23 individual transilience in the face of climate change 2.1. INTRODUCTION Climate change is causing various risks, including extreme weather events (e.g., flooding, bush fires) and increasing temperatures, that have detrimental material, physical, and psychological consequences (IPCC, 2018; Sauerborn & Ebi, 2012; Schneider et al., 2007; Solomon et al., 2008), and affect people’s health, safety, and well-being (Clayton et al., 2015; Doherty, 2018; Fritze et al., 2008; Manning & Clayton, 2018). It is essential that people adapt to climate change, which is defined as ‘moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities’ (IPCC 2014b). Climate adaptation is not only a responsibility of governments, as people themselves can and need to take action to protect themselves from climate change risks too (van Valkengoed & Steg, 2019a). It is, thus, key to understand whether people perceive they can adapt to climate change. In the past, humans have been able to successfully adapt to climate change. Studies have shown that people were able to not only persist, but also flexibly adapt and thrive in the face of past climate change (Degroot et al., 2021). For example, during the Late Antique Little Ice Age (sixth century AD) and the Little Ice Age (thirteenth to nineteenth century AD), humans adapted to climate change by introducing novel agriculture activities and water management strategies which allowed for economic expansion (Izdebski et al., 2016); they also shifted to new sources of energy, developed new trading methods, and developed new practices and languages by migrating to different areas (Degroot et al., 2021). These findings suggest that humans have not only been able to ‘bounce back’ in the face of climate change by recovering and maintaining what they had, which is commonly referred to as resilience (Bonanno, 2004). Instead, they have been able to change for the better, by exploiting new opportunities and shifting to new, beneficial ways of life. The question remains whether positive change is also possible in the face of contemporary climate change, and whether people perceive they have the capacity to adapt to climate change, not only by preventing harm, but also by changing for the better. The next question is whether such perceived adaptive capacity promotes adaptation behaviours, support for adaptation policies, and general well-being. We address these questions in the present paper by introducing a novel construct: transilience. Transilience The construct of transilience captures people’s perceived capacity to adapt to climate change risks. Drawing on historical analyses (Degroot et al., 2021) and the resilience literature (Davoudi et al., 2013, Folke et al., 2010), we theorise that transilience comprises three components: people’s perceived capacity to persist (persistence), 2
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