From Practice to Transformation: Regrounding Community-Based Adaptation in Critical Realism

Abstract

Community-based adaptation (CBA) has become a credible remedy to climate change adaptation, emphasizing local participation and community-defined priorities. However, its transformative potential remains limited when structural root causes of vulnerability are insufficiently addressed. This article argues—via the methodology of problematization—that aligning CBA with the broader agenda of social-ecological transformation requires a stronger philosophical foundation. We propose critical realism as a suitable philosophy of science to translate CBA’s emancipatory ambitions into a robust analytical and methodological practice. Critical realism is a practically oriented philosophy facilitating causal analyses coherent with its realist ontology and relativistic epistemology. It illuminates the interplay between agency and structure, enhancing CBA to confront power imbalances and systemic injustices while supporting local agency. By conjoining insights from political ecology and political economy, we show how critical realism offers analytical coherence, methodological robustness, and normative orientation for transformative adaptation practice. We delineate nine key synergies between critical realism and CBA that together provide the conceptual scaffolding for a politically powerful, reflexive, and justice-oriented adaptation science. In doing so, the paper contributes to rethinking CBA as not merely a localized coping mechanism but as part of a structural response to the social-ecological crisis.

1. Introduction

Human-induced global heating beyond 2 °C is set to intensify pressures on livelihoods and wellbeing, particularly for those already experiencing structural marginalization. In addition to mitigation, far-reaching adaptation measures will be essential to sustain social and ecological systems under worsening climate impacts. The uneven distribution of climate-related risks—both geographically and socially—demands specific attention to the most vulnerable groups. Community-based adaptation (CBA) has emerged as a key approach in this context, grounded in the localization of adaptation planning and the prioritization of community-defined needs. We define community as a fluid, heterogeneous, and complex entity (Selje et al. 2024) that is spatiotemporally contingent (Jarillo and Barnett 2021), constituted through intricate networks of power relations (Chung 2022), situated within socio-political landscapes (Kirkby et al. 2018), and defined by multiple socially constructed identities (Clarke et al. 2019). Next to this, the power of communities to influence adaptation projects is debated (Titz et al. 2018). Despite its emancipatory promise, the translation of the CBA concept into practice faces challenges. Power imbalances—rooted in broader political-economic systems—often remain unaddressed, risking the reproduction of existing inequalities (Selje et al. 2024). Scholars have cautioned that adaptation efforts that fail to recognize these underlying dynamics can entrench rather than alleviate oppression (McNamara et al. 2020; Mfitumukiza et al. 2020). While some interventions link CBA to systemic drivers of vulnerability (e.g., Barrowman and Butler 2020; Clarke et al. 2019; Dodman and Mitlin 2013; van der Ploeg et al. 2020; Wisner et al. 2014), such approaches and its practical application remain the exception.

At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that ecological crises and social inequalities must be understood as interwoven. This insight has given rise to the widely used concept of social-ecological transformation, which highlights the need for far-reaching, systemic change to overcome the structural causes of both ecological degradation and social injustice (Brand and Wissen 2017). While the term has been interpreted in different ways across academic and practical contexts, it broadly refers to the need to radically rethink and reshape social, ecological, and economic relations in equitable and sustainable ways (Kenter et al. 2025; Manuel-Navarrete 2010). This contrasts with technical framings of transformations as changes of “fundamental attributes of a socio ecological system” (IPCC 2018). Climate change, from a social-ecological transformation perspective, is not simply technical alterations of systems but a call to politicize and restructure societies in emancipatory ways (Brand et al. 2025; Görg 2011).

Achieving such a transformation requires addressing deep-seated global structures—“capitalism and materialism”—as well as local structures that condition both vulnerability and the options available to communities (Morrison et al. 2022). These forces are often ignored in concrete adaptation projects or operate beyond the local scale, yet they shape what is considered desirable or even possible within climate projects (Paprocki 2022). Hence, transformations in adaptation require a reflexive approach that actively disenfranchises power relation, builds coalitions, and fosters organizational learning (Taylor et al. 2025).

