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Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Acknowledgments This discussion paper was produced to initiate dialogue with practitioners during the Global Health Council special session on June 2010 as well as with the SHOUT Group through a web discussion hosted by the Center for Design and Research in Sustainability/Sustainable Health and Human Development (CEDARS). You are invited to provide feedback and commentaries by visiting the CEDARS web page, registering and visiting our Discussions Forum. www.cedarscenter.com Contact: [email protected] Thanks to Cindy Young-Turner and Johanna Sarriot for editorial inputs, and to Marie Mikulak for graphic design assistance. Thanks also to Jennifer Yourkavitch who provided critical feedback on the first draft and led the presentation and discussion of the paper during the GHC special session. i Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Table of Contents Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................iii Climate Change Scenarios .......................................................................................................................iii Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens ................................................................................................... v Adaptation Strategies ................................................................................................................................ v The Importance of Social Capital in Adaptation ...................................................................................... viii Information-Based Decisionmaking .................................................................................................... viii Lateral Learning and Sharing .............................................................................................................. viii Conflict Resolution Mechanisms ......................................................................................................... viii The “Non-Negotiables” for Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change .................. ix Conclusions and Discussion Questions ................................................................................................... ix Background ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Approach/Method .......................................................................................................................................... 1 Three Global Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Effect on Food Security/Human Health ....... 2 Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens ....................................................................................................... 4 Adaptation Strategies .................................................................................................................................... 7 The Development of Social Infrastructure for Adaptation: Building Social Capital for Collective Action (Resilience) ................................................................................................................................................. 12 The Meaning of Social Capital ................................................................................................................ 12 Information-Based Decisionmaking ........................................................................................................ 13 Multi-Level Decisionmaking .................................................................................................................... 14 Opportunities for Lateral Learning and Sharing ...................................................................................... 15 Attention to Equity ................................................................................................................................... 16 Conflict Resolution Mechanisms ............................................................................................................. 16 Building Social Infrastructure—The “Nonnegotiables” ................................................................................ 17 Focus on Information for Decisionmaking ............................................................................................... 18 Time, Consistency, and Unity of Purpose ............................................................................................... 18 Clarity of Outcomes ................................................................................................................................. 19 Conclusions and Discussion Questions ...................................................................................................... 20 Reference List ............................................................................................................................................. 21 List of Tables Table 1: Three Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Impact ....................................................... 3 Table 2: Suggestive Review of Global Factors Potentially Affecting Agricultural Output ............................. 6 Table 3: Expected Effect of Status Quo, Hard and Soft Adaptation Strategies at a Local Level ............... 11 ii Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Executive Summary There is general agreement that the negative effects of global climate change (GCC) are likely to be experienced most by already-vulnerable populations in economically poor nations around the world. While mitigation of the GCC risks remains a fundamental global priority, we focus on the adaptation needs of vulnerable communities of developing countries. A great deal of uncertainty exists, however, about the localized effects of climate change. We lay out a summary of a broad array of findings from the available literature about the potential or probable effects of climate change in developing countries. We then examine the respective merits of complementary types of adaptation strategies and seek to open a debate about the urgency of social infrastructure development and the challenges it will bring to development and adaptation efforts. Climate Change Scenarios A reading of the literature on climate change suggests three broad scenarios for how climate change will affect vulnerable communities. These are presented in Table 1 along with a summary of their possible impact on food security, health, and human development more generally: There is great uncertainty about what progressive changes will mean for individual nations or regions and about the exact timing and location of the extreme events. Negative impacts are expected about health and food security, particularly the distribution and severity of changes in food production and infectious agents and vectors’ prevalence. Other factors can modify effects and responses to extreme events, such as economic growth or stagnation, as well as continued growth in overall population. The frequency of extreme events has already increased and is likely to increase further as the impact of GCC is felt. Once again, this overall trend is difficult to link to specific projections at regional and local levels, apart from specific geographic profiles such as lower elevation coastal areas. Less is known about “threshold” events, although there is historical evidence that these have been important throughout human history. In a hyper-connected world, a crisis in one human system can have negative synergies on other systems, with the risk of multi-system and catastrophic failures (i.e., multiple extreme climate events with crop failures and concomitant economic shocks and violent conflict). iii Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Table 1: Three Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Impact Climate Change Scenario Potential Health/Food Security and Other Impacts 1. Progressive climate change (e.g., shifts in mean temperatures and rainfall amounts, changes in lengths of growing seasons) a. b. Probability profile: Irregular (high variability) over short term; incrementally significant over long term. c. d. e. f. g. h. 2. Extreme events (e.g., floods, destructive wind storms, droughts, climate induced fires) Probability profile: Already observable; increased frequency expected; limited predictability at more local levels. Likely for certain geographic profiles (lower elevation coastal areas, etc.). 3. Threshold events or tipping points (e.g., negative synergies with multi-system failures, seen through historic events such as massive loss of life in 16th century Mexico—reported in Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events) Probability profile: Unpredictable—High Impact Loss of coastal habitats reduce some food production activities. Increased rainfall variability leads to decrease in water resources in some locations and decreases irrigation potential with reduced food production. Increasing temperatures in many locations lead to more demand for water for irrigation, thus leading to lower yields. Mitigation efforts drive up input costs, reducing agricultural productivity. Change in range of infectious disease vectors. Increase in respiratory illness due to changes in air quality. Increased conflict due to resource competition Increasing temperatures lead to heat stress on animal and fish stocks, reducing fertility and increasing mortality. a. b. c. d. e. f. g. Heat-related deaths (heat wave). Deaths and injury (flood, fire, storms). Spread of infectious disease post-event (flood). Spread of pests reducing food production (flood following drought). Loss of cultivable land (flood/drought). Loss of water resources (drought). Heat-related stresses reduce cattle reproduction and increase deaths. a. b. c. d. e. f. Epidemics (cattle or human). Crop failure (large scale). Broad ecosystem collapse (leading to uninhabitable zones). Economic crash due to systemic and multi-system spiraling effects. Massive out-migration from affected zones. Conflict (violence) due to migration and resource scarcity. iv Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lensi When isolating the potential effects of different factors (such as climate change, economic growth or stagnation, and population growth) that will interplay under any of the GCC scenarios and impact agricultural output and food prices there is a near convergence of all factors on increasing the price of food (see Table 2 in the main document). Food security is a useful approach to examining the impacts of GCC because food security models, by considering availability, accessibility, and utilization of food, provide a holistic way to assess the overall “health” of communities. A recent Journal of Nutrition supplement dedicated to examining the Impact of Climate Change, the Economic Crisis and Food Prices on Nutrition, emphasizes three points which resonate with our own research on the 2007-2008 combined food price, energy price, and financial crisis: Preexisting and underlying