Conservation Organizations Need to Consider Adaptive Capacity: Why Local Input Matters

Abstract

Conservation organizations are increasingly applying adaptive capacity assessments in response to escalating climate change impacts. These assessments are essential to identify climate risks to ecosystems, prioritize management interventions, maximize the effectiveness of conservation actions, and ensure conservation resources are allocated appropriately. Despite an extensive literature on the topic, there is little agreement on the most relevant factors needed to support local scale initiatives, and additional guidance is needed to clarify how adaptive capacity should be assessed. This article discusses why adaptive capacity assessment represents a critical tool supporting conservation planning and management. It also evaluates key factors guiding conservation NGOs conducting these assessments in tropical island communities, and explores alternative priorities based on input from academic experts and key local stakeholders. Our results demonstrate that important differences exist between local stakeholders and nonlocal academic experts on key factors affecting adaptation and coping mechanisms. The exclusion of local community input affects the validity of adaptive capacity assessment findings, and has significant implications for the prioritization and effectiveness of conservation strategies and funding allocation.

Peripherality as key to understanding opportunities and needs for effective and sustainable climate-change adaptation: a case study from Viti Levu Island, Fiji

“…The data collected and analysed in this study present some opportunities for climate-change (and other) adaptation strategies to become more successful in the future through being better tailored to the requirements of particular communities along the Viti Levu cross-island road. For example, rather than take a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to these 11 communities, which has been the common default position of many external agencies in such situations in the past (McLeod et al, 2016), it is clear that there is a diversity of community autonomy that does not fit well with such an approach. In fact, should communities with a high degree of culturally-grounded autonomy be given a foreign climate-change intervention, then this might encourage that community to devalue their traditional coping ability: a form of maladaptation, such as happened elsewhere in the southwest Pacific (Fazey et al, 2011).…”

Adaptive capacity: from assessment to action in coastal social-ecological systems

“…Adaptive capacity assessments that focus on climate change have been applied in many contexts, including forestry (Pramova et al 2012), agriculture , Wang et al 2013, fisheries (Kalikoski et al 2010, Cinner 2011, Aguilera et al 2015, conservation (McClanahan et al 2008, Mcleod et al 2016, and disasters (Adger et al 2005b, Cutter et al 2008, Taylor 2011, Henly-Shepard et al 2015. Several important points emerge from this literature and the broader literature and case studies on adaptive capacity.…”

Empirically derived guidance for social scientists to influence environmental policy

“…In fact, many resource protection policies fall short of, or directly contradict, what the available evidence suggests [ 13 – 16 ]. This omission is arguably one of the main factors contributing to the failure of environmental conservation and natural resource management worldwide [ 17 , 18 ].…”