Against this backdrop, this opinion argues that CBA must embrace two essential commitments. First, it should align explicitly with the agenda of social-ecological transformation—understood as a process that challenges the systemic root causes of climate vulnerability rather than merely responding to its symptoms. The concepts of political ecology and political economy provide in this breath important analytic lenses guiding such radical social change (Pelling et al. 2015; Paterson 2020). As such, the opinion includes literature selected through a narrative review (Sovacool et al. 2018) which follows themes in the literature and has the aim of qualitative depth rather than comprehensiveness. Problematization is applied as a methodology to investigate assumptions that underlie current CBA practice and theory (Sandberg and Alvesson 2011). Problematization is a methodological undertaking “to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently” (Foucault 1985). Problematizing CBA’s efforts to integrate political ecology and political economy towards transformative approaches points towards that such efforts can benefit from explicitly engaging with their underlying philosophical assumptions. Second, “turning unquestioned assumptions into an invitation to stimulate deeper thinking” (Bärnthaler 2024), this opinion suggests that an adoption of critical realism (CR) as a philosophy of science is capable of advancing CBA’s transformative potential.

CR assumes a stratified ontology that recognizes the causal powers of social structures illuminating the interplay between structure and agency, while remaining open to plural ways of knowing through a relativist epistemology (Archer et al. 2013). It facilitates a reflexive stance that neither romanticizes community agency nor ignores the constraints imposed by political-economic systems. CR also has a history of supporting research on social-ecological transformations as well as synergistic interplay with political ecology and political economy (e.g., degrowth (Buch-Hansen and Nielsen 2023)). Therefore, this research asks: How can CR translate CBA’s social-ecological transformative ambitions into robust analytical and methodological practice?

By bringing CR into a conversation with CBA, it can become a more effective and politically conscious instrument for a social-ecological transformation. Rather than working around large-scale and distant power forces, the community is positioned at the meso-level and can mediate the interaction between higher-level structural drivers and the specificities of local contexts (Barnett 2022). While the transformative potential of CBA is contested (Titz et al. 2018; Dodman and Mitlin 2013), the community is a central agent that can prompt transformation among those who implement adaptation (e.g., funders, “experts”) due to its collective—not homogenous—agency (Galvin 2019).

This opinion begins with a focus on transformation in CBA and the integration of political economy and political ecology as two approaches that can investigate the root causes of vulnerability. It then introduces CR generally and CR’s application to political economy and ecology specifically. This culminates in nine synergies showing how CR can benefit the transformative potential of CBA. Finally, the opinion concludes and points to future implications.

2. Community-Based Adaptation and Root Causes of Vulnerability

CBA literature consistently highlights anchor points for transformative potential and shines a light on the root causes of vulnerability (Selje and Strikker 2025). Within the literature, the “community” has different levels of importance and agency status. Ensor (2014) stresses that communities must be understood as part of interconnected social-ecological systems. According to Ensor (2014), transformative CBA can therefore address ecological as well as socio-political sustainability, integrating “equity, economy, and ecology” as core elements of the transformation challenge. This perspective is further supported by Galvin (2019), who describes CBA’s potential as a catalyst for translocal change when the intended outcome of an intervention requires systemic change, thereby altering thinking and behavior of external actors through community action, and by Nath (2024), who frames it explicitly as transformative community-based adaptation via introducing a reflexivity in project planning. Here the “community” becomes the primary entity of transformation via strengthening of agency. van der Ploeg et al. (2020) and Clarke et al. (2019) highlight how climate change discourse can obscure root causes of vulnerability by shifting attention away from systemic issues like poverty, inequality, and weak governance, instead promoting reductionist solutions that depoliticize environmental and development challenges. Barrowman and Butler (2020) contend in regard to CBA that the international development sphere’s emphasis on agency, self-organization, and the responsibilization of individuals as solutions to systemic social issues neglects the complex interplay of local political and social structures, as well as the historical and political processes that shape them. Here, the transformative potential of the entity “community” is structurally constrained. Other works in the CBA literature try to pave a middle way for that—the tension field between agency and structure. For instance, Dodman and Mitlin (2013) emphasize the importance of engaging higher political levels to drive transformation. Fox et al. (2021) examine how multi-scalar governance in Cape Town’s informal settlements can both support and hinder transformative CBA efforts against flooding, emphasizing how political dynamics, power imbalances, and conflicting views on temporality influence community engagement and underscore the need for more inclusive governance that tackles the root causes of vulnerability for effective adaptation.