chronic food insecurity leaves populations “disproportionately more exposed to shocks.” More important than the rural/urban split, vulnerability and poverty in either context lead to the most negative impacts. Even short-term shocks can reduce households’ future livelihood capabilities by degrading or destroying assets. To household economics impact, we must add the national and global impact of resource shifting. There will ultimately be competition for the same pot of resources, from environment protection, climate change mitigation, response to financial and economic shocks, natural and man–made disasters. Adaptation Strategies The ability of communities to adapt to local manifestations of GCC, by developing adaptive capacity and resilience, can reduce the effects of the events associated with climate change. Ayers discusses how adaptation investments should be additional to, or mainstreamed into traditional development assistance. For the most part, however, the literature has so far focused on what the additional adaptation efforts should address, and in so doing emphasized “hard” adaptation approaches over “soft” (as discussed below). Given the ongoing deficit in sustainable development processes within poor communities, we need to pay attention to the risk of an adaptation “status quo” at community level and then examine hard and soft adaptation approaches. While status quo is not an option for global planners, from a local perspective The concept of “food security” is too often and narrowly associated with food production at national levels or “food aid” responses. We adopt a more comprehensive definition: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritional food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” (FAO 1996) This definition embodies three key concepts: 1) food availability (which includes local food production systems), 2) food access (including trade, wage income, intra-household distribution), and 3) food utilization (mediated by health and infectious disease agents). Risk—aka vulnerability to food insecurity— is borne by all components of the food security framework. A food security model thus provides a holistic way to assess the overall “health” of communities. i v Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries there is unfortunately plenty of evidence that status quo is a probabilistically-likely event due to the continued challenges of bringing sustainable community development to the poorest, most vulnerable parts of the world. Effective sustainable community development, or rather the lack thereof, is the first source of vulnerability and food insecurity in the face of GCC. A World Bank documentii is useful in delineating “hard” and “soft” adaptation approaches. Hard options involve engineering actions such as: river and sea dikes, beach nourishment, port upgrades, rural roads, irrigation infrastructure expansion and health infrastructure and delivery systems. Soft adaptation measures, on the other hand, might include things such as early warning systems, community preparedness programs, watershed management, urban and rural zoning, and water pricing. They rely on effective equitable, local institutions enabling an adaptation process that is anticipatory, long-term, strategic, cumulative, and supported by collective action. Soft adaptation strategies raise the baseline status of communities and will provide for easier implementation of solutions, to the extent they can draw on or expand traditional/local adaptation strategies. Hard strategies leave substantial gaps in terms of adaptation and do not deal with the certainty of negative outcomes that come from current development failures. They will be harder to implement without advances on soft strategies, which include the development of strong local decisionmaking structures, or, to return to the language of the authors of the World Bank study, “empowered communities.” Table 3 thus provides a rough summary of the costs and outcomes of different strategies in the face of the three climate change scenarios seen earlier. ii The Costs to Developing Countries of Adapting to Climate Change: New Methods and Estimates (The Global Report of the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change Study Consultation Draft). World Bank. vi Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Table 3: Expected Effect of Status Quo, Hard and Soft Adaptation Strategies at a Local Level Climate Change Scenario Status Quo Additional Cost: $0 Without action, human migration on a large scale away from most affected areas will result. Well-off and middle-income groups will be able to adapt at individual level, but poorer individuals and communities will 1. be highly affected. All health indices will Progressive either remain largely unchanged or climate regress in these populations. change Stress on middle-income groups will deplete resources and push some into poverty. Focus on Hard Strategies Additional Cost: $75–100 billion per year Given time and resources, these strategies could help various communities adapt to change. At issue here is moving research rapidly from theoretical to practical application and finding ways to bring stakeholders together to problem solve around local management (a soft strategy). Those working in the subsistence or informal sectors may benefit only secondarily if investments target most ‘productive’ sectors/approaches Any increased conflict is likely to fall more heavily on women and children. Arguably, even the hard strategies will require some investment in soft strategies that build on community decisionmaking structures. These strategies will require a focus on equity considerations (see below) if they are to benefit traditionally underrepresented populations (poor, women, minorities). To the extent they can draw on or expand traditional/local adaptation strategies, they will provide for easier adaptation of solutions. Will raise the baseline status of communities. Again, wealthier individual parts of affected populations will be able to leave or recover from extreme events in ways that poorer groups cannot. 2. Extreme events Focus on Soft Strategies Additional Cost: Unknown The fact that most of the kinds of events envisioned here have already occurred or occur with some regularity around the world provides a blueprint for action, but hard strategies are likely to be used after Again, stress on groups will bring them to the fact. lower economic strata. If resources are available large-scale Short-term problems of injury and loss of responses can target not only rebuilding livelihood and assets will be compounded but also reinforcing structures. by potential increased risks of infectious disease and pest infestations. In a sense this scenario would lead to reactive hard strategies being employed: Medium- or longer-term loss of after a disaster one rebuilds and productive assets will be a problem for reinforces to avoid similar problems poorer parts of the population. again. As above, strong social networks and decisionmaking structures can help streamline decisionmaking post-event. Using preexisting networks as early warning channels is also a possibility, as is using such networks to collect data rapidly after events on those most affected so aid can be rushed to them (immediately) and rehabilitation can be targeted after the fact. However, this type of adaptation could also consist of better warning systems and ways to move people out of harm’s way (as is the case for hurricane or tornado warning systems in the United States). Mass out-migration would result with the wealthier groups most likely to survive. Poorer groups would face very high mortality and/or experience IDP or refugee status in poor health 3. Threshold events May be difficult to reverse but will depend on rushing, perhaps largely untested, strategies to the field. Such “macro-level” interventions would require massive investments and be essentially enormous ‘terraforming’ engineering marvels (e.g., dropping iron in the sea) Such large-scale events are outside the experience base of communities. While collective action may be unable to enable appropriate responses to them, soft adaptation does move communities to a better baseline. It connects vulnerable groups to information. It increases their resource base and increases resilience and capacity to respond to a disaster. Social capital also helps put the pieces back together. Starting from a higher baseline may ensure survival, whereas baseline vulnerability leads to higher mortality. vii Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries The Importance of Social Capital in Adaptation Following the literature, we describe three kinds of social capital (bonding, bridging, and linking) and how they are expressed into adaptive capacity. An examination of the social capital literature as it applies to development in general and climate change in particular suggests that community empowerment—via social capital development—that builds adaptive capacity in the face of GCC and enables the implementation of hard and soft strategies requires (1) information-based decisionmaking; (2) multi-level decisionmaking and coordination of action; (3) opportunities for lateral learning and sharing; (4) attention to equity not merely in assuring that vulnerable groups are “beneficiaries” but that they are “around the table” at which decisions are made; and (5) conflict resolution mechanisms. Information-Based Decisionmaking Empowerment of communities requires that communities have full access to climate relevant information systems. It also requires taking into account existing knowledge and coping strategies of the poor. Critical elements of information use for decisionmaking include both its routine and consistent collection and processes that allow people of varying education and experience levels to use it to track local changes in food security. The information basis for adaptation to climate change thus appears to be—at the onset— the same information basis for local sustainable development. We would propose that local information systems include these three elements at least: community diagnosis (to identify current coping mechanisms), community based information systems (food/livelihood security indicators), and ongoing multi-dimensional assessments, from institutional assessments to more comprehensive monitoring of the delivery and results achieved by basic social services (to enhance quality and build credibility—see Hansen et al 2008) Lateral Learning and Sharing Lateral learning concerns bridging capital, and could focus on information sharing about the state of knowledge on the probable effects of climate change. It might start with information sharing on the existing threats to community health and livelihood. This entails bringing various communities together to discuss current development challenges and consider the need for strengthened structures now and in the future. Lateral learning sends a strong message that local experiences are valuable and that solutions can be