Politics, values, and reflexivity: The case of adaptation to climate change in Hampton Roads, Virginia

Climate adaptation planning is said to be a necessary and inevitable facet of future societies, and is rapidly occurring across a range of geopolitical scales. Previous scholarship suggests that a democratic decentralized approach, one that fosters inclusive participation and representation, is central to achieving equitable and sustainable outcomes of adaptation. However, recent studies frequently characterize the adaptation process as dominated by a techoscientific approach, among expert and elite actors, that tends to obscure or neglect the perceptions and desires of more marginalized members of society. This paper employs a values-based approach to better understand motivational factors for a closed and non-inclusive adaptation process. Through a case study of early, yet formidable stages of adaptation planning in the urban, coastal region of Hampton Roads, Virginia, empirical data among the epistemic community were gathered by interviews and participant observation at de facto adaptation planning forums. Research results document an exclusionary process favoring the participation and representation of technocratic elites and the exclusion of elected officials and local citizens. When linking these case study findings to value theory, inferences are made that adaptation planning in Hampton Roads is motivated by dominant institutional actor values of power and security, those that are theorized to be in opposition to values fostering social and environmental justice. In light of these research results, this paper calls for a critically reflexive adaptation practice, thereby challenging values, assumptions, and beliefs of the self, as well as social structures and power relations that shape adaptation planning.