What facilitates adaptation? An analysis of community-based adaptation to environmental change in the Andes

Abstract

This study analyses the environmental, socio-economic and institutional factors that influence community-based adaptation strategies in 16 municipalities in the rural Andes of Colombia. The study focuses specifically on the factors that influence whether communities decide to take measures to manage their water and micro-watersheds in response to water scarcity caused by climate variability and land-use changes. The research uses quantitative and qualitative methods incorporating data from surveys to 104 water user associations, precipitation and land-use data, municipal socio-economic information, and semistructured interviews with key informants. The results reveal 1) the links between environmental change and the type of adaptation that communities implement, and 2) how, in face of water scarcity changes, external funding facilitates adaptation. The findings of this study contributes to the common-pool resource and adaptation literatures by highlighting the important role that external actors may have in shaping collective action to adapt to environmental change.

Keywords

• adaptive capacity
• autonomous adaptation
• climate-change
• common pool resources
• commons
• conservation
• deforestation
• disturbance
• governance
• resilience
• resource management
• socio-ecological systems
• sustainable development
• vulnerability