found within the local setting, while acknowledging that GCC could introduce events that go beyond the capacity of the strategies that have evolved. Conflict Resolution Mechanisms The first reason that conflict resolution skills will be necessary is because one of the effects of GCC is expected to be heightened tensions and conflicts over scarce resources. Thus, skills will required to both create the spaces (creating safety for groups in conflict so they can come together) and to deal with conflicts that will arise. Building trust, overcoming fear, and enabling decisionmaking within groups in which power imbalances exist requires an attention to how power is being used to silence or exclude, to name it and to address it. These elements are crucial to adaptive capacity. viii Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries The “Non-Negotiables” for Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change Given that the current “development deficit” in many communities (both in lower income and middle income countries, in rural and in peri-urban communities) will lead to greater vulnerability under localized phenomena due to GCC, we should begin to immediately fund efforts to create/mobilize bridging and linking social capital. We suggest here some “non-negotiables” concerning that the nature of those investments: Time is a fundamental ingredient widely ignored by project approaches. Some learning and key processes build and solidify over time, while projects are frequently operating on start-stop modes, which bear substantial transaction costs (“start”) and opportunity costs (“stop”) in terms of human development. In our experience, there are first indications that—given appropriate accountability and metrics of progress—minimal investments maintained over time can contribute substantially to sustaining social development processes and outcomes. Two related concepts are also essential: unity of purpose, which refers to multiple actors focusing on common goals, consistency of purpose over time, which should be expressed through clarity of outcomes. The initial efforts to create social capital should focus on two distinct outcomes: creating learning about adaptation strategies already in place to face uncertainty, and collecting data that identifies levels and then trends in food insecurity in communities with an eye to setting targets and developing plans to reduce it. After clear goals and outcomes have been established, the local collection and use of primary data— both qualitative and quantitative—must form the basis for building decisionmaking networks. National and regional aggregate data simply do not suffice to guide effective strategies, even at district level.(Sarriot et Jahan, 2010; Sarriot et al., 2008) We suggest that the food/livelihood security approaches provide a useful starting place for answering information needs, including by more aggressively obtaining local information. Efforts to create bridging and linking capital should not only consider the various kinds of networks that need to be developed but also assure that “the poor” are not merely referred to in terms of being “beneficiaries” but also included around the decisionmaking table in tangible ways. Conclusions and Discussion Questions No one trying to tackle the complexity of Global Climate Change, particularly in the context of ongoing development challenges is going to believe in rapid, simple and easy “fixes.” One might argue that the culture of easy fixes is partly to blame for anthropogenic Climate Change. By reviewing the literature available to date, and mapping out scenarios for impact of GCC on local vulnerable communities, as well as types of adaptation processes (or lack thereof) which can be promoted in these communities, we have identified three salient ideas, which we suggest should guide new efforts to build adaptive capacity/resiliency at local levels: 1. A collective deficit in enabling local, sustainable community development represents the most widely shared source of insecurity and inadaptability among poor communities of developing countries. ix Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries 2. Even context-specific, hard adaptation strategies will be hindered in their effectiveness and impact in the absence of effective development processes focused on soft adaptation. 3. In the face of uncertainty, progressiveness, complexity and randomness of GCC threats, sustainable adaptation processes should emphasize the building of a responsive and capable social infrastructure. We suggest that proper respect for time as a factor of social processes, unity and consistency of purpose demonstrated through appropriate local information systems and metrics, and equity in bringing stakeholders around decisionmaking processes will be central to these efforts. We presented these analyses to stimulate debate and action. Leaving aside for a minute, “how things are done in the business of development” to focus on what is really required, we submit the following questions: 1. We emphasized the importance of food security systems, including livelihood and basic health measures at the local level. As a development community, we have grown reticent to providing some of this information at the local level. What are the essential information needs to be met through the routine data systems, local surveys, surveillance, etc? 2. What role is there for mentors/coaches of adaptation processes if local ownership is to be fostered? Would that be the role of development professionals and agencies as “outsiders,” and can we even think of different ways to engage in development practice if adaptation and building resiliency are critical concerns? 3. We have talked about a long-term process. How should we think about the timeline to put this social infrastructure into place? The final question is common to all discussion groups: 4. What innovative proposition would you put forth to advance adaptation to Global Climate Change among vulnerable communities of developing countries? x Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Background There is general agreement that the negative effects of global climate change (GCC) are likely to be experienced most by already vulnerable populations in economically poor nations around the world. The IPCC 4th Assessment Report (Easterling et al., 2007) states: “Smallholder and subsistence farmers, pastoralists and artisanal fisherfolk will suffer complex, localized impacts of climate change (high confidence). These groups, whose adaptive capacity is constrained, will experience the negative effects on yields of low-latitude crops, combined with a high vulnerability to extreme events… Climate-change models project that those likely to be adversely affected are the regions already most vulnerable to food insecurity, notably Africa, which may lose substantial agricultural land… Weak public-health systems and limited access to primary health care contribute to high levels of vulnerability and low adaptive capacity for hundreds of millions of people.” These populations are not part of global GCC mitigation efforts, but such efforts will affect them, as will climate change itself, for such populations confronting GCC will require adaptation in order to build resilience in the face of change. An examination of the growing literature on climate change and adaptation reveals a great deal of uncertainty about the localized effects of climate change, even as there is much agreement on which groups are and will be most vulnerable and for whom adaptation will be most difficult. Perhaps because of this there is little discussion about what localized adaptation might look like or how it can be supported. Recent international conferences have debated national- or regional-level mitigation commitments. Much less is said about what will be necessary to support robust localized adaptation. Approach/Method Based on a review of the likelihood and impact of forthcoming changes, we lay out a summary of a broad array of findings about the potential or probable effects of climate change in developing countries. We propose that such effects be examined in terms of their probable impact on food security1 for reasons presented in the following sections. F We then seek to summarize the meaning and effects of various adaptation strategies on these populations. Next, we propose an approach to enable vulnerable groups to build a more robust and localized social infrastructure to prepare to adapt to the effects of GCC. This approach is based on supporting the development of various forms of social capital within and between communities, with an eye to creating equitable decisionmaking structures and enabling these structures to deal effectively with conflict. We close the paper by proposing some factors that are key for building this social infrastructure and with questions about the most effective way forward. 1 We adopt a comprehensive definition of food security, which goes beyond food production and aid. See textbox in the Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens Section. 1 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Three Global Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Effect on Food Security/Human Health A reading of the literature on climate change—see especially IPCC 4th Assessment Report and the Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events: Understanding the Contributions to Infectious Disease Emergence (Pachauri and Reisinger, 2007; Relman et al., 2008)—suggests three broad scenarios for how climate change will proceed. These are presented in Table 1, along with a summary of their possible impacts upon food security and, more generally, health and human development.2 Note that these impacts concern primarily the most vulnerable populations described above. F While there is consensus that GCC will lead to an overall warming of the earth over time and that extreme events will increase along with these changes, there is great uncertainty about what the progressive changes will mean for individual nations or regions. There is also uncertainty about the exact timing and location of the extreme events (with the exception of the effects of warming on coastal habitat and ecology, which can be anticipated with more certainty). There is great uncertainty about the health and food security impacts of GCC. Again, while there is high certainty that extreme events will lead to decreases in food production in areas affected by them (Bloem et al., 2010; USAID, 2007; Metz et al., 2007), and there is the potential for increases and spread of infectious diseases, 3 how specific nations and regions will fare is poorly understood. Thus, while the potential for great changes in food production (for example) exist, and infectious agents and vectors could change, there is no current knowledge about the distribution and severity of these kinds of changes. The frequency of extreme events has already increased and is likely to increase further as the impact of GCC is felt. Once again, this overall trend is difficult to link to specific projections at regional and local levels, apart from specific geographic profiles such as lower elevation coastal areas. F F While uncertainty is high about the occurrence of specific events, their possible consequences can be informed by proxy experiences of the past, which have been examined and studied, such as— El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the transmission of vector- and non-vector-borne diseases (Relman et al., 2008). The 2007–2008 food price crisis combined with an energy price hike and a global financial collapse (Cederstrom et al., 2009; Christian, 2010; Bloem et al., 2010). Larger human impacts—such as displacement and conflict—which occur frequently even if caused by stressors of a different nature. Note that we have not attached “likelihood” estimates for these impacts. The IPCC 4th Assessment (and other documents noted in the appendix) address some of these, but the key is that virtually no statements of this kind can be made for individual regions or nations—let alone at the sub-national level, which is our focus. However, we do believe that the potential impacts listed here are broadly supported by climate change modeling activities. The problem, as noted in the Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events document, is that there are many pitfalls in extrapolating climate and disease; and (we would add) other relationships from one spatial level or temporal scale to another. 