Towards more sustainable responses to natural hazards and climate change challenges via transformative adaptation

Climate change is perceived as a major challenge of modern times. Apart from mitigation measures, such as greenhouse gas emission reductions, a further means to tackle it is via the deployment of adaptation policies and responses, which may also help to address the natural hazards associated with it. Despite the importance of adaptation measures, their effectiveness is often limited by a failure to integrate actions addressing both the causes and symptoms of vulnerability. There is evidence that adaptation processes are largely fragmented, incremental, with limited capacity for transformational change. This paper suggests measures through which transformative adaptation may be further deployed to tackle climate challenges in conjunction with efforts that address poverty alleviation. The implications of this paper are two-fold. Firstly, it offers a comprehensive review of the literature on transformative climate change adaptation, outlining its nature and special features. Secondly, it contains a unique set of cases from 20 countries, predominantly from the Global South, mostly affected by climate change, and is one of the largest studies on the topic ever undertaken. The experiences from this paper will support attempts to sustain transformative adaptation and natural hazards control, which are relevant to the many countries suffering from climatic variations. •Examines the concept of transformative adaptation and its adoption in facing climate change adaptation challenges.•Presents cases of climate change adaptation strategies from 20 countries.•Highlights the context-specific nature of climate change adaptation challenges.•Six countries adopted mainly incremental adaptation approach while 14 countries implemented transformative adaptation methods.•Highlights measures for improving the implementation of transformative adaptation to tackle challenges of climate change.