adaptation is epistemologically violent, privileging technocratic knowledge and projectized adaptation packaged as neatly bounded interventions. It also precludes the emergence of grounded, always-ongoing adaptation guided by other forms of knowledge.

In response, the paper considers what forms of adaptation practice and L&D outcomes might come from reorienting away from the project’s epistemological violence. Drawing on concepts like autonomous design, this epistemic reversal centers situated, experiential knowledges and the emergent practices they engender. The paper makes this argument by considering ongoing work in a small Himalayan village that is gradually retreating uphill in response to climate crisis-driven flooding. First, it frames adaptation in the village as part of a continuum of environmental migration amidst abandonment by the state that would be interrupted by the imposition of projectized adaptation. Second, it outlines how a small design team responds to this framing by providing resources to make space for the community’s ongoing adaptive retreat. Finally, drawing on the example of this practice, the paper argues for a reorientation of institutional adaptation practice and L&D priorities toward making space for agential, emergent, community-led worldmaking.