3 The literature (Relman et al., 2008) notes the following in relation to infectious diseases: overall increase in burden (consensus), but case-by-case it is hard to predict; shifts in the distribution is an almost certain outcome; shifts will be affected by acceleration in prevention and control measures. 2 2 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Regional droughts (such as in the Sahel in the 1980s) and other climate-related events of much more localized occurrence such as typhoons, hurricanes, tornados, and floods. Less is known about threshold events, although there is historical evidence (Relman et al., 2008) that these have been important throughout human history. In a hyper-connected world, a crisis in one human system can have negative synergies on other systems, with the risk of multi-system and catastrophic failure (i.e., multiple extreme climate events with crop failures and concomitant economic shocks, as well as violent conflict). 4 F Table 1: Three Climate Change Scenarios and Their Potential Impact Climate Change Scenario Potential Health/Food Security and Other Impacts 1. Progressive climate change (e.g., shifts in mean temperatures and rainfall amounts, changes in lengths of growing seasons) a. b. Probability profile: Irregular (high variability) over short term; incrementally significant over long term. c. d. e. f. g. h. 2. Extreme events (e.g., floods, destructive wind storms, droughts, climate induced fires) Probability profile: Already observable; increased frequency expected; limited predictability at more local levels. Likely for certain geographic profiles (lower elevation coastal areas, etc.). 3. Threshold events or tipping points (e.g., negative synergies with multi-system failures, seen through historic events such as massive loss of life in 16th century Mexico—reported in Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events) Probability profile: Unpredictable—High Impact Loss of coastal habitats reduce some food production activities. Increased rainfall variability leads to decrease in water resources in some locations and decreases irrigation potential with reduced food production. Increasing temperatures in many locations lead to more demand for water for irrigation, thus leading to lower yields. Mitigation efforts drive up input costs, reducing agricultural productivity. Change in range of infectious disease vectors. Increase in respiratory illness due to changes in air quality. Increased conflict due to resource competition Increasing temperatures lead to heat stress on animal and fish stocks, reducing fertility and increasing mortality. a. b. c. d. e. f. g. Heat-related deaths (heat wave). Deaths and injury (flood, fire, storms). Spread of infectious disease post-event (flood). Spread of pests reducing food production (flood following drought). Loss of cultivable land (flood/drought). Loss of water resources (drought). Heat-related stresses reduce cattle reproduction and increase deaths. a. b. c. d. e. f. Epidemics (cattle or human). Crop failure (large scale). Broad ecosystem collapse (leading to uninhabitable zones). Economic crash due to systemic and multi-system spiraling effects. Massive out-migration from affected zones. Conflict (violence) due to migration and resource scarcity. Risk Management “Science” has made forays into the public consciousness through recent publications, such as The Black Swan: The Impact of Unprobable Events (Taleb, 2007), which provides useful discussions on management of the risks of unpredictable system failures. 4 3 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries While these events provide data on both the effects and responses to events (whether progressive, extreme, or threshold), other factors can modify their effect in given areas and over time. These include, among others, economic growth or stagnation and population growth. While population growth rates are in rapid decline, population momentum ensures continued growth in overall population for the coming generation and beyond. The reality of the business cycle—amplified through highly integrated product and financial markets—also modifies the effects of climate change in complex ways given the link between economic growth (or stagnation) and research and development of new technologies that affect food production and the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Food Security: A Useful Analytical Lens What is food security? The concept of food security is too often and narrowly associated with food production at national levels or ‘food aid’ responses. We adopt a more comprehensive definition: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritional food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” (FAO, 1996) This definition embodies three key concepts: (1) food availability (which includes local food production systems), (2) food access (including trade, wage income, intra-household distribution), and (3) food utilization (mediated by health and infectious disease agents). Risk—or vulnerability to food insecurity—is borne by all components of the food security framework. A food security model thus provides a holistic way to assess the overall health of communities. When isolating the potential effects of different factors (such as climate change, economic growth or stagnation, and population growth) that will interplay under any of the GCC scenarios and impact agricultural output and food prices, there is a near convergence of all factors on increasing the price of food (see Table 2). The Journal of Nutrition dedicated a supplement (Bloem et al., 2010) to examining the “Impact of Climate Change, the Economic Crisis and Food Prices on Malnutrition.” The experts, gathered in Castel Gandolfo, offer a large number of papers and analyses, some of which resonate with our own research, conducted for UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa Region (Cederstrom et al., 2009): Preexisting and underlying chronic food insecurity leaves populations “disproportionately more exposed to shocks” (Bloem et al., 2010). More important than the rural/urban split, vulnerability and poverty in either context lead to the most negative impacts. Even short-term shocks can reduce households’ future livelihood capabilities by degrading or destroying assets. To household economics impact, we must add the national and global impact of resource shifting. There will ultimately be competition for the same pot of resources, from environment protection, climate change mitigation, response to financial and economic shocks, natural, and man-made disasters. If we have not developed sustainable systems under high ODA funding, where will that leave us when resources dry out? The Gandolfo Group’s analyses suggest that the recent food, fuel, and financial crises “will likely undo much of the progress toward the Millennium Development Goals” (Sari et al., 2010). 4 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries At a national level, governments do not necessarily choose either efficient or sustainable solutions faced with a crisis. In our research, for example, all MENA countries subsidized grain imports in 2008 at a huge cost, reducing resources available for basic services, especially in poor communities. Food security is also a useful approach to examining the impacts of GCC. Food security models, with their consideration of availability of food (which includes local food production systems), access to food (including trade, wage income, and intra-household distribution), and utilization of food (mediated by health and infectious disease agents), provides a holistic way to assess the overall health of communities. (See food security textbox above.) We will argue that enabling communities to track changes in food security via simple, local information systems, in order to develop responses to it, is critical to laying the groundwork for more effective adaptation in the face of GCC while helping them address current vulnerabilities. 5 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Table 2: Suggestive Review of Global Factors Potentially Affecting Agricultural Output Factors Affecting Agricultural Output Climate Change Economic Growth (Global) Economic Stagnation (Global) Population Growth Water Availability In many areas Implies that growth provides for better water use via investment in better technologies / Current water-saving infrastructure not maintained; no new finds to increase availability Land Availability / The exact outcome could depend on the distribution of catastrophic events (floods/droughts) and their duration Implies that growth provides for better land use via investment in better technologies Fertilizer Prices This assumes that rich country mitigation efforts increase cost of carbon emission and thus prices rise due to ‘taxes’ on natural gas / Outcome depends on prices for natural gas / Global population growth is putting pressure on all natural resources Improved Seed Varieties Availability ? Human Labor / Labor pushed off land by climate-related catastrophes in worst case and health of labor worse off / Less critical to production but growth could stimulate greater migration; however, labor via potentially healthier Petroleum Prices (assumes greater mechanization in agriculture is pushed) This assumes that rich country mitigation efforts increase cost of carbon emission and thus prices rise due to ‘taxes’ on petroleum Increase in price of petroleum with economic expansion / / Global population growth is putting pressure on all natural resources World Market Integration ? Generally growth in trade enables (and is enabled by) economic growth Generally stagnation leads to more protectionism ? Could lead to more integration via migration as has been happening Food Production Summary / Increase in price of natural gas with economic expansion (mitigated perhaps by newer finds now exploitable due to price increases) Investment in agriculture possible / Investment in agriculture limited / Labor more critical to production but destitution could still push people to urban areas; also, labor is not as healthy, so even more labor may not lead to true increases ? / Population growth has led to migration away from land, but enough may stay to have little effect; labor health likely worse Attendant Potential Impact on Food Prices of Each Factor Given the Foregoing Food Prices The picture here is unambiguous: factor prices increase; land and water are less available. Less food is produced. Prices will go up. Urban poor hurt most, but rural peasants also potentially hurt by high input prices and increasing competition for land and water. / Arguments could go either way: factor prices rise but other inputs used more ‘efficiently.’ Most expect more food to be produced given general changes in technology. Not captured above is the use of food crops for biofuels, which increases input costs even more. Also, while global integration promises lower food prices, the last food crisis shows this is not necessarily the case. There appear to be few who think prices will decline even with economic stagnation. This is due to greater migration out of agriculture, less investment in agriculture, and more protectionism. At best, food prices stabilize. Rural poor no worse off but urban poor dependent on imports and ‘off the farm’ suffer more. Population growth alone has the potential to place greater pressure on natural resources and has been leading to greater urban migration. Rural poor bear brunt of increases. Legend: = Declines/Decreases; = Goes up/Increases; = Neutral; ? = Unknown/Unsure 6 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Adaptation Strategies Smit and Pilifosova (2001) state, “Adaptation refers to adjustments in ecological, social, or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts. It refers to changes in processes, practices, and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change.” Their chapter provides an excellent review of the literature on adaptation, and we summarize only a few key points here: Not surprisingly, “underdevelopment fundamentally constrains adaptive capacity, especially because of a lack of resources to hedge against extreme but expected events.” Adaptive capacity is defined as building “the potential or capability of a system to adapt to (to alter to better suit) climatic stimuli or their effects or impacts.” This is also referred to as building resilience. Not surprisingly, “Activities required for the enhancement of adaptive capacity are essentially equivalent to those promoting sustainable development.” “Some people regard the adaptive capacity of a system as a function not only of the availability of resources but of access to those resources by decision makers and vulnerable subsectors of a population” and “the presence of power differentials can contribute to reduced adaptive capacity.” “In general, countries with well-developed social institutions are considered to have greater adaptive capacity than those with less effective institutional arrangements—commonly, developing nations and those in transition.” These points focus on a number of key elements related to the ability of communities to adapt to local manifestations of GCC—especially those that concern “underdevelopment and the need for social infrastructure.” A World Bank report (2009) states: Our combined experience suggests that the best way to address climate change impacts on the poor is by integrating adaptation measures into sustainable development and poverty reduction strategies… Many adaptation mechanisms will be strengthened by making progress in areas such as good governance, human resources, institutional structures, public finance, and natural resource management. Such progress builds the resilience of countries, communities, and households to all types of shocks, including climate change impacts… In effect, this argues that building the social infrastructure of communities enhances their capacity to respond and is thus, in itself, the beginning of an adaptation that is intentional, anticipatory, long-term, strategic, and cumulative. The WB document is one of the few that attempts to estimate the global costs of adaptation to climate change and is useful in delineating “hard” and “soft” adaptation approaches. Hard options involve acts of engineering such as river and sea dikes, beach nourishment, port upgrades, rural roads, irrigation infrastructure expansion, and improvement of health infrastructure and delivery systems. 7 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Soft adaptation measures, on the other hand, might include things such as early warning systems, community preparedness programs, watershed management, urban and rural zoning, and water pricing. They rely on effective institutions supported by collective action. Adapting to risk scenarios has costs—some of which are estimated in the literature and others that are not. The World Bank authors, referring to hard options, put their cost “between 2010 and 2050 of adapting to an approximately 2oC warmer world by 2050 in the range of $75 billion to $100 billion a year.” No similar estimate is made for soft options. While a number of authors (The World Bank, 2009; Ayers et al., 2009; USAID, 2007) acknowledge the nonnegotiable necessity of soft adaptation to improve human health and welfare, with or without climate change shocks (“no regrets strategies”), and to create conditions for effective hard adaptation measures, most of the climate change and health literature of recent years has focused (for partly justifiable reasons) on the need for new and hard strategies, and additional adaptation strategies and investments. Soft options are probably addressed less frequently because they may be considered part of the underlying development requirements, as summarized by Ayers and others (2009): Given that a community that is vulnerable in an existing climate is likely to be vulnerable to future climate change, it is not necessary to wait for climate change data to become available to start building adaptive capacity. Rather, the starting point for vulnerability reduction is development, and so the priorities for any development agency must first be meeting their existing aid commitments and focusing on community priorities in the nearterm. Mainstreaming will not be effective if existing development trajectories are inconsistent with the objectives of adaptation, so first and foremost a “more of the same” approach to development must form the underlying basis for any adaptation program undertaken by development agencies. Soft adaptation strategies raise the baseline status of communities and will provide for easier implementation of solutions, to the extent they can draw on or expand traditional/local adaptation strategies (see following figure). Hard strategies leave substantial gaps in terms of adaptation and do not deal with the certainty of negative outcomes that come from current development failures. They will be harder to implement without advances on soft strategies, which include the development of strong local decisionmaking structures or, to return to the language of the authors of the World Bank study, “empowered communities.” In a paper on community-based adaptation to the health impacts of climate change, Ebi and Semenza (2008) note the importance of what is needed in comparison to the current situation: The focus has been on interventions that are the responsibility of national and state public health agencies. Although these interventions are critical, they will not be sufficient, even with optimal resources and engagement. Additional activities will need to be taken by individuals within their communities. Considering what the adaptation strategies might lead to, in terms of helping people adapt to climate change, affects how we can value the two different approaches. Table 3 provides a rough summary of the costs and outcomes of hard and soft strategies in the face of the three climate change scenarios seen earlier. We present this table not only to demonstrate the timing and potential use of hard and soft adaptation approaches to GCC but also to highlight two other points: 8 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Given the ongoing deficit in emergency of sustainable development processes within poor communities, we need to pay attention to the risk of an adaptation status quo at the community level and then examine hard and soft adaptation approaches. While status quo is not an option for global planners, from a local perspective there is unfortunately plenty of evidence that status quo is a probabilistically likely event due to the continued challenges of bringing sustainable community development to the poorest, most vulnerable parts of the world. As stated repeatedly, effective sustainable community development or lack thereof is the first source of vulnerability and food insecurity in the face of GCC. Both hard and soft adaptation both require empowerment of local communities to assess needs, use information, and plan for action. While empowerment is a difficult concept to define, assessment, information use, and planning can only be conducted in the context of strong and inclusive local institutions. Unfortunately, even in the context of increased ODA funding, current development efforts rarely focus on investing resources in the building of such localized social infrastructure. 9 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries 10 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Table 3: Expected Effect of Status Quo, Hard and Soft Adaptation Strategies at a Local Level Climate Change Scenario Status Quo Additional Cost: $0 Focus on Hard Strategies Additional Cost: $75–100 billion per year Without action, human migration on a Given time and resources, these large scale away from most affected strategies could help various communities areas will result. adapt to change. At issue here is moving research rapidly from theoretical to Well-off and middle-income groups will be practical application and finding ways to able to adapt at individual level, but bring stakeholders together to problem poorer individuals and communities will solve around local management (a soft 1. be highly affected. All health indices will strategy). Progressive either remain largely unchanged or climate regress in these populations. Those working in the subsistence or change informal sectors may benefit only Stress on middle-income groups will secondarily if investments target most deplete resources and push some into “productive” sectors/approaches. poverty. Any increased conflict is likely to fall more heavily on women and children. 