Community Resilience and Adaptive Capacity: An Integrative Perspective

The aim of this paper is to examine the adaptive capacity for community resilience. Adaptive capacity supports the residents of a local community to survive and recover during and after a disaster. The holistic view of community resilience is seen as personal attributes possessed by community residents which enables them to survive during and after a disaster. Reviewed articles and other secondary sources that discussed on the topic of community resilience and adaptive capacity were used for this study through content analysis and empirical evidence. The discussion of the theories in this paper shed more light towards understanding the four-way adaptive capacity. Community resilience increases the chance of community adaptation during and after a disaster. This study will encourage private businesses and professional individuals to become part of a community by providing them with resources needed to survive in the face or after a disaster. It will also contribute to related research in the future which focuses on adaptive capacity for community resilience.

Population demography maintains biogeographic boundaries

Global biodiversity is organized into biogeographic regions that comprise distinct biotas. The contemporary factors maintaining differences in species composition between biogeographic regions are poorly understood. Given the evidence that populations with sufficient genetic variation can adapt to fill new habitats, it is surprising that we do not see more homogenization of species assemblages among regions. Theory suggests that the expansion of populations across biogeographic transition zones could be limited by environmental gradients that affect population demography in ways that could limit adaptive capacity, but this has not been empirically explored. Using three independently curated data sets describing continental patterns of mammalian demography and population genetics, we show that populations closer to biogeographic transition zones have lower effective population sizes and genetic diversity, and are more genetically differentiated. These patterns are consistent with reduced adaptive capacity near biogeographic transition zones. The consistency of these patterns across mammalian species suggests they are stable, predictable, and generalizable in their contribution to long-term limits on expansion and homogenization of biodiversity across biogeographic transition zones. Understanding the contemporary processes acting on populations that maintain differences in the composition of regional biotas is crucial for our basic understanding of the current and future organization of global biodiversity. The importance of contemporary, population-level processes on the maintenance of global biogeographic regions suggests that biogeographic boundaries are susceptible to environmental perturbation associated with human-caused global change.

Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers

Damming and water regulation creates highly modified rivers with limited ecosystem integrity and resilience. This, coupled with an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, makes river restoration a priority, which requires water reallocation. Coupled human–natural systems research provides a suitable lens for integrated systems’ analysis but offers limited insight into the governance processes of water reallocation. Therefore, we propose an analytical framework, which combines insight from social–hydrological resilience and water reallocation research, and identifies the adaptive capacity in highly modified rivers as the capacity for water reallocation. We test the framework by conducting an analysis of Sweden, pre- and post-2019, a critical juncture in the governance of the country’s hydropower producing rivers. We identify a relative increase in adaptive capacity post- 2019 since water reallocation is set to occur in smaller rivers and tributaries, while leaving large-scaled rivers to enjoy limited water reallocation, or even increased allocation to hydropower. We contend that the proposed framework is broad enough to be of general interest, yet sufficiently specific to contribute to the construction of middle-range theories, which could further our understanding of why and how governance processes function, change, and lead to outcomes in terms of modified natural resource management and resilience shifts.

Assessment of Local Adaptive Capacity of Mountain Farmers: A Way Forward for Sustainable Livelihood Development

This study aims to understand the perception of mountain farmers towards the local adaptive capacity at a household level in an agro-ecological landscape. An indicator-based assessment is conducted to examine the 6 determinants and 27 indicators to give a local adaptive capacity index of the villages around Govind Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park, located in the Indian Himalayan region. The findings indicate that, though the connected and isolated villages have a low and very low adaptive capacity, respectively, the effect of various determinants on the local people varies among the village settlements, based on their socio-economic capacity. Despite the government endeavours to build the livelihood of mountain farmers through different programmes and policies, it still lacks proactive decision-making. The study suggests for an integrated assessment and sustainable enhancement of the landscape as a whole, with a focus on community-level adaptation strategies. It draws attention to the need for enhanced collaboration between research institutions, government and private sectors with the mountain community in the centre.

