Adaptation of water resources management to climate change

PARTICIPATION OF VULNERABLE GROUPS AND LOCAL ELITES IN FLOODMITIGATION AND ADAPTATION IN GUYANAThe vulnerability of communities to hazards is a product of their limited access to economic,environmental, social, political and personal assets. Opportunities for coping are influenced bylivelihood, community structure, social groups, household structure, age, ethnicity, history and health.Those most vulnerable to floods rely primarily on individual mitigation strategies or adaptationduring flood events. When dealing with flood mitigation and adaptation, an opportunity to buildsocial capital can easily be lost if a top-down approach to community targeting is used. Failing topromote social capital will simply confirm and strengthen existing linkages of dependency andcontrol, and will not reduce vulnerability. Securing participation of the most vulnerable sectors ofthe population will require strengthened political institutions and a commitment to participatoryapproaches. 234.2 Pumping Alone: the Role of Social Capital in AdaptationSocial capital plays a highly significant role in organising and changing societies. Social capitalis generally considered to consist of the combination of trust, norms and networks that facilitatecoordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. In relation to flood hazard and vulnerability,social capital will, for instance, reflect the amount of co-operation amongst people and the qualityof this cooperation. 23 Networked people assisting flood victims by pumping dry their basement,providing them with temporary shelter or giving them seeds for a new crop are a clear expressionof social capital. People often do not recognise and respect social capital as a resource until themoment they realize they have very little of it…. the moment they are pumping alone.Social capital is widely varied among societies and changes over time. Some consider that socialcapital is rapidly declining in the developed world. The declining level participation in civil societygroups and volunteer associations in the U.S. can be regarded as an indicator of thisphenomenon. 24 Changes in agricultural cooperatives in Europe could also be considered indicativeof such a decline. With a higher emphasis on market orientation, efficiency and competitivestrength, farmer cooperatives are losing some of their ability to sustain a sense of solidarity andreciprocity. 25“PEOPLE DON’T RECOGNISE SOCIAL CAPITAL UNTIL THEMOMENT THEY ARE PUMPING ALONE.”A decline in social capital can have serious consequences for the capacity of a society to adaptto climate-induced change and related shocks. For instance, when a Vietnamese community’s socialcoherence is reduced and people are no longer willing to volunteer their time for necessary dikerepair works, local authorities will need to hire paid labour to do the job. In northern Vietnamthis has resulted in an increase in household taxation to cover the cost, while a decline in socialcoherence related to disaster preparedness has also developed. 231