3. Threshold events Arguably, even the ‘hard strategies’ will require some investment in soft strategies that build on community decisionmaking structures. These strategies will require a focus on equity considerations (see below) if they are to benefit traditionally underrepresented populations (poor, women, minorities). To the extent they can draw on or expand traditional/local adaptation strategies, they will provide for easier adaptation of solutions. Will raise the baseline status of communities. Again, wealthier individual parts of affected populations will be able to leave or recover from extreme events in ways that poorer groups cannot. 2. Extreme events Focus on Soft Strategies Additional Cost: Unknown The fact that most of the kinds of events envisioned here have already occurred or occur with some regularity around the world provides a blueprint for action, but hard strategies are likely to be used after Again, stress on groups will bring them to the fact. lower economic strata. If resources are available large-scale Short-term problems of injury and loss of responses can target not only rebuilding livelihood and assets will be compounded but also reinforcing structures. by potential increased risks of infectious disease and pest infestations. In a sense this scenario would lead to “reactive” hard strategies being employed: Medium- or longer-term loss of productive after a disaster one rebuilds and assets will be a problem for poorer parts reinforces to avoid similar problems again. of the population. However, this type of adaptation could also consist of better warning systems and ways to move people out of harm’s way (as is the case for hurricane or tornado warning systems in the United States). As above, strong social networks and decisionmaking structures can help streamline decisionmaking post-event. Mass out-migration would result with the wealthier groups most likely to survive. Poorer groups would face very high mortality and/or experience IDP or refugee status in poor health Such large-scale events are outside the experience base of communities. While collective action may be unable to enable appropriate responses to them, soft adaptation does move communities to a better baseline. It connects vulnerable groups to information. It increases their resource base and increases resilience and capacity to respond to a disaster. May be difficult to reverse but will depend on rushing, perhaps largely untested, strategies to the field. Such “macro-level” interventions would require massive investments and be essentially enormous “terraforming” engineering marvels (e.g., dropping iron in the sea). Using preexisting networks as early warning channels is also a possibility, as is using such networks to collect data rapidly after events on those most affected so aid can be rushed to them (immediately) and rehabilitation can be targeted after the fact. Social capital also helps put the pieces back together. Starting from a higher baseline may ensure survival, whereas baseline vulnerability leads to higher mortality. 11 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries The Development of Social Infrastructure for Adaptation: Building Social Capital for Collective Action (Resilience) The idea of empowering local communities is not a new one in development work, but what it means and how to promote it are questions that merit further exploration and development. Conceptually, it is useful to think about empowerment 7 as taking place via the development of social infrastructure—which is referred to in the literature as the formation or mobilization of social capital. F F An examination of the social capital literature as it applies to development in general (Woolcock, 1998) and climate change in particular 8 suggests that community empowerment—via social capital development—that builds adaptive capacity in the face of GCC and enables the implementation of hard and soft strategies requires the following: (1) information-based decisionmaking; (2) multi-level decisionmaking and coordination of action; (3) opportunities for lateral learning and sharing; (4) attention to equity not merely in ensuring that vulnerable groups are “beneficiaries” but that they are “around the table” at which decisions are made; and (5) conflict resolution mechanisms. F F The Meaning of Social Capital Ebi and Semenza (2008) provide a useful reminder of the meaning of social capital, describing it as “the potential embedded in social relationships that enables residents to coordinate community action to achieve shared goals, such as adaptation to climate change.” They go on to define briefly three wellknown forms that social capital takes: bonding, bridging, and linking capital. Bonding capital enables communities to mobilize based on the deep relationships of trust that exist within largely homogeneous groups. Bridging capital refers to the resource for action derived from heterogeneous groups joining together to build relationships that bring capacities to the table that might be lacking within homogeneous groups. Linking capital concerns relationships that extend beyond community groups, connecting such groups to individuals and groups of power (for example the state in its various manifestations). Elbie and Semenza note that all three forms of social capital are critical to enabling communities to adapt to climate change. Woolcock (1998), writing more generally about the role of social capital and development notes the same things and goes further, pointing out the development challenges that exist if various forms of capital are lacking. He uses these two concepts to argue that both are necessary for “bottom-up” development efforts to succeed. His arguments join Ebi and Semenza’s (2008) who make this argument explicitly in relation to climate change when he notes that even high levels of bonding capital quickly reach a self-limiting role in development because homogeneous groups often lack essential skills and experiences to face the challenges of poverty. In addition, Woolcock talks about the problem of too little bonding capital, examples of which exist in post-conflict environments, where basic lack of trust within groups renders communal action difficult. For both groups of authors, finding ways to support the development of bonding and bridging capital is critical for local efforts—be they general development or adaptation to the local effects of GCC. 7 We use this term to refer to the process by which people come to achieve more control over their own decisionmaking and future goals. 8 We draw primarily from numerous authors for these concepts (Ebi and Semenza, 2008; Thomas and Twyman, 2005; Tompkins and Adger, 2004). 12 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries However, both also see the necessity of moving beyond these critical, local types of social capital to linking communities to those “in power,” also known as linking capital. Elbie and Semenza limit their consideration to the importance of linking capital, which is essentially about creating collaborative efforts between community groups and those in power (health, administrative, and political authorities). Woolcock concurs, calling this type of capital “synergy,” but goes a step further and notes that another type of social capital is critical to ensure useful “top-down” development efforts. He adds that credibility and capacity (technical and experiential) of state and civil society institutions are vital for top-down approaches to development in order to work and to effectively marry top-down and bottom-up approaches. 9 F While examples of bonding and bridging capital are easy to find, there would appear to be a deficit of experience in successfully developing linking capital. One possible example comes from the USAID-funded UPHOLD project to develop a response to HIV/AIDS transmission in Uganda (Orobaton et al., 2007). That project focused explicitly on creating linking capital through trust building activities. It also had components related to credibility by facilitating processes with district health officials and others to build shared values and build skills. We turn now to examine briefly certain specific elements critical of creating/mobilizing social capital. Information-Based Decisionmaking As the World Bank’s The Costs to Developing Countries of Adapting to Climate Change: New Methods and Estimates notes (2009), empowerment of communities requires that communities have full access to climate-relevant information systems. In addition, the report states that “effective adaptation should build upon, and sustain, existing livelihoods and thus take into account existing knowledge and coping strategies of the poor.” This obviously does not deny the role of professionals, technicians, or experts, but resets the focus of expertise toward the production of actionable information. Taken together, these two points indicate the importance of collecting and using relevant climate information and the experiences of local adaptation to enable decisionmaking about current and future adaptation needs. As we argued above, a food security perspective has the potential to encompass both of these broad types of information. The keys to information use for decisionmaking include both its routine and consistent collection and processes that allow people of varying education and experience levels to use it to track local changes in food security. Devereux et al. (2004) are not writing within the context of GCC but discuss the use of a food security/livelihood approach to data collection that has historically been used in regions of the world in which extremes of climate variability are the norm (the likely reality of a world in which the fuller effects of climate change have occurred, as we have seen in the second GCC scenario above). While their paper, ironically, deals with scaling up such information systems to the national scale, the system they describe has been designed to enable the local collection and use of information on food and livelihood security. 9 These concepts in the literature echo some of our own experiences. Examples of bridging capital, for example, come from the world of microfinance in the idea of rotating savings and credit groups or federations of credit groups. Linking between community groups and decisionmakers was at the heart of remarkable and, to a high extent, sustainable achievements of an urban health project of Concern Worldwide in Bangladesh (Sarriot et al., 2004; Sarriot and Jahan, 2010). Both linking and bridging social capital were at play in projects we evaluated, namely of Save the Children USA in Guinea (Sarriot, 2006) and through the Living University model. 