Browsing by Author "Adger, W. Neil"

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Does Adaptive Management of Natural Resources Enhance Resilience to Climate Change?
(2004) Tompkins, Emma L.; Adger, W. Neil
"Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. We argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. We review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. We demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago. The case demonstrates that community-based management enhances adaptive capacity in two ways: by building networks that are important for coping with extreme events and by retaining the resilience of the underpinning resources and ecological systems."
The Equity and Legitimacy of Markets for Ecosystem Services: Carbon Forestry Activities in Chiapas, Mexico
(2004) Corbera, Esteve; Adger, W. Neil
"Markets for ecosystem services are increasingly being designed and implemented across the developing world. They have been promoted by national governments and global institutions based on a faith in their ability to promote sustainable development, without a critical engagement in the implications of these markets on elements of sustainability. In this paper we argue that equity and legitimacy constitute key aspects of sustainable development and are critical to the success or failure of markets for ecosystem services. We argue that equitable procedural and distributive mechanisms built into the design and implementation of these markets could potentially challenge local and project-based power relations and hence provide a potential for transformative action. Yet most markets for ecosystem services are more likely to reinforce existing power structures and inequalities in access to resources. We examine these issues through two communities engaged in a carbon forestry project in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. These communities differ on the way in which they engage in the project, either through individually or collectively owned land, and we investigate the relations between local property regimes, legitimacy processes and the implicit distribution of benefits in the selection of participants and project- related information. Our analysis indicates that, in both cases, markets do not represent legitimate and equitable mechanisms for sustainable development and override local socio-political and property dynamics. We therefore cast doubt over the capacity for transformative action towards sustainable development of market-based mechanisms that reinforce existing inequities and vulnerabilities."
Evaluating Successful Livelihood Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change in Southern Africa
(2010) Osbah, Henny; Twyman, Chasca; Adger, W. Neil; Thomas, David
"This paper examines the success of small-scale farming livelihoods in adapting to climate variability and change. We represent adaptation actions as choices within a response space that includes coping but also longer-term adaptation actions, and define success as those actions which promote system resilience, promote legitimate institutional change, and hence generate and sustain collective action. We explore data on social responses from four regions across South Africa and Mozambique facing a variety of climate risks. The analysis suggests that some collective adaptation actions enhance livelihood resilience to climate change and variability but others have negative spillover effects to other scales. Any assessment of successful adaptation is, however, constrained by the scale of analysis in terms of the temporal and spatial boundaries on the system being investigated. In addition, the diversity of mechanisms by which rural communities in southern Africa adapt to risks suggests that external interventions to assist adaptation will need to be sensitive to the location-specific nature of adaptation."
Observing Institutional Adaptation to Global Environmental Change in Coastal Vietnam
(1998) Adger, W. Neil
"This paper examines institutional adaptation surrounding collective security from present climate extremes. A case study is presented in Nam Dinh Province, northern Vietnam, highlighting common themes from the restructuring of ownership and control of coastal resources throughout Vietnam's coastal Provinces and Delta regions. The study demonstrates that reduction of locally organised collective action for coastal defence and water management has been undermined by decollectivisation and the reduction of importance of agricultural co- operatives. Offsetting these trends, informal collective action, as manifestations of civil society, have contributed to reducing the overall increase in vulnerability to external environmental change. "Following a discussion of the role of institutional structure in determining social vulnerability to environmental change, this paper sets out empirical observations of institutional adaptation in Nam Dinh Province. Features of the recent historical evolution of collective action on hazards in Nam Dinh include the hierarchical operation of local and regional central planning under collectivised agriculture in the communist era; the inertia of this system in the light of both liberalisation and of changing environmental pressures; and concurrent institutional adaptation to cultural and political-economic factors within the District. The local level formal government institutions have, over the past three decades, acted as the facilitator for collective action to ameliorate the impacts of climate extremes and hazards. In the most recent five years under Doi Moi reforms, significant retrenchments of the government institutions have occurred, which essentially have decreased the importance of collective action and hence are shown to have enhanced vulnerability. The major reason for this is the concentration of resources and power in the coastal Communes. "Following the viewpoint that perceptions of vulnerability are primary determinants of political action, the perceptions of vulnerability are elucidated for individuals experiencing this risk. The role of institutions and culture in framing perceptions of vulnerability is therefore also addressed. Households perceive increasing risk because of the trend towards atomised decision-making felt by some disempowered households. In particular the legal framework which has changed the rights to property; the rapid economic growth in the Red River Delta; and the associated migration and remittances have all influenced the type of institutional changes which have occurred. "Data on the storm protection system in Xuan Thuy are presented, leading to an assessment of how Commune and higher level institutions seek to legitimise and retain their power over resource allocation, while concurrently implementing adaptation to the evolving social and physical environment. A number of 'core' Communes act within the District to retain political influence and determine actual resource allocation away from 'peripheral' inland Communes through the medium of coastal protection expenditure. As demonstrated by the empirical evidence from Xuan Thuy District, the short term goals of maintaining political power, as well as non-decision-making by bureaucracies, are important institutional causes of collective vulnerability."
The Political Economy of Cross-Scale Networks in Resource Co-Management
(2005) Adger, W. Neil; Brown, Katrina Myrvang; Tompkins, Emma L.
"We investigate linkages between stakeholders in resource management that occur at different spatial and institutional levels and identify the winners and losers in such interactions. So-called crossscale interactions emerge because of the benefits to individual stakeholder groups in undertaking them or the high costs of not undertaking them. Hence there are uneven gains from cross-scale interactions that are themselves an integral part of social-ecological system governance. The political economy framework outlined here suggests that the determinants of the emergence of cross-scale interactions are the exercise of relative power between stakeholders and their costs of accessing and creating linkages. Cross-scale interactions by powerful stakeholders have the potential to undermine trust in resource management arrangements. If government regulators, for example, mobilize information and resources from cross-level interactions to reinforce their authority, this often disempowers other stakeholders such as resource users. Offsetting such impacts, some cross-scale interactions can be empowering for local level user groups in creating social and political capital. These issues are illustrated with observations on resource management in a marine protected area in Tobago in the Caribbean. The case study demonstrates that the structure of the cross-scale interplay, in terms of relative winners and losers, determines its contribution to the resilience of social-ecological systems."