SUPERVISOR: Melanie PICHLER

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Julia BEIER

Austria faces growing health and wellbeing risks from heat stress as climate change intensifies, which are unevenly distributed within and across regions and social groups due to structural drivers of vulnerability. When root causes such as unequal access to resources and political marginalization remain unaddressed, adaptation measures risk reinforcing existing inequalities. Yet, they are rarely tackled through (integrated) transformative social and climate policies. Although transformative adaptation (TA) offers a framework to address these challenges, it remains insufficiently operationalized. Austria’ s Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change continues to prioritize incremental measures, leaving root causes largely untouched. This gap highlights the untapped potential of the provisioning systems perspective (PSP) to operationalize TA by examining how resource use, institutional arrangements, and political-economic structures in different sectors shape social outcomes, emissions, and vulnerability. Thereby, PSP links technical factors, a key focus of current adaptation research, with broader institutional, political economic, and socio-cultural dynamics, including ownership structures, privatization, and societal norms.

Against this background, this PhD project explores the potential of the provisioning systems approach to operationalize transformative climate adaptation, both conceptually and empirically as part of the FFG-funded Transform-Labor project. Conceptually, I how the provisioning systems perspective can be applied in the context of transformative adaptation. Empirically, I analyze the impacts of heat stress on the housing and healthcare provisioning systems in Austria, particularly with regards to the workers providing these essential services (construction and long-term care workers). Both sectors are characterized by labor-intensive and highly gendered work, persistent workforce deficits, and high exposure to heat stress. As such, they constitute critical and innovative empirical cases. The central research question guiding this project is: “How can a provisioning systems approach inform and operationalize transformative climate adaptation in the context of heat stress and heat exposed workers in essential provisioning systems in Austria?”. 

To address this question, the project employs qualitative methods, including literature reviews, institutional analysis, semi-structured interviews, co-production workshops, and qualitative systems mapping, collaborating with key stakeholders from the Chamber of Labour Vienna and Union Bau-Holz. These methods are used to a) bridge scholarship on provisioning systems and transformative adaptation through the development of a novel conceptual framework; b) apply this framework to analyze the root causes of vulnerability among heat-exposed workers in essential provisioning systems, with a focus on construction and long-term care workers; and c) identify leverage points for TA and propose measures that address root causes, enhancing worker wellbeing, and secure the sustainable provision of essential services under increasing heat stress.