13 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Many of the data points collected in such systems concern climate-related issues such as local rainfall. They go beyond this information, however, to examine broader issues of access to food and the tracking of vulnerable groups. There is clearly much to be learned from these approaches. While current approaches to tracking climate change focus on national- or even international-level data collection and modeling, tools exist that permit communities (think “district” level) to collect data rapidly and efficiently (Davis et al., 2009). We would argue that there are no inherent technical or procedural challenges to enabling communities to gather and analyze local data to inform decisionmaking about global climate change. Indeed, as we have argued, there is nothing standing in the way of helping communities to do this in the current environment of food insecurity in which they find themselves. What is lacking is the commitment to capacity building over time. However, as noted, the food/livelihood security information systems are not the only kind of information to be collected and analyzed. All societies have ways of adapting to climatic (and other) shocks and while most writers agree (Tompkins and Adger, 2004) that the challenges of adapting to future climate change lie outside their experienced coping range, learning of and adapting these coping mechanisms will be critical to ongoing adaptation efforts. Bhattamishra and Barrett (2010), though not writing in the context of GCC, provide a useful summary of community-based risk management actions (CBRMA) illustrating how they exist in many places. Other studies cited in their paper illustrate the vast array of strategies used— often in the context of climatic shocks. Given the foregoing we would propose that local information systems include these three elements at least: 1. Community diagnosis (to identify current coping mechanisms). 2. Community-based information systems (food/livelihood security indicators). 3. Ongoing multidimensional assessments, from institutional assessments—to build credibility (Orobaton et al., 2007)—to more comprehensive monitoring of the delivery and results achieved by basic social services. The tools for collecting information at local levels meet with professional-cultural reluctance for their implementation, but they are well established and proven to be workable at the district level. What is less clear is, again, how to develop processes to enable emerging groups to analyze and then use data to make decisions; more work needs to be done to create these processes. Despite this challenge the key will be to develop routine data collection systems and to consistently, over long periods, help groups meet to analyze data and progress toward goals (see below). Multi-Level Decisionmaking The foregoing assumes that information will be used in ongoing ways to make decisions about current food security and community health challenges, and that the processes so developed will build the adaptive capacity of communities. The idea of multi-level decisionmaking is merely another way of talking about linking capital or synergy. 14 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries What specific structures are needed? Tompkins and Adger (2004) argue for a model that operationalizes Woolcock’s (1998) concept of synergy in the form of “co-management,” which they link to the idea of “networks of engagement,” which give people access to power and representation. Quoting Ostrom (1990), they state: Co-management is one form of collective action whereby resource stakeholders work together with a government agency to undertake some aspect of resource management. Collective action in this context is the coordination of efforts among groups of individuals to achieve a common goal when individual self-interest would be inadequate to achieve the desired outcome. Tompkins and Adger go on to acknowledge that “inclusive institutions and the sharing of responsibility for natural resources go against the dominant hierarchical institutional forms of most governments throughout the world.” They do, however, provide examples in their article of where co-management is working. What this implies is that the specific form of synergy must involve private actors (communities) working explicitly with government agents to develop adaptation strategies (starting with a response to current food security challenges). The same authors speak of the need to “cement localized spaces of dependence.” This echoes the longstanding research of Kurt Lewin on how the formation of new groups enables significant behavior change by members. Opportunities for Lateral Learning and Sharing The issue of lateral learning concerns bridging capital and, perhaps, provides as answer to the question: Where does one start the process of co-management? As we have seen, bridging capital is a necessary but not sufficient condition for increasing adaptive capacity of communities. It is important for moving beyond the limitations of bonding capital—especially in the face of the local manifestations of GCC—but requires linking capital to move toward realistic solutions to poverty and GCC’s effects. Lateral learning could begin by focusing on information sharing about the state of knowledge on the probable effects of climate change (acknowledging the great uncertainty that exists at national and local levels). In a sense this concerns bringing various communities together to discuss current development challenges and consider the need for strengthened structures now and in the future. Beyond this, forming networks should catalogue already existing adaptation strategies that groups use to adapt to risk. Bhattamishra and Barrett (2010) provide a useful summary of community-based risk management actions illustrating how they exist in many places. One challenge they acknowledge—and that could offer a second stage of questions for local groups to deal with—is the problem that most CBRMAs don’t work well in cases of broad co-varying risks—the kinds that are going to be common in GCC-induced events. Thus, emerging social structures should be enabled to both critically examine local adaptation strategies that could be useful models, but also consider their limitations and the opportunities to build relationships beyond them. Lateral learning sends a strong message that local experiences are valuable and that solutions can be found within the local setting while acknowledging that GCC could introduce events that go beyond the capacity of the strategies that have evolved. Because it explicitly seeks to build bridging capital through 15 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries joint learning, it provides a good foundation and starting place for discussions on the role of policymakers within the state. Thus, bridging capital builds community capacity to engage in its own advocacy vis-à-vis the state. Attention to Equity While the social capital concept provides a useful understanding of the value of different groups coming together to do that which they could not accomplish alone, it does not deal directly with the issues of exactly who is involved in creating the bridging and linking forms of capital. This raises the issue of equity and representation. Thomas and Twyman (2005) ask explicitly about the voices that are heard and the issue of the inclusion of traditionally excluded groups in decisionmaking bodies. They articulate the concept of equity in relation to climate change adaptation processes this way: Therefore equity in the context of climate change outcomes ought to be much more than simply ensuring that the vulnerable are treated fairly and buffered from unduly bearing the burdens of impacts. It should relate to a wide range of issues including: decision-making processes—who decides, who responds; frameworks for taking and facilitating actions; relationships between the developed and developing world; and also to relationships between climate change impacts and other factors that affect and disturb livelihoods. While they are not addressing directly the issue of bridging and linking capital, they are talking about creating new “social spaces” (headroom) in which decisions about what to do about GCC at the local level can be debated. They point to the need for these spaces to “retain principles of equity and social justice” at their core. They conclude by pointing out the need for careful facilitation of the process: seeing a role for outsiders in asking questions and guiding debate about who should be around the table. The idea of outsiders playing this role is echoed in a manual on “people-centered” advocacy (VeneKlasen and Miller, 2007), which focuses not just on getting community issues to the table but “enlarging” the table to include more voices, especially those that are traditionally un- or under-represented. Thus, efforts to create bridging and linking capital should not only consider the various kinds of networks that need to be developed but also ensure that “the poor” are not merely referred to in terms of being “beneficiaries” but also included around the decisionmaking table in tangible ways. This points to the need for intentional longstanding processes to ensure greater participation of all groups. Conflict Resolution Mechanisms A final point related to the development of the social infrastructure required to enhance community adaptation to climate change concerns the need, within actions that focus on creating bridging and linking capital, to set up mechanisms to deal fruitfully with conflict. We focus on this for two distinct reasons. The first reason that conflict resolution skills will be necessary is because one of the effects of GCC is expected to be heightened tensions and conflicts over scarce resources. Nearly all the literature on GCC points to this seeming inevitability, with some arguing that even mean temperature changes are likely to lead to more conflict in local settings (Burke et al., 2009). This implies that the creation of new social spaces will be done, increasingly, in the context of ongoing conflict among participants. Thus, it will require skill to both create the spaces (creating safety for groups in conflict so they can come together) and to deal with conflicts that will arrive once people come into them. 16 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries A second reason why these skills will be necessary concerns the issues of power and equity, raised previously. Building trust, overcoming fear, and enabling decisionmaking within groups in which power imbalances exist requires an attention to how power is being used to silence or exclude, to name it and to address it. These issues are often overlooked by program evaluators guided through technical expertise, but with attention are found to play an essential part in the sustainability of social development efforts (Sarriot and Jahan, 2010; Sarriot, 2002). The fields of conflict transformation, adult education, and team building contain a variety of tools and processes that must be brought to bear to enable these groups to organize and move ahead. The existence of external facilitators that will bring new perspectives and approaches to newly forming groups will be an important element of external support to local adaptation efforts and should be a