Environmental Engineering Reference
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plans and measures. Successful adaptation, both reactive and proactive, is reliant on
the capacity to adapt, which becomes especially important to understand (along
with associated governance and institutional frameworks that help or hinder its
development) under increasingly uncertain conditions, where prior experiences may
no longer be as indicative of the future.
Adaptive capacity is defined as the capacity of actors (collectively or individually),
to respond to, create, and shape variability and change in the state of the system
(Adger et al. 2005 ; Chapin et al. 2009 ; Walker et al. 2004 ). It can be characterised
as the preconditions needed to enable adaptation, both proactive and reactive,
including social and physical elements, and the ability to mobilise these elements
(Nelson et al. 2007 ). It has also been described as relating to the 'ability to mobilise
(scarce) resources to anticipate or respond to perceived or current stresses' (Engle
2010 , p 33).
Adaptive capacity is also closely related to concepts of robustness, adaptability,
flexibility, resilience, and coping ability (Smit and Wandel 2006 ) . Rather than use
the concept of adaptive capacity interchangeably with these concepts, it is clearer to
characterise it as contributing to these aspects of a system, i.e. the presence of adap-
tive capacity leads to a better ability to cope with climate risks. In this regard, a
system's coping range is seen as a feature of adaptive capacity. Yohe and Tol ( 2002 )
elucidate the ability for adaptation to expand the coping range of a community,
region or country. Some authors use the term coping capacity to refer to a system's
ability to just deal with or survive environmental and climate shocks (some also
refer to this form of short term coping as adaptability 3 ), while adaptive capacity
represents the ability to develop longer term or more sustainable adjustments to
changes (Bohle 1993 in Smit and Wandel 2006 ; Vogel 1998 ) .
In the preceding decade, adaptive capacity has become significantly more main-
stream a concept for those researchers who focus on the stresses and potential
impacts from climate change and other sources of physical or external stresses
(Yohe and Tol 2002 , p 25). Through the adaptation and vulnerability literature it
was termed as a function of a number of factors including; economic and physical
resources; access to technology, information and skills; infrastructure; and institu-
tions (Smit et al. 2000 ; Yohe and Tol 2002 ) and it was posited that by fostering or
contributing to the presence of these factors in communities, adaptive capacity
would be fostered, reducing vulnerability.
Of the different pillars of adaptive capacity, the institutional and governance
pillar has received wide recognition as an important mechanism. Governance and
institutional components include the law, policies, rights, formal & informal insti-
tutions, public policy, and have all been shown to be key for building adaptive
capacity and resilience at local, regional and national levels (Adger et al. 2005 ;
Agrawal 2008 ; Brooks et al. 2005 ; Engle and Lemos 2010 ; Gupta et al. 2010 ;
Nelson et al. 2007 ; Smit et al. 2000 ; Yohe and Tol 2002 ) . More recently, more
nuanced evidence has been presented from the resilience community, suggesting
that in the process of developing adaptive capacity in instituional contexts, flexible
3 See Watts and Bohle (1993) and Vogel ( 1998 ) .
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