Building adaptive Capacity in the informal settlements of maputo - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 22

focused more on meeting immediate-term challenges - such as through the
provision of technologies to enhance food or water security in the face of
existing climate variability - than the reality of on-going climate change (Ensor
and Berger 2009). While the academic literature has discussed adaptive capacity
for some time now (Smit and Wandel 2006; Engle and Lemos 2010; Eakin et al.
2011; Engle 2011; Gupta et al. 2011; Juhola & Kruse 2013), it is only recently
that publications from major development organizations have recognized
addressing adaptive capacity as a component of their adaptation actions. As a
result, there remains a shortage of development experiences that explore the
meaning of adaptive capacity (Mitchell and Tanner 2006; Nelson et al. 2007),
and definitions vary considerably (CARE 2010; CCCD 2010; Pettengell 2010;
Ludi et al. 2012). Meanwhile, for many development actors, adaptation remains
based on notions of 'good' development - which reinforce existing development
paradigms and fail to engage with what is new and different about climate
change (Ireland 2012).
Adaptive capacity can be supported by the opportunities that emerge from
small-scale experiments with livelihood practices that, if adopted at the local
scale, can increase resilience, shifting communities away from thresholds. Yet
adaptive capacity is also shaped by the social and political context. The formal
and informal institutions that intersect with local communities play a key role in
mediating interests across scales, shaping the opportunities and constraints for
local-level changes (Agrawal 2010; Eakin and Lemos 2010; Gupta et al. 2010).
In poor or marginalized communities where the continuity (and resilience) of
inequitable or unsustainable resource access and distribution arrangements is
undesirable, the capacity to influence and create change at the higher scale can
be critical. Creating the conditions for effective participation that disaggregates
communities, providing opportunities for the range of local understandings,
needs and values to gain traction in the bureaucracies at higher scales, is thus a
key challenge for local adaptive capacity.
Conversely, it has been shown that informing people that the risks of climate-
change impacts are increasing is not enough to engage the local population to
act (Patt and Schröter 2008): climate-change risks and adaptations need to be
made meaningful in context. As such, the dissemination and bridging of both
scientific and local knowledge through multi-scalar institutions is a key process
in building adaptive capacity for climate change. As noted by Pelling (2010:3),
adaptation can also be 'an opportunity for social reform, for questioning the values
that drive inequalities in development and our unsustainable relationship with the
environment'. For adaptive capacity, such reform needs to include opportunities
for communities to engage with others in learning cycles, so that they can test and
revise alternative ways of living in the face of emerging environmental change
(Collins and Ison 2009; Tschakert and Dietrich 2010). Adaptive governance is
one model for adaptation planning in which multiple actors come together to
identify the interests, values and uncertainties at different scales, and to learn from
activities that are collectively defined and reflected upon (Folke et al. 2005). In this