Complexity,continuity and change: livelihood resilience in the Darfur region of Sudan

Darfur farming and pastoralist livelihoods are both adaptations to the environmental variability that characterises the region. This article describes this adaptation and the longer‐term transformation of these specialised livelihoods from the perspective of local communities. Over several decades farmers and herders have experienced a continuous stream of climate, conflict and other shocks, which, combined with wider processes of change, have transformed livelihoods and undermined livelihood institutions. Their well‐rehearsed specialist strategies are now combined with new strategies to cope. These responses help people get by in the short term but risk antagonising not only their specialist strategies but also those of others. A combination of factors has undermined the former integration between farming and pastoralism and their livelihood institutions. Efforts to build resilience in similar contexts must take a long‐term view of livelihood adaptation as a specialisation, and consider the implications of new strategies for the continuity and integration of livelihood specialisations.     

Adaptation to coastal hazards: the livelihood struggles of a fishing community in Kerala,India

This case study examines the coastal hazard adaptation strategies of a fishing community in a village in Kerala, India. It shows that formal adaptation strategies are highly techno‐centric, costly, and do not take into account the vulnerabilities of the fishing community. Instead, they have contributed to ecological, livelihood, and knowledge uncertainties. The adaptation strategies of the fishing community are a response to these uncertainties. However, they may not lead to the fishing community's recovery from its vulnerability contexts. This case study is primarily qualitative in nature. Data were collected through in‐depth interviews. Insights reveal that when actors with diverse values, interests, knowledge, and power evolve or design their respective adaptation strategies, the resulting interface often aggravates existing uncertainties associated with hazards. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that local discourses on coastal hazards are livelihood‐centric and socially constructed within the struggle of the fishing community to access resources and to acquire the right to development.     

An ecosystem-based resilience analysis of Infanta,Philippines

An exploratory study is conducted to assess the resilience of Infanta through an analysis of its ecosystems from ecological, physical, economic, social and institutional perspectives. Recognizing the strong interdependencies of ecological, physical, economic, social and institutional dimensions in ecosystems and that community-level perceptions can shape adaptation actions, a survey is conducted in 36 village councils in Infanta, Quezon, Philippines utilizing a questionnaire covering 5 dimensions, 25 parameters and 125 measures selected based on the local context of Infanta to gain an understanding of the level of resilience in mountain, riverine, urban, agricultural plain, estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Results show that overall resilience levels of ecosystems lie between 3.08 (medium resilience) and 3.26 (high resilience) on a scale of 1–5. However, resilience scores in the five dimensions vary from 2.57 (low resilience) to 3.51 (high resilience). On the whole, overall resilience levels in the 36 villages exhibit high levels in the social dimension and low levels in the economic dimension. By assessing the resilience of ecosystems as attempted in this study, a baseline is determined where entry points for adaptation actions that are responsive to prevailing ecosystem conditions can be identified, positive and negative factors addressed and gaps and opportunities acted upon to enhance the resilience of Infanta's ecosystems.     

Local initiatives and adaptation to climate change

Climate change is expected to lead to an increase in the number and strength of natural hazards produced by climatic events. This paper presents some examples of the experiences of community-based organisations (CBOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of variations in climate, and looks at how they have incorporated their findings into the design and implementation of local adaptation strategies. Local organisations integrate climate change and climatic hazards into the design and development of their projects as a means of adapting to their new climatic situation. Projects designed to boost the resilience of local livelihoods are good examples of local adaptation strategies. To upscale these adaptation initiatives, there is a need to improve information exchange between CBOs, NGOs and academia. Moreover, there is a need to bridge the gap between scientific and local knowledge in order to create projects capable of withstanding stronger natural hazards.     

Resilience to natural hazards: How useful is this concept?

Resilience is widely seen as a desirable system property in environmental management. This paper explores the concept of resilience to natural hazards, using weather-related hazards in coastal megacities as an example. The paper draws on the wide literature on megacities, coastal hazards, hazard risk reduction strategies, and resilience within environmental management. Some analysts define resilience as a system attribute, whilst others use it as an umbrella concept for a range of system attributes deemed desirable. These umbrella concepts have not been made operational to support planning or management. It is recommended that resilience only be used in a restricted sense to describe specific system attributes concerning (i) the amount of disturbance a system can absorb and still remain within the same state or domain of attraction and (ii) the degree to which the system is capable of self-organisation. The concept of adaptive capacity, which has emerged in the context of climate change, can then be adopted as the umbrella concept, where resilience will be one factor influencing adaptive capacity. This improvement to conceptual clarity would foster much-needed communication between the natural hazards and the climate change communities and, more importantly, offers greater potential in application, especially when attempting to move away from disaster recovery to hazard prediction, disaster prevention, and preparedness.     

