Integrating farmers’ adaptive knowledge into flood management and adaptation policies in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: A social learning perspective

Flood management and adaptation are important elements in sustaining farming production in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). While over the past decades hydraulic development introduced by the central government has substantially benefited the rural economy, it has simultaneously caused multiple barriers to rural adaptation. We investigate the relational practices (i.e., learning interactions) taking place within and across the flood management and adaptation boundaries from the perspective of social learning. We explore whether and how adaptive knowledge (i.e., experimental and experiential knowledge) derived from farmers’ everyday adaptation practices contributes to local flood management and adaptation policies in the selected areas. We collected data through nine focus groups with farmers and thirty-three interviews with government officials, environmental scientists, and farmers. Qualitative analysis suggests that such processes are largely shaped by the institutional context where the boundary is embedded. This study found that while the highly bureaucratic operation of flood management creates constraints for feedback, the more informal arrangements set in place at the local level provide flexible platforms conducive to open communication, collaborative learning, and exchange of knowledge among the different actors. This study highlights the pivotal role of shadow systems that provide space for establishing and maintaining informal interactions and relationships between social actors (e.g., interactions between farmers and extension officials) in stimulating and influencing, from the bottom-up, the emergence of adaptive knowledge about flood management and adaptation in a local context.     

Climate discourses as barriers to rights-based adaptive social protection: How historical politics shape Ethiopia’s climate-smart safety net

A rights-based approach to ‘adaptive social protection’ holds promise as a policy measure to address structural dimensions of vulnerability to climate change such as inequality and marginalisation, yet it has been failing to gain traction against production and growth-oriented interventions. Through the lens of Ethiopia’s flagship Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), we trace the role of climate discourses in impeding progress towards socially transformative outcomes, despite the importance of social protection for building resilience. We argue that intertwining narratives of moral leadership and green growth associated with Ethiopia’s national climate strategy shape how the PSNP is rendered ‘climate-smart’. These narratives, however, are embedded within politics that have historically underpinned the country’s drive for modernisation and growth-oriented policies, particularly in dealing with food insecurity. Like pre-existing narratives on development and the environment, they rationalise the presence of a strong central State and its control over natural resources and rural livelihoods. The PSNP is thus conditioned to favour technocratic, productivist approaches to adapting to climate change that may help reproduce, rather than challenge the entrenched politics at the root of vulnerability. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates how climate discourses risk diluting core rights-based dimensions of social protection, contradicting efforts to address the structural dimensions of vulnerability to climate change.     

Novel insights on intensity and typology of direct human-nature interactions in protected areas through passive crowdsourcing

Recent advances in geotagging, sharing and automatically analyzing online content from Social Networking Sites (SNS) offer unprecedented opportunities for the analysis of human-nature interactions. Previous studies in this field, however, offer limited insights regarding the benefits of automated content analysis especially at large scales, biases arising from the selection of SNS sources, and the predictive power of visitation models based on SNS data. We explore quantitative and qualitative aspects related to intensity, interests and sentiments associated with on-site experiences in 568 protected areas in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We analyze counts and content of >100,000 photographs and tweets from four different SNSs, calibrate visitation models and predict visitation in unmonitored sites, cluster sites based on the typology of human-nature interactions reflected in online photographs, and characterize the polarity of sentiments associated with experiences in individual sites and clusters thereof. We find benefits in combining data from multiple sources and controlling for biases related to sites’ photogenicity and type of human-nature interactions. Our results suggest that current best estimates of visitation in unmonitored sites underestimate by 39% the actual number of visits. We discuss how the techniques and findings in this study are applicable in the broader context of the management and conservation of sites of environmental or cultural interest.     

