A Resilience Approach to Community-Scale Climate Adaptation

Abstract

Climate risk is expected to impact rural communities in West Africa in multiple ways. However, most current research addresses resilience and climate adaptation at either the national or the household scale; very little is known about community-scale interventions. We interviewed 934 community members in six communities in southeastern Nigeria about sources of climate risk and community-based actions for climate change adaptation. We found these communities contained multiple active and engaged groups that have implemented a wide range of interventions to reduce climate risk, most of which are seen as effective by community members. Flooding was the most common form of risk in this region, but drought, windstorms, and irregular rainy seasons are also frequent, implying that effective climate adaptation will have to be sensitive to multiple types of risk. Structural interventions (constructing roads, bridges, etc.) were the most common type of intervention, suggesting that communities are capable of marshalling considerable organizational and human power for adaptation efforts, even in the absence of external assistance. Efforts to boost community resilience and adaptation to climate change would benefit from first understanding what community actions are currently underway, and working with the groups implementing these actions to support and extend them.

Operationalising Community Resilience to Climate Change in Developing Countries: A Grounded Delphi Method (GDM) Approach

“…One of our key ndings is that community resilience was not de ned in terms of transformative capacity by the experts. The understanding of community resilience in terms of transformative capacity as a concept is very important as it would give direction and provide a long-term structure for preparedness for communities to reach a sustainable future (Chung, 2017;Choko et al 2019). Society needs to move towards transformative capacity that involves robust re ective learning in the face of climate change (Otoara-Ha'apio et al 2018).…”

Linking the social, economic, and agroecological: a resilience framework for dairy farming

“…First, the focus was on the capacity of individual dairy farms to persist or continue (i.e., maintain their identity) rather than assess the capacity for transformation (e.g., conversion from dairy to another land use or activity). Second, although the focus was at the farm scale, resilience is multiscalar, i.e., influenced by activities, actors, and actions at multiple scales (Walker et al 2004, Choko et al 2019. Finally, the focus was on the generic attributes of resilience or adaptive capacities, that enhance capability and capacity to respond to a range of stressors (Darnhofer et al 2010) as opposed to specified resilience, which might enable farm systems to respond to a specific threat (e.g., biosecurity incursion, or invasive pest such as clover root weevil; Carpenter et al 2012).…”

How Can Climate Resilience Be Measured and Visualized? Assessing a Vague Concept Using GIS-Based Fuzzy Logic

“…While robustness can be covered quite well with secondary (geo-)data, the adaptiveness concept is mostly seen through a more qualitative lens and therefore challenging to manage in GIS-based analysis. Currently, this primary data can be assessed by volunteered geographic information (VGI), household surveys or interviews on topics like active climate adaptation strategies and masterplans [45,52]. On the other hand, if not integrated into existing surveys, such primary data collection may be very time and cost consuming.…”