Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-05
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Guillaume Simonet-Umaña, research professor in adaptation to climate change, University of Pau and the Adour Countries (UPPA)
At the local level, numerous actions spontaneously emerge to cope with climate hazards. Rarely claimed as climate change adaptation measures, they often go unnoticed by public policies.
Scientific reports, political injunctions, and national plans follow one another to urge territories to adapt to new climate realities. Yet, one question remains: how is adaptation concretely deployed on the ground? While announcements of projects or regulatory frameworks often take center stage, other forms of reorganization are at work, much more discreet, which can be grouped under the term “silent adaptation.”
Behind this label lie multiple individual, corporate, or collective initiatives which, without being designated or labeled “adaptation,” nevertheless gradually transform organizations and territories. Taking these dynamics into account and better understanding their contours could prove relevant to prevent public policies from overlooking part of the reality experienced on the ground by populations and businesses.
Adaptation, a notion still seeking meaning in terms of its practical application
Let’s look at a case to understand it clearly. Facing the continuous decline of his crops, which suffer from a stubborn downy mildew due to capricious weather episodes, a winegrower established in the Aude has been benefiting since 2021 from information collected by weather stations positioned in his area through a technician provided by the departmental Chamber of Agriculture. This valuable data allows him to better anticipate unfavorable climatic conditions while awaiting the approval by Inrae of new grapevine varieties more resistant to diseases, tested within the framework of a collaboration.
Yet, at no point does this winegrower mention these measures as actions to adapt to climate change, even though they contribute to the transformation of his operation in order to cope with the acceleration of new climate realities.
Long labeled as the “poor relative” of international or national climate policy agendas, climate change adaptation is now one of the most prominent terms. Evidence of this includes the 3rd edition of the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan, the increasing number of Adaptation Trophies, as well as the clearincreasescientific and media publications on the subject.
Yet, behind its stated priority in climate public policies, adaptation still faces several obstaclesdifficultiesat the time of its operational implementation, among which is being identified as such. Thus, the artisan chocolatier who has no choice but to diversify and find new sources of cocoa supply after the disastrous harvests of their usual supplier located in Ivory Coast will not mention their approach as an adaptation to climate change.
For a large portion of professionals working in the emerging field of resilience to climate change, on the other hand, adapting is often nothing more than updating a 3.0 risk management enhanced by new technical means of anticipation that AI (artificial intelligence) is progressively joining.regenerative. Colored and numbered maps from increasingly advanced climate models are then offered as basic tools for the development of actions to be planned by the client.
Yet, as early as 2004, theresearchersSuraje Dessai and Mike Hulme questioned this “top-down” logic and its relevance in terms of operationalizing adaptation. From then on, despite the regularly announced horizon of “transformation” of territories and activities, the objective is stated: to increase the resilience of life characteristics such as those established over several generations to face a +4°C France around 2100.
But at the local level, a different story unfolds among the populations facing increasingly severe climatic hazards. Thus, in a clinic located in the Grand Est region, a circular confirms that working hours may be adjusted during now recurrent episodes of intense heat in order to protect employees and patients. At the same time, discussions are taking place within management to evaluate the possibility of offering more suitable clothing for the care attendants.
So many actions embody new practices without, however, adopting the terminology “adaptation” when questioning the stakeholders. This is because, in order to ensure the continuity of their services or the sustainability of their professional activities, the room for maneuver of local authorities and businesses is limited: concretely, it is above all about improvising in the face of accumulating financial, technical, or administrative constraints. Numerous local actors thus work silently outside the administrative radars that tally, award, or highlight the best performers in terms of adaptation.
The silent adaptation: beyond injunctions
To describe the phenomenon that regularly emerges from interviews and observations conducted over the past two decades with field actors, I have chosen the term “silent adaptation,” referring to the work of philosopher François Jullien.
To describe the continuous changes that are at the heart of life, such as aging or the evolution of feelings, François Jullien has used since 2009 the term“silent transformations”, a term which he also applies to climate changes:
“What are climate changes if not silent transformations, resulting from an indefinite correlation of factors occurring infinitesimally and continuously on a global scale?”
In turn considered a silent transformation, adaptation can thus be perceived as an ongoing reorganization process through which systems structure themselves according to climate change in order to ensure their viability.
Linking “adaptation” and “silent” also allows evoking a reality: many actors use little, whether voluntarily or not, the vocabulary associated with the adaptation approaches promoted in the injunctions. Here, one does not communicate with “vulnerability diagnostics,” “hazard exposures,” or “sensitivity factors.” One monitors the weather day by day, and decides according to available means: changing sowing dates, postponing the worksite, or cleaning the banks of the nearby river.
Next, the aim is to operate within a timeframe that allows the continuation of the activity, maintaining a good relationship with the client or reducing the impact of the upcoming rainfall. The temporal horizon ranges from the day before to the day after, up to “next time.” The spatial horizon is situated at the scale of the 120 square meters of the north wall of the 14th-century church undergoing significant clay shrink-swell, at the scale of the pasture plot intended to sustain the herd of seventeen sheep until next month, or at the scale of the four employees of the municipal team responsible for clearing the western outskirts of the village. These successive chains of initiatives implemented “to cope with this erratic weather” unfold across the territory and contribute to adaptation.
Concretely, these invisible reorganizations are as many processes not explicitly designated as adaptations to climate change that become apparent through use, and not by decree: fearing another summer, “like last year’s,” the real estate agency’s office is testing its clientele on new schedules during the summer period to ensure the thermal comfort of its employees.
For researchers who traverse the territories, these forms of action are more widespread than one mightthink. They differ from public action by several characteristics, including the absence of a label, maximum decentralization, and step-by-step learning optimization: having been unable to access the weekly market due to flooded roads, the butcher truck exhibitor inquires about the possibilities of other markets by calling on his network in order to develop a new annual schedule taking into account these recurring weather-related obstacles.
Adapting also means listening to what is being established quietly and in the shadows. The illusion lies in believing oneself reassured by the tangibility of a noisy adaptation. Yet, silence also has the potential to build an ability to inhabit the world that is taking shape more and more before our eyes every day. In the quest for efficiency, public policies could gain a great deal by ceasing to consider local actors as passive recipients of master plans conceived for them.
Guillaume Simonet-Umaña is the coordinator of the association Reconnexion – Expertise Climat Occitanie.
–ref. The silent adaptation: these transformations that escape public policies –https://theconversation.com/the-silent-adaptation-these-transformations-that-escape-public-policies-280500