Building adaptive Capacity in the informal settlements of maputo - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 19

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building adaptive
CapaCity in the inFormal
settlements oF maputo
Lessons for development from a
resilience perspective
Jonathan Ensor, Emily Boyd, Sirkku Juhola and
Vanesa Castán Broto
introduction
Increasing numbers of development practitioners are turning their attention to
community-based adaptation as a response to the emerging reality and threat of
climate change (Reid et al. 2009; Ensor et al. 2014). At the heart of adaptation
is the need to address future uncertainty and, as a consequence, the role that
adaptive capacity plays in enabling communities to make changes to their
lives and livelihoods. But this understanding presents twin challenges: first,
to develop a clear picture of adaptive capacity, so that the demands placed on
development can be articulated; and second, to find development models and
modes of practice that meet those demands.
The premise of this chapter is that adaptive capacity, while now part of
the development lexicon, has still to be fully explored as to its meaning for
development practice. Here, as elsewhere, the term is assumed to capture
the ability to carry out adaptation measures. These measures may be aimed
at reducing vulnerability to specific weather-related threats or at building the
ability to cope with and recover from unexpected events. The vulnerability
of communities 1 to future climate change therefore depends in part on their
adaptive capacity, through which timely adaptation measures can be adopted.
Development actions on adaptation commonly include some or all of the
following: vulnerability-reducing measures, support for coping or absorbing
capacity, and efforts to build adaptive capacity. At the local level, they are often
directed to place-specific climate impacts and their perceived consequences. In
this chapter, we adopt an explicit contextual understanding of vulnerability, one
which emphasizes a multi-dimensional view on climate-society interactions