Does External Funding Help Adaptation? Evidence from Community-Based Water Management in the Colombian Andes

Despite debate regarding whether, and in what form, communities need external support for adaptation to environmental change, few studies have examined how external funding impacts adaptation decisions in rural resource-dependent communities. In this article, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to assess how different funding sources influence the initiative to adapt to water scarcity in the Colombian Andes. We compare efforts to adapt to water scarcity in 111 rural Andean communities with varied dependence on external funding for water management activities. Findings suggest that despite efforts to use their own internal resources, communities often need external support to finance adaptation strategies. However, not all external financial support positively impacts a community’s abilities to adapt. Results show the importance of community-driven requests for external support. In cases where external support was unsolicited, the results show a decline, or “crowding-out,” in community efforts to adapt. In contrast, in cases where communities initiated the request for external support to fund their own projects, findings show that external intervention is more likely to enhance or “crowds-in” community-driven adaptation.     

Adaptation in a multi-stressor environment: perceptions and responses to climatic and economic risks by coffee growers in Mesoamerica

While climate change adaptation policy has tended to focus on planned adaptation interventions, in many vulnerable communities, adaptation will consist of autonomous, “unplanned” actions by individuals who are responding to multiple simultaneous sources of change. Their actions are likely not only to affect their own future vulnerability, but, through changes in livelihoods and resource use, the vulnerability of their community and resource base. In this paper, we document the autonomous changes to livelihood strategies adopted by smallholder coffee farmers in four Mesoamerican countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica). Our aim is to gain insight into the process of autonomous adaptation by proxy: through an assessment of how farmers explain their choices in relation to distinct stressors; and an understanding of the set of choices available to farmers. We find that climatic stress is a feature in decision making, but not the dominant driver. Nevertheless, the farmers in our sample are evidently flexible, adaptive, and experimental in relation to changing circumstances. Whether their autonomous responses to diverse stressors will result in a reduction in risk over time may well depend on the extent to which policy, agricultural research, and rural investments build on the inherent logic of these strategies.     

A Strategic Framework for Responding to Coral Bleaching Events in a Changing Climate

The frequency and severity of mass coral bleaching events are predicted to increase as sea temperatures continue to warm under a global regime of rising ocean temperatures. Bleaching events can be disastrous for coral reef ecosystems and, given the number of other stressors to reefs that result from human activities, there is widespread concern about their future. This article provides a strategic framework from the Great Barrier Reef to prepare for and respond to mass bleaching events. The framework presented has two main inter-related components: an early warning system and assessment and monitoring. Both include the need to proactively and consistently communicate information on environmental conditions and the level of bleaching severity to senior decision-makers, stakeholders, and the public. Managers, being the most timely and credible source of information on bleaching events, can facilitate the implementation of strategies that can give reefs the best chance to recover from bleaching and to withstand future disturbances. The proposed framework is readily transferable to other coral reef regions, and can easily be adapted by managers to local financial, technical, and human resources.     

Nested vulnerability: exploring cross-scale linkages and vulnerability teleconnections in Mexican and Vietnamese coffee systems

Analyses of the vulnerability of farm populations and food systems to exogenous change, whether in relation to climatic extremes, market shocks, epidemics or other concerns, have typically been approached through a focus on the place of food production or the specific sub-sector exposed to stress. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which national institutions, history and social expectations transform the same signals of global change into very different outcomes in distinct geographic contexts. The channels that convey signals of change from the global to the local may also work in reverse, connecting the responses and choices of households in one geographic context to outcomes and choices of other households in quite distant places. We draw from recent case studies of farm-level vulnerability and livelihood security in Mexico and Vietnam to demonstrate that coffee smallholders’ independent responses to the risks and opportunities associated with global scale economic and environmental change, are teleconnected and thus can create feedbacks which in turn affect the present and future vulnerabilities of other smallholders around the globe.     

A stakeholder driven process to reduce vulnerability to climate change in Hermosillo,Sonora, Mexico

While there is a growing body of knowledge on potential impacts of climate change on water availability, there has been much less empirical research on exploring the viability of particular adaptation options. The participation of stakeholders in defining appropriate adaptation strategies is increasingly recognized as a critical element in the translation of climate change impact research into effective actions to reduce future vulnerability, yet the process by which stakeholders are included in such initiatives is not well-defined. This article presents the results of a pilot project in which a participatory approach was employed to identify and evaluate adaptation options to climate change scenarios for Sonora’s capital city, Hermosillo. In an iterative process, stakeholders representing different water users and managers in the city met to discuss climate change scenarios, identify specific adaptation options, and evaluate a subset of options for possible future implementation. This process enabled the focus of the investigation on those adaptations that addressed not only concerns with the potential future impacts of climate change but also the immediate and pressing concerns about development patterns and water use in the city. Two of the adaptations to climate change identified by stakeholders would also reduce energy demand. The simplicity of the approach makes it a feasible model for adaptation initiatives in other regions of Mexico and in other countries in Latin America.

Interactive effects of multiscale diversification practices on farmland bird stress

Farmland diversification practices (i.e., methods used to produce food sustainably by enhancing biodiversity in cropping systems) are sometimes considered beneficial to both agriculture and biodiversity, but most studies of these practices rely on species richness, diversity, or abundance as a proxy for habitat quality. Biodiversity assessments may miss early clues that populations are imperiled when species presence does not imply persistence. Physiological stress indicators may help identify low-quality habitats before population declines occur. We explored how avian stress indicators respond to on-farm management practices and surrounding seminatural area (1-km radius) across 21 California strawberry farms. We examined whether commonly used biodiversity metrics correlate with stress responses in wild birds. We used ∼1000 blood and feather samples and body mass and wing chord measurements, mostly from passerines, to test the effects of diversification practices on four physiological stress indicators: heterophil to lymphocyte ratios (H:L), body condition, hematocrit values, and feather growth rates of individual birds. We then tested the relationship between physiological stress indicators and species richness, abundance, occurrence, and diversity derived from 285 bird point count surveys. After accounting for other biological drivers, landscape context mediated the effect of local farm management on H:L and body condition. Local diversification practices were associated with reduced individual stress in intensive agricultural landscapes but increased it in landscapes surrounded by relatively more seminatural area. Feathers grew more slowly in landscapes dominated by strawberry production, suggesting that nutritional condition was lower here than in landscapes with more crop types and seminatural areas. We found scant evidence that species richness, abundance, occurrence, or diversity metrics were correlated with the individual's physiological stress, suggesting that reliance on these metrics may obscure the impacts of management on species persistence. Our findings underscore the importance of considering landscape context when designing local management strategies to promote wildlife conservation.