Local collective action: Adaptation to coastal erosion in the Monkey River Village,Belize

Successful adaptation to environmental change and variability is closely connected with social groups’ ability to act collectively, but many social-ecological challenges exceed local adaptive capacity which necessitate assistance from governmental institutions. Few studies have investigated how local collective action can be used to enrol external support for adaptation. This paper reduces this research gap by analysing a locally driven adaptation process in response to coastal erosion in Monkey River Village, Belize. Drawing on literature on adaptation and political ecology, we examine the different strategies the local residents have used over time to influence government authorities to support them in curbing the coastal erosion. Our findings show that the local mobilisation generated government support for a temporary sea defence and that collective strategies emerge as a response to threats to a place specific way of life. Our case illustrates that it was essential that the villagers could ally with journalists, researchers and local NGOs to make their claims for protection heard by the government. The paper contributes to adaptation research by arguing that local collective action, seen as contestation over rights to protection from environmental change, can be a means for places and communities not prioritised by formal policies to enrol external support for adaptation. Our study supports and adds to the perspective that attention to formal arrangements such as adaptation policy alone has limited explanatory power to understand collective responses to change.     

A conceptual framework for analysing adaptive capacity and multi-level learning processes in resource governance regimes

Governance failures are at the origin of many resource management problems. In particular climate change and the concomitant increase of extreme weather events has exposed the inability of current governance regimes to deal with present and future challenges. Still our knowledge about resource governance regimes and how they change is quite limited. This paper develops a conceptual framework addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of resource governance regimes as multi-level learning processes. The influence of formal and informal institutions, the role of state and non-state actors, the nature of multi-level interactions and the relative importance of bureaucratic hierarchies, markets and networks are identified as major structural characteristics of governance regimes. Change is conceptualized as social and societal learning that proceeds in a stepwise fashion moving from single to double to triple loop learning. Informal networks are considered to play a crucial role in such learning processes. The framework supports flexible and context sensitive analysis without being case study specific.First empirical evidence from water governance supports the assumptions made on the dynamics of governance regimes and the usefulness of the chosen approach. More complex and diverse governance regimes have a higher adaptive capacity. However, it is still an open question how to overcome the state of single-loop learning that seem to characterize many attempts to adapt to climate change. Only further development and application of shared conceptual frameworks taking into account the real complexity of governance regimes can generate the knowledge base needed to advance current understanding to a state that allows giving meaningful policy advice.     

Wildfire preparedness,community cohesion and social–ecological systems

The consequences of wildfires are felt in susceptible communities around the globe on an annual basis. Climate change predictions in places like the south-east of Australia and western United States suggest that wildfires may become more frequent and more intense with global climate change. Compounding this issue is progressive urban development at the peri-urban fringe (wildland–urban interface), where continued infrastructure development and demographic changes are likely to expose more people and property to this potentially disastrous natural hazard. Preparing well in advance of the wildfire season is seen as a fundamental behaviour that can both reduce community wildfire vulnerability and increase hazard resilience – it is an important element of adaptive capacity that allows people to coexist with the hazardous environment in which they live. We use household interviews and surveys to build and test a substantive model that illustrates how social cohesion influences the decision to prepare for wildfire. We demonstrate that social cohesion, particularly community characteristics like ‘sense of community’ and ‘collective problem solving’, are community-based resources that support both the adoption of mechanical preparations, and the development of cognitive abilities and capacities that reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience to wildfire. We use the results of this work to highlight opportunities to transfer techniques and approaches from natural hazards research to climate change adaptation research to explore how the impacts attributed to the social components of social–ecological systems can be mitigated more effectively.     

Co-management and the co-production of knowledge: Learning to adapt in Canada's Arctic

Co-management institutional arrangements have an important role in creating conditions for social learning and adaptation in a rapidly changing Arctic environment, although how that works in practice has not been clearly articulated. This paper draws on three co-management cases from the Canadian Arctic to examine the role of knowledge co-production as an institutional trigger or mechanism to enable learning and adapting. Experience with knowledge co-production across the three cases is variable but outcomes illustrate how co-management actors are learning to learn through uncertainty and environmental change, or learning to be adaptive. Policy implications of this analysis are highlighted and include the importance of a long-term commitment to institution building, an enabling policy environment to sustain difficult social processes associated with knowledge co-production, and the value of diverse modes of communication, deliberation and social interaction.     

