Dickinson to Durban » Climate Change, Environmental Politics, Featured, Key COP17 Issues » “You have to celebrate nothing happening.” – Vajjhala
“You have to celebrate nothing happening.” – Vajjhala
Shalini Vajjhala, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of International & Tribal Affairs, EPA
By Emily Bowie ’14
This past week the Global Mosaic students had the valuable opportunity to talk to government officials and scientists from Washington, DC about their jobs, experiences and their perspectives on both Climate Change and December’s COP 17. One of these delegates was Shalili Vajjhala, the Deputy Assistant Administrator to the Office of International & Tribal Affairs in the EPA. Vajjhala was one of the few women we heard from over the two days, her message was insightful and her friendly presence was well received by all of us.
Vajjhala continued the discussion we had began with Ko Barrett (Associate Director for International Affairs in the Climate Program Office at NOAA) concerning the growing area of policy surrounding climate adaptation issues. Vajjhala works both internationally as well as nationally concerning this issue, nationally she works mainly with affected, or threatened, tribal communities.
One point that Vajjhala made really stood out to me. She said that adaptation is one of the trickiest political issues because “you have to celebrate nothing happening.” I had never looked at climate adaptation policy this way before. Essentially, for adaptation policy to work you need to observe no changes in the subject of the policy. But if nothing happens then how can you measure success? And if there is no way to measure the success of a policy then why would the government implement the policy, or more importantly, fund it?
It appears to me that most political actions are implemented as a response to something that is occurring. For instance, driving laws were put in place because accidents were happening, after the laws were put in place a measurable decline in the numbers of accidents was observed. This observation provided incentive for the government to keep funding the institutions that implemented the laws. With climate adaptation, however, we cannot adhere to this policy implementation structure. By the time we see the effects we want to avoid it will be too late to implement them. But at the same time, we cannot put in place intense adaptation policies unless we are positive it is absolutely necessary because we don’t have copious amounts of money to waste. So the question really is, what amount of concrete evidence of climate vulnerability will we need in order to begin forming crucial adaptation policy?
Filed under: Climate Change, Environmental Politics, Featured, Key COP17 Issues · Tags: adaptation, climate change, Emily Bowie, Ko Barrett, Shalini Vajjhala
I agree with you the Shalini Vajjhala’s talk was fascinating, and she was an impressive speaker. As you explain, it is difficult to measure success when talking about climate change because success is nothing happening. But her consideration of successes thus far on the issue of climate change seems problematic to me. This is because if we say, as the representatives from the EPA did, that the US is successfully taking on climate change, then it does not create a sense of urgency to work for more in the future. Why would we put in the effort to change something that is succeeding? Yes, there have been some small successes, but I think we need to be careful in defining and proclaiming success.
Emily, this statement stood out to me as well. At first, I was taken aback with the realization that she made a valid point. The more I think about it, at first nothing would be a good thing, but as negotiations get deeper and deeper, I think the results should as well. Soon we will reach the point that nothing happening will not be to our benefit…
Great post Emily! You can now see your post under the “Featured” column of our homepage : )
Is it really the case that “we cannot put in place intense adaptation policies unless we are positive it is absolutely necessary”? Look at the impacts of the recent storms on the mid-Atlantic and Northeast areas, and the impacts of Hurricane Katrina. We have all the evidence we need that we are vulnerable to climate hazards. I think this is sufficient basis to invest in adaptation that reduces vulnerability to climate variations and extremes.