Livestock Farmer Demography and Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change and Variability in Limpopo and Mpumalanga Province of South Africa

The study investigated the demographic characteristics of smallholder livestock farmers in Limpopo and Mpumalanga Province of South Africa and their effect on the capacity of the farmers to adapt to climate change and variability. Respondents were mainly heads (58.7%) and parents (25.7%) to heads of households and were mostly male (63.4%) with good health (97.8%) associated with high adaptive capacity to climate change and variability. Regarding socio-economic status, four in five (81.5%) of the livestock farmers had only secondary education at most, and incomes were generally low, probably associated with low capacity to adapt to climate change and variability. On the contrary, the quality of housing for the livestock farmers was either top (48.5% of farmers) or medium (47.4%). Some 45.9% of farmers owned 4 to 5 rooms, 44.5% owned six or more rooms, with 88.5% of them having financed their houses. Almost all the respondents (97.3%) had access to electricity, and these suggest the high capacity to adapt to climate change and variability. With regards to aspects of livestock farming, one male (40.1% of households) and female (39.3%) member was fit to work in farming, livestock was owned by heads (52.9% of the households) and by children (29.0%), affirming the high capacity to adapt to climate change and variability. Almost all respondents (99.2%) used communal land, had fewer livestock, lacked training (99.5%), never belonged to a farmers’ union (99.7%) or a producer organization (100.0%), and had no access to financial support from the government (99.2%) associated with low adaptive capacity. The findings of the study revealed that demographic factors had different influences on the capacity of smallholder livestock farmers to adapt to adverse effects of climate change and variability on the farming enterprises. This was true for all the three types of demographic factors studied, namely: personal characteristics, economic status, and aspects of livestock farming.

Climate events and the role of adaptive capacity for (im-)mobility

The study examines the relationship between sudden- and gradual-onset climate events and migration, hypothesizing that this relationship is mediated by the adaptive capacity of affected individuals. We use survey data from regions of Cambodia, Nicaragua, Peru, Uganda, and Vietnam that were affected by both types of events with representative samples of non-migrant residents and referral samples of migrants. Although some patterns are country-specific, the general findings indicate that less educated and lower-income people are less likely to migrate after exposure to sudden-onset climate events compared to their counterparts with higher levels of education and economic resources. These results caution against sweeping predictions that future climate-related events will be accompanied by widespread migration.

Household Livelihood Vulnerability to Climate Change in West China

Climate change disproportionately affects natural resource-dependent communities in the ecologically vulnerable regions of western China. This study used the household livelihood vulnerability index under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (HLV-IPCC) to assess vulnerability. Data were collected from 823 households in Ningxia, Gansu, Guangxi, and Yunnan provinces, these being ecologically vulnerable regions in China. With a composite HLVI-IPCC and multiple regression model, the factors that affect households’ adaptive capability to HLVI-IPCC was estimated. Results indicate that Ningxia is the most vulnerable community, while Guangxi is the least vulnerable community across all indices. Moreover, Gansu has the heaviest sensitivity and exposure to climate change, whereas Ningxia has the highest adaptive capability to climate change. In addition, the age of household head and distance of the home to the town center had significant negative impacts on households’ adaptive capacity to HLVI-IPCC. The results also suggest that the HLVI assessment can provide an effective tool for local authorities to formulate prioritizing strategies with promoting climate-resilient development and increasing long-term adaptive capacity.

Can Forest-Related Adaptive Capacity Reduce Landslide Risk Attributable to Climate Change?—Case of Republic of Korea

Recent cases of climate disasters such as the European floods in 2021 and Korea’s longest rainy season in 2020 strongly imply the importance of adaptation to climate change. In this study, we performed a numerical prediction on how much climate change adaptation factors related to forest policy can reduce climate disasters such as landslides. We focused on the landslide in Korea and applied a machine learning model reflecting adaptive indicators in the representative concentration pathway 8.5 climate scenario. The changes in the landslide probability were estimated using the Random Forest model, which estimated the landslide probability in the baseline period (2011) with excellent performance, and the spatial adaptation indicators used in this study contributed approximately 20%. The future landslide risk predicting indicated a significant increase in the Very High and High risk areas, especially in 2092. The application of the forest-related adaptation indices based on the policy scenario showed that in 2050, the effect was not pronounced, but in 2092, when the risk of landslides was much higher, the effect increased significantly. In particular, the effect was remarkable in the Seoul metropolitan and southern coastal regions. Even with the same adaptive capacity, it exerted a larger effect on the enhanced disasters. Our results suggest that the enhancement of adaptive capacity can reduce landslide risk up to 70% in a Very High risk region. In conclusion, it implies an importance to respond to the intensifying climate disasters, and abundant follow-up studies are expected to appear in the future.