In government we trust? Micro-business adaptation to climate change in four post-colonial and transitional economies of China

Public expectations of government influence private action for managing climate change risks. Institutional neglect or incompetence result in a loss of trust in public institutions, consequently discouraging the public from taking added responsibility for risk management. This has been explained in terms of social contract, but evidence suggests that a politics of distrust can reinforce alternative social drivers of action, rather than displacing action. This is empirically confirmed by the present study, which examines the tendencies for adopting private protective measures across a gradient of institutional trust. Surveys were conducted in four jurisdictions within China that operate under two different political-economic systems, namely, Hong Kong and Macao (liberal market economy), and Zhuhai and Sanya (socialist market economy). Structured interviews were conducted with 569 business operators to explore how their stated adaptation practice is related to institutional trust and social capital. We found that trust predicted action only in Sanya, which is characterized by a high level of public confidence in authorities. In places of lower institutional trust, social capital became a salient and powerful driver of action. The weakening of the social contracts in Hong Kong and Macao turned their people to alternative social mechanisms. We explain the results in terms of the development trajectories, socio-political norms and institutional settings of these jurisdictions. This study provides insights into how adaptation practice can be mediated by the consequences of a change in political leadership, policy, or governance arrangements that alters the relationship of trust.     

Preaching to different choirs: How to motivate dismissive,uncommitted, and alarmed audiences to adapt to climate change?

People vary considerably in terms of their knowledge, beliefs, and concern about climate change. Thus, an important challenge for climate change communicators is how to most effectively engage different types of audiences. This study aimed to identify distinct audience segments that vary in terms of their values, beliefs, and responses to climate change and determine for each segment which specific message attributes increased motivation to engage in climate adaptation. A sample of 1031 Australian residents (aged 18–66 years) completed an online survey assessing their values, beliefs, and behaviors related to climate change, and recording their responses to a broad range of climate change adaptation messages. Latent profile analysis identified three distinct audience segments: alarmed (34.4%), uncommitted (45.2%), and dismissive (20.3%). Sixty climate change adaptation messages were coded in terms of the presence/absence of six attributes: explicit reference to climate change, providing specific adaptation advice, strong negative emotive content, emphasis on collective responsibility, highlighting local impacts, and underscoring financial impacts. Participants viewed a random sample of six messages and rated the extent to which each message motivated them to seek out more information and immediately respond to the climate change threat portrayed in the message. Multilevel modeling indicated messages that included strong negative emotive content or provided specific adaptation advice increased adaptation intentions in all three audience segments. Omitting any mention of climate change and emphasizing local impacts increased adaptation intentions in dismissive audiences. Implications for tailoring and targeting climate change adaptation messages are discussed.     

The economic impact of extreme sea-level rise: Ice sheet vulnerability and the social cost of carbon dioxide

The possibility of extreme sea-level rise is one of the commonly cited reasons for concern about climate change. Major increases in sea level would likely be driven by the melting or collapse of major ice sheets. This possibility has implications for the social cost of carbon dioxide, which is a key policy value as well as a useful summary measure of damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.This paper extends earlier work on the importance of low-probability, high-impact events for the social cost of carbon dioxide to incorporate the possibility of extreme sea-level rise.To estimate its impact, an integrated assessment model is used, which allows a probabilistic assessment of climate change damages based on the linkages between the economic and climate systems. In the model, the generic discontinuity damage is replaced with the possibility of large-scale damage from factors that are taken to be correlated with temperature rise and, crucially for this paper, explicit consideration of extreme sea-level rise.Estimates of the amount of increase in the social cost of carbon dioxide that can be expected from incorporating extreme sea-level rise show that the increase is significant, though not especially large in percentage terms.The paper contributes to the literature of how to represent uncertain climate impacts in integrated assessment models and the associated estimation of the social cost of carbon dioxide.