Livelihoods and governance improve adaptive capacity
In my second post I want to talk about what it takes to give people a fighting chance against climate change. The points I touch on will sound familiar to most people because they’re quite established arguments yet somehow, they still need re-emphasis. I argue that if people must wonder where their next meal will come from or whether they’ll manage to send their children to school for the rest of the year then their capacity to think innovatively about adapting to climate change is compromised. If we support them to better secure their livelihoods, we’ll help activate their agency to do more to adapt.
People struggle to live fulfilling lives if they can’t make a living. Caught in this reality, adapting to climate change in lasting ways becomes difficult because they still need to solve basic needs. This doesn’t mean that one must be achieved before the other in some version of a linear relationship – the two are linked and co-evolve. I believe however that failing to secure a living has more significant consequences for adaptation than the other way round. Moreover, adaptation doesn’t always come cheap – more so the transformative kind. Investments need to be made in technologies and system reforms to get it right. People with fewer economic opportunities struggle to find this agency.
We must always ask ourselves – how can we contribute to this agency in lasting ways? I believe that the answer to this lies in governance: doing all we can to include each other every step of the adaption journey. A broad definition of governance is that it is a social function centred on steering societies away from collectively undesirable outcomes towards collectively desirable ones. Climate governance is therefore ‘..the diplomacy, mechanisms and response measures aimed at steering social systems towards preventing, mitigating, or adapting to the risks posed by climate change’ (Jagers and Stripple, 2003). I believe we must meaningfully include the most affected people in the structures and decision processes that direct climate action to shape lasting solutions.
My argument for this inclusive type of governance, which builds on my last post, is that people have either seen or have a good idea of the kind of actions they need to respond to crisis. Including them in the design processes of livelihoods support will help foreground the most urgent actions to take and how to scale and institutionalise these to contribute effectively to adaptation. I believe there is much to be gained from listening to people and observing how they act in response to changing conditions if we’re to collectively workout how to make these actions last. To do that we need to ask and regularly check in with people at the frontline about whether global adaptive actions are making a positive impact to their lives and what we can do to improve this.
Anything less in my opinion would be wasteful and ineffective. We need bold leadership from the frontline to better link livelihoods and governance for sustainable adaptation to climate change.
This is so true...there is a lot that needs to be done as far as the human development index is concerned clearly one can not think of the future when the tummy is empty... you can only think of filling the tummy!! We need the kind of Governance that will be for the people, voted for by the people,and working with the people there should be equal participation of stakeholders, we need the kind of Governance that will make sure its people have access to basic needs and will not struggle to think of the next meal, or access to education..the Governance that will put in place and monitor policies that support climate change adaptation.....there Is a lot that you are unpacking there!!