To reflect further on the relation of root causes and CBA, the literature engages with political ecology and political economy—as two notions that specially address those social and political-economic root causes of vulnerability. The issue of political economy has been discussed on the sidelines in the CBA literature. Dodman and Mitlin (2013) were among the first to explicitly link CBA to broader discussions of socio-ecological transformation, identifying underlying political-economic processes as key drivers of vulnerability—a view echoed by Galvin (2019). Other scholars, such as Archer et al. (2014) and Faulkner et al. (2015), highlight how political-economic structures shape adaptive actions, while Warrick (2011) and Aslany and Brincat (2021) go further by directly applying political economy frameworks to analyze CBA practices. Their case studies critically assess the vulnerability in Vanuatu as a class phenomenon and the distribution of agricultural means of production in an Indian village, respectively. Similarly, Fontana et al. (2025) approach CBA through a lens of class struggle, examining justice claims and participatory climate policies in Bologna, Italy. A pivotal contribution comes from Barnett (2022), who articulates three distinct scales of the political economy of climate adaptation: the macro level, dominated by state-led spatial planning; the micro level, characterized by market-driven capital projects; and a proposed meso-level, where CBA can serve as a transformative alternative. Barnett positions this meso-level approach as the “case for hope” in the broader field of climate adaptation as it opens possibilities for a different political economy. In general, the conversations of political economy and CBA either abstractly mention political economic structures as issues to be considered, introduce class struggle or the socio-economic status to the local analysis on the ground.

Political ecology gets less but more explicit attention. Soltesova et al. (2014) offer urban political ecology to shine light on the “biophysical condition [and the] socio-political and historical context of […] development”. Chung (2017) uses political ecology and resilience thinking to develop a new framework that “places politics in the centre of CBA” to address the depolitization gap—meaning the view of communities as neutral or CBA as mere development practices with universally agreed goals. Beckwith (2022) uses political ecology to show how an “analysis of historically produced socio-political structures” lays open different, otherwise hidden, resilience strategies. It echoes more with Ensor’s (2014) view to place CBA or the “community” within a social-ecological system, thereby politicizing the approach and vulnerability.

However, while the engagement with social structures and the need to address root causes of vulnerability is a progressive trajectory within CBA, what is missing is a coherent meta-theoretical understanding of how the causal powers emerge, operate, and persist and of how they can be addressed. With few exceptions (e.g., Vorbach 2023) CBA scholars have said little about that to date even though it would be beneficial as “changes in our systems of knowledge production could not only inform better understandings of ecological change but could also offer new possibilities for viable futures in the face of a variety of present and future threats” (Paprocki 2022). To advance the “case of hope” (Barnett 2022) we argue that an explicitly mentioned and coherently used philosophy of science including shared epistemological and ontological assumptions can increase CBA’s reflexivity to address root causes of vulnerability. The proposed philosophy of science is critical realism (CR). Vorbach and Ensor (2022), e.g., state in an article with a critical realist approach on CBA that “local agents of change—were driving these […] change processes, their agency enabled and constrained by structures within and beyond the community”, thereby showing how CR can enhance CBA research.

3. Critical Realism—An Emancipatory Science

CR has increasingly been recognized as a philosophically robust and normatively committed framework for advancing social-ecological transformative research. Across a range of contributions, CR’s stratified, emergent, and open ontology is shown to align with the complex and dynamic nature of socio-ecological systems, allowing for multi-level analyses that move beyond constructivist or positivist paradigms (Buch-Hansen and Nesterova 2021; Buch-Hansen and Nielsen 2023; Downward et al. 2006; Price and Lotz-Sisitka 2015).

CR actually started as a critique against positivism and constructivism. It argues for a realist ontology combined with a weak relativist epistemology (Archer et al. 2013). For example, while climate change vulnerabilities exist independent of knowledge about them (realist ontology), CR points to the socially constructed understanding (relativist epistemology) of such vulnerabilities and imagined solutions (Buch-Hansen and Nielsen 2023).

CR research centers around causal explanations which are an interplay of structures (e.g., capitalism) that operate through mechanisms (e.g., privatization) causing events (e.g., accumulation by adaptation). While CR supports an understanding of causality, it cannot elucidate what the exact causes are. This leaves room for substantive theories investigating, e.g., how large-scale political economic structures interplay with the local context of resource distribution. Normatively, CR aims to support emancipatory science and practice which is reflected in CR’s capacity for explanatory critique (Spash 2024). This can uncover deep generative mechanisms and ideological distortions depending on the chosen theories—such as those underpinning capitalism, neoliberalism, or colonialism.

