Resource Management and Geography - Theses
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ItemOutsourcing adaptation: examining the role and influence of consultants in governing climate change adaptation( 2017)The aim of this thesis is to examine the role and influence of consultants in governing climate change adaptation. The thesis is guided by three research questions: how did consultants become involved in advising governments on adaptation planning; what work do consultants do as advisors; and how do consultants reproduce themselves in adaptation planning? In answering these research questions, this thesis develops a conceptual framework that theorises adaptation governance as a governmental programme shaped by (and shaping) the practices, materialities and spatial-temporalities of consulting. The research combines a broader historical analysis of adaptation consulting (2004-2015) with a multi-sited and multi-scalar institutional ethnography of adaptation consulting as it was performed over a two-year period (2014-2015) in an adaptation planning consulting project and at conferences, training events and other sites. This thesis finds that (1) consultants are advising governments on a wide range of adaptation issues and across scales, places and time so as to deeply entangle public and private actors in adaptation governance; (2) the project creation and business development work of consultants renders adaptation both techno-managerial and governable by the market; and (3) the involvement of consultants in advising governments on planning for a changing climate constitutes adaptation governance in ways that highlights the increasing depoliticisation of public policy development in Australia. The thesis concludes with discussion of the implications for the future of adaptation governance in Australia, as well as the contribution of this research to broader debates on geographies of governance and productions of neoliberal expertise.