priority for donors. Building Social Infrastructure—The “Nonnegotiable” In considering these points it is clear that an investment in social infrastructure will be a long-term process and require a significant amount of process facilitation in many local communities around the world. As Ebi and Semenza (2008) note: “Preparing for and effectively responding to climate change will be a process, not a one-time assessment of risks and likely effective interventions.” Given that the current “development deficit” in many communities will lead to greater vulnerability under the local effects of GCC, we should begin to immediately fund efforts to begin to create/mobilize bridging and linking social capital. In the next section we lay out some nonnegotiables concerning in what areas that investment should start. We hasten to add that such efforts should not be seen as projects but should allow for flexible engagement over a longer period of time. They should be seen as investments in current development deficits as well as investments in enhancing adaptive capacity in the face of GCC. (If quick fixes got us to the current situation, is it not time to try a sustainable development model to respond to the greatest unsustainability challenge of our day?) So where do we begin? How do we start to think about how to actually build this infrastructure? There are few fully formed models that address all these issues comprehensively, especially for the creation of linking capital at the district level, but there are a multitude of sectoral projects and programs that provide demonstration that such approaches can work in addition to a substantial learning basis. Discussion of these models goes beyond the scope of this paper, but some leads based on our experience, primarily but not exclusively in community health, are presented in the textbox below. Promising Practices in Building Social Infrastructure Mosley and Lozare (2008) provide a useful ‘leadership development’ approach. Other approaches include Partner Defined Quality (Save the Children, 2010) and numerous international communitybased experiences (Ricca and Morris, 2010; Sarriot and Jahan, 2010; Sarriot, 2006). See Citizens in Action: Making Peace in the Post-Election Crisis in Kenya—2008 by George Wachira et al. (2010) for an example that is at a level somewhat above district-level problem solving. Other examples include NGO/state collaboration in Northern Iraq (unpublished/personal communication between authors and 3D Security initiative staff). 17 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Despite the lack of many practical implementation approaches, we would like to return to some critical points we believe must be part of any efforts to develop approaches to building bridging and linking capital. Focus on Information for Decisionmaking As noted previously, the local collection and use of primary data—both qualitative and quantitative—must form the basis for building decision networks. In fact, it is an oft violated rule that the only data worth collecting are to guide decisionmaking. The specific kinds of information to be collected should be prioritized but also negotiated in each setting to ensure maximum relevance. The food/livelihood security approaches provide a useful starting place for answering information needs, including by more aggressively obtaining local information. 10 F This returns us to several points raised earlier about who should be around the table, the size of the table, and the role of participants. There is a need to explicitly focus on equity issues in forming groups and inviting participation, and we would suggest an important role for outsiders in challenging groups about this and in ensuring full participation of all members. Our own experience has shown us that power imbalances in groups must be acknowledged and managed appropriately. If decisions are to be made that represent the needs of all participants, then appropriate processes must be in place to ensure that. Building facilitative capacity that includes tools to raise voices and deal with conflict will be critical to ensuring that it is not merely the voices of the powerful that are incorporated into the decisions. Time, Consistency, and Unity of Purpose Time is a fundamental ingredient widely mistreated by project approaches. Some learning and key processes build and solidify over time, while projects are frequently operating on start-stop modes, which bear substantial opportunity costs in terms of human development (Shediac-Rizkallah and Bone, 1998; Witter and Adje, 2007). A review of Noraid health sector development projects argues that less successful and less sustainable projects are more likely to receive longer funding (Catterson and Lindahl Claes, 2003). In our experience on the evaluation of sustainability of community health interventions, there are first indications that minimal investments maintained over time can contribute substantially to sustaining social development processes and outcomes. Time in itself does not suffice to ensuring progress in the building of human resiliency; two related concepts are essential and have received substantial attention in the management literature, but surprisingly little in the development and climate change literature: Unity of purpose refers to multiple actors focusing on common goals, which can be made possible by the creation of social space and information systems discussed previously. 10 The Rapid Household Survey Handbook (Davis et al., 2009) provides a useful starting place for developing quantitative information collection methods. Other tools exist for qualitative methods, including Participatory Learning and Action—PLA (Freudenberger, 1999). Community-based monitoring systems and surveillance (nutritional and epidemiological) all have their set of challenges but have been implemented successfully in a number of settings. 18 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Consistency of purpose refers to maintaining focus and commitment to key issues over time. The world of development is notably falling short on this fundamental principle. Some exceptions are obvious, such as national immunization programs and recent efforts to bring ITN technology to the fight against malaria. At the local level, however (think district and below), both national and international actors can be involuntarily disruptive. This is most easily demonstrated by the absence of actionable information at those local levels of interaction with communities (Sarriot et al., 2008; Davis et al., 2009). Clarity of Outcomes As we have argued throughout this document, the development of social infrastructure is not for the sole purpose of preparing to react to the effects of climate change. There exists a large development deficit that technology and know-how transfer will not fill. We believe that the initial efforts to create social capital should focus on two distinct outcomes: As noted previously, initial bridging capital efforts might focus on creating learning about adaptation strategies already in place to face uncertainty. Initial data collection efforts and decisions should focus on identifying levels and then trends in food insecurity in communities with an eye to setting targets and developing plans to reduce it. Again, the food security model we are proposing provides a holistic approach to thinking about community health with its focus on food production, wages, markets, and health and infectious diseases. With data on these issues in hand, and with an analysis of the meaning and classification of “vulnerability” in the community, emerging groups can develop plans to reduce food insecurity in the short to medium term. 11 F These outcomes are of immediate relevance: build a knowledge base, bring people together, and focus on using information to create plans based on locally available resources. Over the longer term the development of the disciplines of data analysis will lead to an ability to respond to the effects of GCC. Thus, focusing on today’s needs prepares the way enhanced adaptive capacity tomorrow: A community active in examining information and making decisions to enhance its own welfare will be far better positioned to examine climate variability data, surveillance information, and evidence of climate impact on crop, health, and livelihood. As basic health, livelihood, and human development indicators over time improve, the physical condition of communities will also position them to be more resilient to the shocks of climate change. 11 More detailed discussion of metrics and their production is required but can be informed by recent literature (Devereux et al., 2004). 19 Hurry Up Slowly—Building Social Infrastructure as Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries Conclusions and Discussion Questions No one trying to tackle the complexity of Global Climate Change, particularly in the context of ongoing development challenges is going to believe in rapid, simple, and easy fixes. One might argue that the culture of easy fixes is partly to blame for anthropogenic Climate Change. By reviewing the literature available to date, and mapping out scenarios for impact of GCC on local vulnerable communities, as well as types of adaptation processes (or lack thereof) that can be promoted in these communities, we have identified three salient ideas, which we suggest should guide new efforts to build adaptive capacity/resiliency at local levels: 1. A lack of local, sustainable community development associated with a poor social infrastructure represents the most widely shared source of insecurity and inadaptability among poor communities of developing countries. 2. Even context-specific, hard adaptation strategies will be hindered in their effectiveness and impact in the absence of effective development processes focused on soft adaptation. 3. In the face of uncertainty, progressiveness, complexity, and randomness of GCC threats, sustainable adaptation processes should emphasize the building of a responsive and capable social infrastructure. We suggest that proper respect for time as a factor of social processes, unity and consistency of purpose demonstrated through appropriate local information systems and metrics, and equity in bringing stakeholders around decisionmaking processes will be central to these efforts. We presented these analyses to stimulate debate and action. Leaving aside for a minute “how things are done in the business of development” to focus on what is really required, we submit the following questions: 1. We emphasized the importance of food security systems, including livelihood and basic health measures at the local level. As a development community, we have grown reticent to providing some of this information at the local level. What are the essential information needs to be met through the routine data systems, local surveys, surveillance, etc.? 2. What role is there for mentors/coaches of adaptation processes if local ownership is to be fostered? 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