Critiquing existing beliefs requires an ethical standpoint against which judgements take place. Further, such a critique points to potential alternatives and hence constraining and enabling powers (Archer 2019). CR allows different scientific approaches to compete and judge them by their practical adequacy, making it “fundamentally pluralistic” (Buch-Hansen and Nielsen 2023). Therefore, CR enables place-based context-specific transdisciplinary research (Cockburn 2022)—thereby supporting emancipatory action and normative commitments to social justice and ecological sustainability (Buch-Hansen and Nielsen 2023; Xue 2022).

While there is no unifying approach to the interplay of structure and agency in relation to social change in CR (Jessop 2005), certain core aspects are synthesized in the transformational model of social activity (Faulkner and Runde 2013; C. Lawson 2013). Social structures exist prior to an individual agent but agents simultaneously reproduce and change social structures, integrating the role of agency in their reproduction (Benton and Craib 2023). Structures and agency are non-identical (Svensson and Nikoleris 2018). Social structures enact causal mechanisms with constraining or enabling powers, favoring actions/actors for their reproduction while constraining others (Jessop 2005). While agents can make conscious decisions, these often reproduce social structures unconsciously. Nevertheless, the power of social structures is not deterministic but practices can oppose or change social structures (e.g., behave contrary to the law). If the new practice is routinized, institutionalized, and repeated it varies the social structures or lets new social structures emerge (von Redecker 2018). As such, CR overcomes determinism and voluntarism by opening up transformative potentials whose outcomes ultimately depend on the social interaction of (collective) agents (Archer 1995). Transformation of prevailing structures then becomes a core question of power relations. Therefore, CR substantiates technical framings of transformation as a change of fundamental attributes of a system common in the resilience and adaptation discourse by naming them as power relations (Cretney 2014). This renders “the dimensions [visible] that can contribute to eradicating the ideology in question, and shaping better planning ideas, including ethical reasoning, utopia thinking and transformative agency” (Xue 2022). Summarizing, CR offers a meta-theory to elucidate structural causality, but it cannot identify the exact causes without theoretical underpinning.

Political economy is one such underpinning that explains power structures, material relations, and agency within complex social systems (C. Lawson 2013). Patomäki (2003), e.g., shows how CR has informed the emergence of the neo-Gramscian approach in international political economy. This approach draws on CR to highlight the structural underpinnings and ideational formations that shape individual and global political and economic dynamics, as is exemplified, e.g., by the “Imperial Mode of Living” (Brand and Wissen 2021). Fletcher (2017) provides a concrete example of applied qualitative research guided by CR. Drawing on a study of Canadian farm women’s experiences with agricultural policy, she develops a flexible coding and analysis strategy. CR’s focus on causal mechanisms and critical engagement with participants’ knowledge enables the identification of structural constraints and opens pathways for in this case feminist political economy to better theorize women’s work and agency in rural contexts. Further developing methodological implications, Belfrage and Hauf (2017) introduce critical grounded theory as a CR-informed methodology that combines deductive theoretical work with inductive field research. Informed by cultural political economy, critical grounded theory integrates structural/material and discursive/semiotic dimensions through critical discourse analysis. Using a case study on competing recovery projects in Iceland after the financial crisis, Belfrage and Hauf (2017) illustrate how CR enables multi-dimensional, retroductive research into organizational and political-economic change. McKeown et al. (2022) utilize a critical-realist-informed Marxist lens to demonstrate how resilience framings ontologize vulnerabilities and align recovery pathways in the interest of capital.

