Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Often, bridging social capital can help women's groups in an agricultural com-
munity increase human capital by learning skills from other communities that have
adapted successfully or from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that build
individual capacity in the context of the community.
13.2.4 S
oCial
C
apital
Social capital consists of interactions among people and groups for mutual support.
It involves trust, shared norms, reciprocity, and working together. Social capital has
two dimensions: bridging and bonding. Bridging social capital is the linking of local
groups or institutions to resources and external partners with similar goals, while
bonding social capital is the strengthening of internal organization and capacity to
take collective action based on the common backgrounds and experiences of the
individuals or groups involved. In traditional societies, interactions are often deter-
mined by gender and age, which determine what groups are appropriate for which
kinds of people. Often, cultural and political capitals limit both their bonding and
bridging social capital. Capacity is the ability of individuals and organizations or
organizational units to perform functions effectively, efficiently, and sustainably
(United Nations Development Programme 1998).
Women's social capital in many traditional societies is bonding, and there are
barriers to women forming bridging social capital. Increasingly, women use bond-
ing social capital to form women's associations and mothers' clubs. Through these
community groups, they create bridging social capital with technical assistance
providers.
Local bridging and bonding networks are key to community adaptation (Skinner
2011). Since women's networks are frequently informal, they are often ignored when
outsiders come in to facilitate adaptation. Many times, external projects are subject
to elite capture (taken over by those who have most resources), and these elites are
almost always male. Women's groups often create internal mechanisms to protect
the assets they generate in their groups for family use.
13.2.5 p
olitiCal
C
apital
Political capital refers to the codification of community's norms and values into stan-
dards that are supported by rules and regulations that are enforced equally. Policy
incentives can hurt or hinder adaptation to climate change. Very often, insurance
schemes reward producers for doing what they previously have done (as that makes it
easier to determine the value of the loss), rather than encouraging innovative adapta-
tions to changing climatic conditions.
Traditional agricultural communities, particularly women in those communities,
are not able to get larger political entities to recognize their norms and values, par-
ticularly those related to common land use, so they have little ability to influence
the distribution of resources at the family, community, or regional level. Women's
organizations are often not officially recognized. Women's strategic interests regard-
ing access and control of land, pasture, water, and fuel are often not recognized in
