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Beyond climatic risk: envisioning, legitimizing and materializing imaginaries of climate change adaptation in Barbados
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DOI：10.1080/17565529.2026.2693234.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Caribbean critical literature has drawn attention to how climate change and adaptation framings are shaped by colonial legacies and contemporary global dependencies, yet less attention has been paid to how adaptation ideas take shape within national sociopolitical dynamics. Using the analytical lens of imaginaries and Barbados as a case study, this article examines how adaptation meanings are constructed. Drawing on analysis of key policy documents and interviews with policymakers, the study identifies three dominant imaginaries. Together, these imaginaries legitimize a national adaptation approach that prioritizes green–blue economic transformation, hard engineering solutions, and expanded financial access, not simply as responses to climate risk, but as pathways to pursue prosperity, preserve cultural identity and security, and reclaim perceived fairness and justice. These meanings, what is viewed as normal, desirable, and possible, are co-produced through the interaction of local histories and identities with globally circulating narratives of development, vulnerability, and justice. The article argues that greater attention to these ideological foundations is essential to explain why certain practices persist and to identify the assumptions that must be be challenged to enable transformative change. By making these imaginaries visible, it encourages reflexivity and supports more inclusive and transformative climate futures.
Keywords:
adaptation
imaginaries
Small Island Developing States (SIDS)
Barbados
future
climate change
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