CR has increasingly been applied to political ecology as well to address limitations in dominant epistemologies and ontologies used to understand environmental degradation, nature–society relations, and resource politics. Early contributions, such as Forsyth (2001), highlighted how scientific models of environmental degradation often reflect the social and political agendas of those producing them, particularly in the context of development. Drawing on critical realist insights, Forsyth critiques political ecology for sometimes uncritically adopting positivist definitions of degradation without interrogating their construction. He argues that environmental change must be understood through deeper causal mechanisms and situated knowledges, noting that what appears as degradation (e.g., deforestation or soil erosion) may not always harm local livelihoods or ecosystems. CR thus enables a more reflexive and socially embedded understanding of environmental problems. Blaikie (2012), in his inaugural lecture, further explores the possibilities of a critical realist political ecology by addressing the question of its practical utility. He argues that a CR-informed approach is often more legible and acceptable to policymakers and other societal actors than more opaque post-structuralist perspectives. One reason for this is that the climate policy–science interface (e.g., IPCC) operates in resonance with critical realist foundations (Buch-Hansen and Nielsen 2023). Blaikie (2012) calls for a “practical and dynamic” form of engaged political ecology that combines normative commitment with ontological clarity and strategic communication. Going further, Forsyth (2023) emphasizes the evolving nature of CR and the need to understand how ecological “reality” is not only what exists but also how it is constructed, interpreted, and politically mobilized. He cautions against isolating ontological debates from the lived and contested nature of environmental knowledge and stresses that political ecology must grapple with both what is real and how realities are made and negotiated.

Together, CR fosters both a philosophy of science base and ethical orientation necessary to understand, critique, and transform the socio-ecological conditions of our time. As such, it enables taking emancipatory analytic lenses like political economy and political ecology into account while maintaining a coherent normativity fostering a transformation towards social justice and ecological sustainability.

4. Grounding Community-Based Adaptation in Critical Realism

We argue that CR offers a coherent and normatively engaged philosophy of science for CBA—one that helps translate its social-ecological transformative potential into robust analytical and methodological practice. Below, we articulate nine key synergies between CR and CBA, demonstrating how CR provides the conceptual scaffolding for a politically conscious, reflexive, and justice-oriented adaptation science. We cluster the synergies around the philosophy of science dimensions: ontological, epistemological, and methodological. This starts a conversation between CBA and CR and hence necessarily abstracts form difference within the fields. By giving examples, we hope to show that our arguments apply to a range of CBA efforts.

4.1. Ontological

• CBA seeks to address power imbalances that reproduce vulnerability, yet opportunities remain to advance a realist perspective on structural root causes. The understanding of structure agency interplays substantiates CBA’s growing concern for the tension field between structural injustice and emancipatory agency (Selje et al. 2024). The stratified ontology informed by power sensitive theories such as political economy makes structures analytically visible, even if they were not empirically observable pre-adaptation (e.g., capitalism, patriarchy). This can help to avoid situations such as the following: adaptation projects excluded women from the decision making in an adaptation project in Kenya because the project focused on economic growth (Caretta and Börjeson 2015). However, women conducted reproductive work which was deemed irrelevant for the adaptation project. Here externally introduced economic growth structures enabled productive workers to participate while interacting with patriarchal structures selectively constraining women’s participation. This explanatory critique indirectly suggests the alternative pathway. This goes beyond involving women in the decision making but addresses the root cause of economic growth, shifting the focus of the project towards reproductive work. Positioning this within the social-ecological transformation discourse transcends the project focus towards calls for an economic transformation away from productivity and growth and towards reproductivity and sufficiency (Biesecker and Hofmeister 2010).
• CBA practitioners work with complex community dynamics that are more than the sum of individual preferences. CR incorporates the concept of emergence elucidating that communities, institutions, and social phenomena are irreducible to their parts and must be studied at the appropriate level (Sayer 2010). Thus, transformative CBA incorporates a social ontology that pays sensitivity to power relations constituting the community instead of viewing actors as isolated individuals. The community is not a homogenous group but consists of social positions (e.g., gender, job) that have social relations (e.g., teacher and pupil) impacted by specific social rules (e.g., pupil listens to teacher). Reflecting on the relational character of communities and their members can help identify what and why power structures are reproduced (e.g., why the teacher is more dominant in a meeting than the student). This ontological awareness can increase the power sensitivity already present in CBA efforts.
• The concept of community and its spatio-temporal contingencies resonates with the open system perspective of CR. However, remaining at the community scale as the only level of analysis can fall short in addressing root causes. Social-ecologically transformative approaches have to go beyond changing fundamental attributes of perceived isolated systems (e.g., viewing CBA as a closed community living together not impacted by the outside world). Instead, an open system understanding relates distant structural root causes to local conditions (Fraser et al. 2020). This perspective recognizes structural root causes such as the force to integrate communities into capitalist markets through adaptation as exerting power on communities already pre-intervention. Integrating communities into capitalist markets then simply reproduces tendencies of structural root causes in a new context and is thus not viewed as social ecological transformative, even if the community has different fundamental attributes (e.g., non-capitalist → capitalist). The reason for this is that the reproduction of capitalism is better captured as maladaptation than transformation (Morrison et al. 2022). This links transformation to emancipation and overcomes supposed techno-managerial neutrality. From this follows a strategic orientation of building power against root causes. Uncovering their mechanisms can foster collective action to address them (Gillard et al. 2016). This does not view the community as the single actor capable of radical social change but instead positions it within a multi-level world of adaptation politics possessing transformative potentials, i.e., power to effect outcomes. Ultimately, this can lead to a focus on collective power and strategic alignments of the community and other actors to transcend the reproduction of root causes.

