Localizing Climate Change Adaptation: A Framework For Conceptualizing Community Resilience

Abstract

Expert-driven, top-down frameworks have dominated the climate change adaptation discourse and emphasized technological, economic, infrastructural, and singlesector (e.g. agriculture, water, health) strategies for responding to the impacts of climate change. However, human adaptation to climate change is also considered to be a process rooted in local contexts and involving diverse socio-cultural forms. The objective of this research project was to construct a resilience framework for climate change adaptation at the community level. An inter-disciplinary literature review on social dimensions and conceptualizations of community resilience was conducted. Qualitative perspectives were also gathered through eight interviews of individuals with relevant academic expertise or community voices that represent local, place-based environmental efforts. Findings from the literature review and emergent themes from the interview were checked against one another, then synthesized to build a framework describing community resilience processes. Community resilience was conceptualized as a process rooted in a local value context that draws upon six different types of socially embedded adaptive resources, thereby supporting a community through change.