Building adaptive Capacity in the informal settlements of maputo - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 24

These insights indicate that support for adaptive capacity at the community
scale should focus on three interconnected areas (Ensor 2011):
• the power-sharing arrangements that are in place to expand communities'
networks, voice and influence (rows 1 and 2 in Table 2.1 );
• the sources and processes that give rise to the knowledge and information that
inform adaptation decisions (rows 2 and 3); and,
• the availability of experimentation and testing of adaptation options that are
relevant at the local level (row 3).
These three dimensions provide a framework for supporting adaptive
capacity, focusing attention onto important aspects of social systems that are
frequently overlooked in development actions. Attention is directed explicitly
to the processes that can be supported and sustained that in context expand a
community's power sharing, knowledge and information, and experimentation
and testing opportunities. This makes it possible for communities to expand
their capabilities in ways that enable them to engage with the challenges of
climate change in a complex world - rather than achieving a specific governance
arrangement or set of actions. As Figure 2.1 illustrates, the dimensions are linked
and interdependent: the sources and processes that give rise to knowledge and
information feed into power-sharing relationships and emerge as collaborative
actions - experiments and tests - that apply new understandings and produce
learning in the form of new knowledge and information.
Power sharing
Power is significant because of its central role in defining the opportunities
and resources that communities can access, and is thus an essential step in
addressing adaptive capacity. Competing claims and differing understandings
of value are subject to unequal power and representation in social processes,
undermining and excluding the poor while cementing their vulnerability -
including vulnerability to climate impacts (Ribot 2009). Poor and marginalized
communities are most threatened by climate change because of relations
of power, politics and economics. And here, women are often particularly
vulnerable, as in Maputo (Figueiredo & Perkins 2012), the case study in this
chapter. Unequal gendered power relations can mean that adaptation strategies
are pursued because 'they reflect and reinforce gender inequalities, rather than
because they represent the best adaptation choices' (Terry 2009).
The significance for those working to support adaptive capacity lies in
recognizing that 'business as usual' is likely to repeat and reinforce this pattern.
Consideration of the voice and influence (see Figure 2.1 ) of adaptation actors is
critical. As Nelson et al. observe, 'most adaptation does not necessarily reduce
the vulnerability of those most at risk' (2007:411). Adaptations are not politically
neutral: winners and losers are created when benefits are redistributed