Climate change as a major slow-onset hazard to development: an integrated approach to bridge the policy gap

The paper considers climate change from a hazard to economic development and public security perspective. Integration of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction policies is substantiated, building upon resilience concept as a unique methodological basis and civil protection measures as a common practice. Specific recommendations to implement this integration are introduced.     

Adapting to climate change in the coastal regions of Bangladesh: proposal for the formation of community-based adaptation committees

The paper outlines a concept and proposal for the formation of ‘community based adaptation committees’ (CBACs) at the micro-level, and it explains how such local committees would act with respect to the existing organisation of disaster management in Bangladesh. It examines how the CBACs would be sustained locally without colliding with the present system of government. The main objective of this is to identify how the CBACs could act independently as per local demands, without any conflict with the existing system, in order to ensure sustainable adaptation in future. To achieve these objectives the author conducted interviews with key informants at both local and national levels, and also conducted eight participatory rapid appraisal sessions at eight coastal communities. The author finds that severe corruption is impeding the existing system of relief and rehabilitation at community levels. The paper emphasises that the government of Bangladesh urgently needs to formulate a national adaptation policy, and that within that policy the concept of CBACs at community level should be prioritised. This would provide the government with guidelines for the use, at community level, of adaptation funds from developed countries in order to reduce future vulnerability in Bangladesh.     

Climate change and disaster management

Climate change, although a natural phenomenon, is accelerated by human activities. Disaster policy response to climate change is dependent on a number of factors, such as readiness to accept the reality of climate change, institutions and capacity, as well as willingness to embed climate change risk assessment and management in development strategies. These conditions do not yet exist universally. A focus that neglects to enhance capacity-building and resilience as a prerequisite for managing climate change risks will, in all likelihood, do little to reduce vulnerability to those risks. Reducing vulnerability is a key aspect of reducing climate change risk. To do so requires a new approach to climate change risk and a change in institutional structures and relationships. A focus on development that neglects to enhance governance and resilience as a prerequisite for managing climate change risks will, in all likelihood, do little to reduce vulnerability to those risks.     

Community-based disaster preparedness and climate adaptation: local capacity-building in the Philippines

Community-based disaster preparedness (CBDP) approaches are increasingly important elements of vulnerability reduction and disaster management strategies. They are associated with a policy trend that values the knowledge and capacities of local people and builds on local resources, including social capital. CBDP may be instrumental not only in formulating local coping and adaptation strategies, but also in situating them within wider development planning and debates. In theory, local people can be mobilised to resist unsustainable (vulnerability increasing) forms of development or livelihood practices and to raise local concerns more effectively with political representatives. This paper focuses on the potential of CBDP initiatives to alleviate vulnerability in the context of climate change, and their limitations. It presents evidence from the Philippines that, in the limited forms in which they are currently employed, CBDP initiatives have the potential both to empower and disempower, and warns against treating CBDP as a panacea to disaster management problems.     

Drought risk reduction through a Socio-economic,Institutional and Physical approach in the northwestern region of Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, drought is seasonal and can destroy crops, causing hardship to poor agricultural labourers and others who cannot find alternative sources of income. Droughts most commonly affect the northwestern region, which generally has less rainfall than the rest of the country. In this context, this study attempts to measure the existing level of drought resilience with indicators related to Socio-economic, Institutional and Physical (SIP) conditions in two of the most drought-prone districts, namely Rajshahi and Chapai-Nawabganj. The results of 14 sub-districts (upazilas) show a variation of 2.41 (lowest resilience) and 3.61 (highest resilience) in a scale of 1–5. Some of the critical areas that need improvement include education and awareness, conflict resolution on water usage, policy enhancement, coordination among different stakeholders and proper land-use pattern. SIP methodology can be used as a rapid planning tool at the district level, and as a micro-level planning and improvement tool at the sub-district level. The tool has potential application for a participatory and process-based approach of engaging local stakeholders in minimizing drought risks in future.     

