One thing that i like about having discussions with various people, is the art of having different heads on one particular issue. It doesn’t matter really about the ‘title’ of the issue, or the name, or whatever. As long as you can catch the essence of the issues, then basically you’re in the right path. Strangely, i had the opportunity to discuss about ‘the philosophy’ of Climate Change Adaptation with several people from different backgrounds. As if we were meant to have the discussion, we then came up with the conclusion, that the activities related to Climate Change Adaptation are something that we need to do, but the term itself, it’s simply a jargon.
Climate Change Adaptation is truly important for us to do; that’s for people who really understand the term and context. But the fact is, Climate Change Adaptation as a term, is basically meaningless. Such term has been translated into different languages, and one found out that even the translations give no meaning. For someone whose her mothertounge is not english, i don’t really noticed about that. Which is for me, that’s interesting. Why do you have to create a term that basically meaningless?
Climate Change Adaptation is understood as some activities that have many things to do with adapting with climate change. Well, it is true, though; no doubt about it. Several people tried to break it down into detail activities in meeting the basic needs, and tried to link it with the climate change phenomenon; could be access to clean water, sanitation (clean and appropriate house for living), and livelihood. These activities, if we bundled it into one, turned out to be things that are needed to enhance the achievement of a sustainable state. Which leads us to the conclusion that Climate Change Adaptation (activities) is a part of sustainability issue. And pathetically, many times, we tried to separate both issues, and see it differently.
Analyzing from this fact, made us (who were in the discussion) think that the term of Climate Change Adaptation is basically a jargon, that so many times misleads people in responding. People were trying to avoid it, because they think they’ve gone too far into the sustainability issue. But the fact is, Climate Change Adaptation issues are majorily parts of sustainability issues. So, there is nothing wrong if we found that the solution to Climate Change Adaptation issues as sustainability issues.
Having said that, we finally agreed that climate change adaptation is no more than a jargon to accomodate the issue of climate change. So that from its term, people could then claimed it (by recognizing it) as climate change issue.
Our point of conclusion from the discussions was sometimes we were misled because of the term itself, which with it, we tried to treat the issue of Climate Change Adaptation exclusively. While from the reality, you cannot separate the issue of adapting with climate change with the issue of development, or any other sustainability issues. ‘Climate Change Adaptation’ is only a jargon; but if you look at it deeper enough, you’ll see that it’s an issue of sustainability, and it’s real.
Just don’t be deceived by terms; look further inside and determine it by yourself.
ime’…