4.2. Epistemological

• CR’s combination of realist ontology and relativist epistemology resonates with CBA’s commitment to on the ground vulnerabilities and plural situated knowledges (Beckwith 2022; Ensor et al. 2018). This shifts awareness to the social power relations in producing knowledge and the feedback of them on the material reality, e.g., creating vulnerabilities (Albert et al. 2020). It becomes important to understand the source of power in knowledge production to recognize and address epistemic hierarchies. For example, conducting a wealth ranking of community members can increase transparency, create a level playing field, and avoid elite capture (Leavy et al. 2022). Further, CR helps CBA to embrace indigenous, local, and traditional knowledges (Bronen et al. 2020) further and lived experiences as pivotal to understanding the social-ecological crises. This is central for transformative adaptation as it breaks the linkage of political-economic structures and the production of knowledge (Eriksen et al. 2015). Therefore, CR strengthens the case for CBA by offering a philosophical background for the empowerment of vulnerable voices during the knowledge generation process. Further, the perspective points to problematic practices of remunerating experts more than locals (Johnson et al. 2023), potentially impacting the way CBA distributes resources internally.
• CR’s commitment to practical adequacy over predictive certainty enables CBA to evaluate interventions based on their real-world relevance, not abstract universality (Buch-Hansen and Nielsen, 2023). This allows to critical reflect standardized measures to track transformative adaptation such as the founding of enterprises which tend to mask inequalities (Bertilsson and Thörn 2021). While more market activity can be beneficial for local adaptation it does not guarantee an increased capacity at the community level. Instead, reinforcing competitive markets through adaptation is likely to increase inequalities (Thomas 2024). Reflecting on the practical adequacy of adaptation measures resonates with the way CBA values local validity, learning, and iteration, while remaining open to competing perspectives and normative debate. CR’s emphasize that all knowledge is fallible can help to ground CBA interventions in local ways of living, while keeping a role for scientific expertise about structural causality.
• CR distinguishes between highly abstract concepts and everyday experiences but simultaneously emphasizes their relation, particularly how everyday activities and beliefs often point to hegemonic truths (Sayer 2010). This encourages reflexive adaptation research that accounts for community narratives, interpretations, and activities in relation to causal structures (Nath 2024). Through this CR supports CBA’s participatory, deliberative, and inclusive ethos (Reid et al. 2009) while avoiding community determinism. For example, Nightingale et al. (2022) point to individual affects increasing climate vulnerability because they reproduce capitalist and patriarchal structures in adaptation. Critically explaining what causes such affects and viewing these critiques as opportunities to imagine new pathways can foster CBA imaginations beyond reproducing global political economic structures (Gillard et al. 2016).