Assessing climate change and health vulnerability at the local level: Travis County,Texas

We created a measure to help comprehend population vulnerability to potential flooding and excessive heat events using health, built environment and social factors. Through principal component analysis (PCA), we created non‐weighted sum index scores of literature‐reviewed social and built environment characteristics. We created baseline poor health measures using 1999–2005 age‐adjusted cardiovascular and combined diabetes and hypertension mortality rates to correspond with social–built environment indices. We mapped US Census block groups by linked age‐adjusted mortality and a PCA‐created social–built environment index. The goal was to measure flooding and excessive heat event vulnerability as proxies for population vulnerability to climate change for Travis County, Texas. This assessment identified communities where baseline poor health, social marginalisation and built environmental impediments intersected. Such assessments may assist targeted interventions and improve emergency preparedness in identified vulnerable communities, while fostering resilience through the focus of climate change adaptation policies at the local level.     

Pinning down social vulnerability in Sindh Province,Pakistan: from narratives to numbers,and back again

This paper reflects critically on the results of a vulnerability assessment process at the household and community scale using a quantitative vulnerabilities and capacities index. It validates a methodology for a social vulnerability assessment at the local scale in 62 villages across four agro‐ecological/livelihood zones in Sindh Province, Pakistan. The study finds that the move from vulnerability narratives to numbers improves the comparability and communicational strength of the concept. The depth and nuance of vulnerability, however, can be realised only by a return to narrative. Caution is needed, therefore: the index can be used in conjunction with qualitative assessments, but not instead of them. More substantively, the results show that vulnerability is more a function of historico‐political economic factors and cultural ethos than any biophysical changes wrought by climate. The emerging gendered vulnerability picture revealed extremes of poverty and a lack of capacity to cope with contemporary environmental and social stresses.     

Mountain inhabitants’ perspectives on climate change,and its impacts and adaptation based on temporal and spatial characteristics analysis: a case study of Mt. Yulong Snow,Southeastern Tibetan Plateau

Based on the results of questionnaires issued to 202 local residents in the Mount Yulong Snow region, southeastern Tibetan Plateau, this study analyzes mountain residents’ perspectives on climate change and its impacts, their strategies to adapt to climate change impacts, including their willingness or otherwise to become ecological migrants, and some of the factors that influence their perceptions. Overall, local perception of climate change and its impacts corresponds to the patterns of observed climate change revealed by climate records. The intensity of climate change perception shows a highly significant correlation with residents’ age and villages’ elevation gradient. Most respondents did not believe that climate change affected crop growing and their yields, but the number of crop insect pests was thought to be increasing slightly and the crop growth period to be extending. Nearly all respondents believed that climate change seriously affects the mountain tourism economy, and their way of life and spiritual world. Persistent drought in recent years has forced mountain dwellers to adjust industrial structure, save water in the agricultural economy, participate in mountain tourism and work outside the home in order to adapt to climate change impacts and supplement their meager farm incomes. Additionally, residents expect to receive government compensation and relief to mitigate natural disaster damage.     

Complementing institutional with localised strategies for climate change adaptation: a South-North comparison

Climate change and disasters pose a serious risk to sustainable development. In the South, local coping strategies are an important element of adaptation to climate and disaster risk. Such strategies have emerged because of the limited assistance provided by urban actors and associated social security and governance systems. In the North, in contrast, local coping strategies are comparatively poorly developed. However, the extent of the changing climatic conditions is also reducing the capacity of Northern institutions to deal with climatic extremes and variability, which emphasises the need for more local-level engagement in the North. This paper analyses the differences in local and institutional responses to climate change and disasters in a Southern and a Northern city (San Salvador, El Salvador, and Manchester, United Kingdom, respectively), and highlights how the lessons learned might be translated into an improved distributed governance system; that is, an 'integrated engagement model', where local and institutionalised responses support rather than hinder each other, as is currently the case.     

