Adaptation Without Recovery: Development Trajectories After Flood-induced Resettlement in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Climate adaptation is increasingly understood as a development process, yet its success is still evaluated primarily through reductions in environmental risk. This article asks what development trajectory emerges when environmental adaptation succeeds but developmental recovery remains incomplete. Drawing on abductive thematic and narrative analyses of qualitative interviews with 20 purposively selected residents more than a decade after government-led flood-induced relocation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, it examines the long-term development consequences of planned resettlement. Although relocation reduced flood exposure, participants continued to experience constrained livelihoods, inadequate infrastructure, institutional uncertainty and incomplete socio-economic incorporation. The article develops adaptation without recovery as a mid-range Development Studies concept explaining this divergence. It identifies three interconnected everyday adaptive pathways: rebuilding livelihoods without incorporation, waiting for development, and faith and relational agency. The findings show that environmental adaptation, persistent agency and developmental recovery may evolve unevenly, suggesting that adaptation should be evaluated by the long-term development trajectories it produces, not by environmental risk reduction alone.