4.3. Methodological

• CBA can be enhanced with transdisciplinary approaches (Kirkby et al. 2018). CR, as a meta-theory, facilitates transdisciplinary integration by offering a common ontological and epistemological understanding (Cockburn 2022). Instead of methodological pluralism CR argues for method plurality emphasizing the logical relation between the research object and methods (Spash 2012). For example, the irreducibility of communities to the sum of their parts points to the use of collective methods as opposed to individually aggregated data. This logical flow from ontological commitments to resulting methodological implication can facilitate transformative inter- and transdisciplinary exchange in CBA. For another example, CR and CBA reject the closed-system ontology of neoclassical economics, where individuals are treated as isolated rational agents (Arnsperger and Varoufakis 2006; T. Lawson 2013). Contrasting, feminist economics, among others, views actors as embedded in relational structures (T. Lawson 1999), mirroring CBA’s emphasis on social connectedness and context-specificity (McNamara and Buggy 2017; Piggott-McKellar et al. 2019). By making assumptions behind scientific approaches explicit, CBA can engage with other scientific emancipatory projects more strategically, increasing the transformative power.
• CR provides arguments for practitioners towards policy makers for collaborative knowledge production across science, policy, and community—a hallmark of effective CBA (Ayers et al. 2017; Shammin et al. 2022a; Shammin et al. 2022b). CR’s power-sensitive stance reflects on fundamental assumptions of theoretical perspectives that legitimize neoliberal top-down policy making and responsibility shifting to lower levels. For example, a CR-informed critique presents resilience framings for shifting the responsibility to the individual level (McKeown et al. 2022) which mirrors some critique in CBA literature on devolution (Barnett 2022; Galvin 2019). CBA emerged in part as a critique of technocratic, top-down approaches rooted in Global North scientific paradigms (Forsyth 2013; Magee 2013). Thus, CBA ought not to be just about reducing risk but about fostering transformative practices (Nath 2024). CR points to the importance of methodologically grounding adaptation in the community but simultaneously interacting with the multi-level world of adaptation. Specifically, the ontological and epistemological implications of emergent phenomena and relativist epistemology point to deliberative and collective methods that disenfranchise oppressive structural constraints.
• CR explicitly supports emancipatory science by enabling explanatory critique—the ability to link empirical findings to underlying oppressive systems and studying ways to overcome them (Spash 2024; Xue 2022). It provides a methodological language to trace causal mechanisms that link structures to events, e.g., that neoliberalism favors market-centered economic evaluation criteria causing inequalities and vulnerabilities (Mills-Novoa et al. 2025). CR proposes modes of inference that substitute the question of what is there to why it is there. This shifts a focus on the status quo to a methodological approach asking what would make something (e.g., a transformative CBA implementation) possible (Danermark et al. 2019). This is crucial for CBA’s ambition to intervene in and transform root causes of vulnerability as seen in calls to confront “maldevelopment” (Wisner et al. 2014) or depoliticization (Galvin 2019) by addressing capitalism and materialism (Morrison et al. 2022).

5. Conclusions

This opinion problematizes current transformative approaches in CBA for being implicit about their underlying philosophical assumptions. While welcomed in general, this shows in the CBA literature with the engagement of social or political economic structures as root causes of vulnerability that are often abstractly mentioned but coherence of the understanding about the concrete mechanism or power and how they operate can be improved. To stimulate deeper thinking about how root causes of vulnerability affect CBA, this opinion introduced critical realism as a meta-theory. Rather than offering a fixed set of methods or doctrines, CR can support CBA with a philosophical foundation that strengthens its capacity to act politically, think relationally, and research reflexively. The opinion demonstrated that taking ontological commitments strengthens the case for collaborative and deliberative methods and simultaneously increases power reflexivity central for CBA. Making philosophical assumptions explicit fosters exchange between CBA and other disciplines overcoming hegemonic political economic structures (e.g., economic growth). This can strengthen CBA’s power within theoretical and policy contexts. CR-informed CBA acknowledges limited powers for transformative change due to selective social structures while simultaneously making the case for collective agency. This neither denies nor romanticizes the transformative power of CBA. Instead, it can enable actions to move beyond shallow participation or seemingly isolated project-based fixes toward becoming an emancipatory practice that confronts the structural root causes of vulnerability. This grounding in CR equips CBA to unfold in social-ecological transformative ways.

6. Limitations and Recommendations for Future Studies

One of the limitations of this study is its uncomprehensive selection of materials. As such it does not depict the entirety of CBA approaches nor claims to cover all transformative ones. Nevertheless, the findings highlight that future studies can increase CBA’s inter- and transdisciplinarity with other emancipatory science projects such as degrowth and feminist economics, while avoiding those that do not share philosophical assumptions (e.g., neoclassical economics). Another limitation is the rather general treatment of CR and CBA. This is a consequence of a first exploration between the fields, which cannot go into detail of specific aspects of each. Future studies could, for example, investigate how specific modes of inferences from CR benefit CBA or how explanatory critiques can be integrated into CBA practice. In accordance with CR’s commitment to method plurality qualitative as well as quantitative studies can be conducted to elucidate social-ecological vulnerabilities and pathways to address them from different perspectives. Thereby, the research can inform policy makers to not only abstractly but practically address the root causes of vulnerability with a robust methodological lens.