Stakeholder participation in building resilience to disasters in a changing climate

The resilience perspective has emerged as a plausible approach to confront the increasingly devastating impacts of disasters; and the challenges and uncertainty climate change poses through an expected rise in frequency and magnitude of hazards. Stakeholder participation is posited as pivotal for building resilience, and resilience is not passive; rather, stakeholders are actively involved in the process of building resilience. Who is involved and how they are involved are crucial aspects for developing resilience in practice. Nevertheless, there are few empirical studies available to inform theory or show how these issues are addressed. This study focuses on revealing how practitioners frame the issue of participation in relation to resilience, its relevance to a changing climate and how, in consequence, they construct practices. Using Hajer's [(1995). The politics of environmental discourse: Ecological modernization and the policy process. New York] ‘Social-interactive discourse theory’, in this interdisciplinary research, we study the frames and subsequent practices developed around a disaster management policy initiative in Australia: the Natural Disaster Resilience Program in Queensland. What emerges from the research findings as critical and requiring urgent attention is stakeholder and especially local government and community participation, and for this to become socially relevant, challenges such as meaningful communication and power structures need to be addressed. What is also critical is to move from experiential learning to social learning. Additionally, the results presented here offer empirical evidence on how broadening the pool of actors can be implemented, and the opportunities that this opens up for building resilience.     

Resilience from the ground up: how are local resilience perceptions and global frameworks aligned?

Numerous resilience measurement frameworks for climate programmes have emerged over the past decade to operationalise the concept and aggregate results within and between programmes. Proxies of resilience, including subjective measures using perception data, have been proposed to measure resilience, but there is limited evidence on their validity and use for policy and practice. This article draws on research on the Decentralising Climate Funds project of the Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters programme, which supports communities in Mali and Senegal to improve climate resilience through locally controlled adaptation funds. It explores attributes of resilience from this bottom‐up perspective to assess its predictors and alignment with food security, as a proxy of well‐being. We find different patterns when comparing resilience and the well‐being proxy, illustrating that the interplay between the two is still unclear. Results also point to the importance of contextualising resilience, raising implications for aggregating results.     

Exploring system interactions for building resilience within coastal environments and communities

This paper focuses on identifying examples of first-order system interactions, which make important contributions to building coastal resilience for coastal zone management. This discussion is based on an application of the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to a case-study analysis of coastal management in South Australia. The study suggests that cross-scale interactions and informal relationships within and between users and managers are key interactions defining resilience outcomes within the current system. A significant constraint on improving resilience was the lack of evaluative criteria for identifying sustainable forms of system behaviour. The paper argues that resilience is a function of a normative statement on the characteristics desirable in the functioning system. Analyses of coastal resilience, which facilitate greater understanding of the range of complexities in coastal behaviour, are therefore central to gaining the most useful insights into the options and pathways for building more sustainable coastal futures.     

Effects of the tsunami on fisheries and coastal livelihood: a case study of tsunami-ravaged southern Sri Lanka

Beyond the death toll, the tsunami of 26 December 2004 crippled many of the livelihood assets (human, social, physical, financial and natural) available to assist those directly affected. Drawing on surveys of three villages in three districts in the south of Sri Lanka, this paper describes the livelihood asset building capacity of the fishing communities. Assessments are also made of the impact of the tsunami on coastal communities and the impact of government policy on rebuilding. A livelihood asset score was calculated for each village by comparing their strengths in capacity building. In all aspects of capital building, including human, social, financial, physical and natural capital, the fishing community in Tangalle was significantly ahead of the fishing communities in Hikkaduwa and Weligama. Experienced fishermen with better educational backgrounds had a significant influence on the capacity building of livelihood assets. Relocation and resettlement plans brought persistent uncertainty to fishermen in Hikkaduwa and Weligama and threatened to disrupt their community bonds and social networks.     

Community resilience and urban planning in tsunami-prone settlements in Chile

Urban planning can serve to minimise the effects of a tsunami and enhance community resilience. This study explores to what extent urban planning has addressed tsunami resilience in four villages on Chile's South Pacific coast, each of which was struck by tsunamis in 1960, 2010, and 2015. Through a detailed policy review and semi-structured interviews with residents, this paper analyses whether tsunami mitigation policies were incorporated into regional and local planning tools. It finds that although the government proposed relocation to tsunami-safe areas after the tsunami of 1960, urban development continued mainly in tsunami inundation zones—in the context of weak local planning frameworks and in the absence of community participation. In only one of the four case studies did participatory planning bring about the relocation of an entire village to a safe location. This paper concludes that incorporating participatory risk zone planning into urban planning enhances tsunami resilience.