Climate-driven changes in water availability in tropical agricultural systems will force many farmers to significantly alter their cultivation practices. In agricultural systems dominated by ...water-intensive rice cultivation, farmers may need to diversify away from rice to crops that perform better in the new climate. We combine data from interviews and household surveys with Sri Lankan farmers to identify the factors that influence farmers’ decisions to diversify away from rice monoculture. Results indicate that many farmers cannot diversify because of the characteristics of their fields, including elevation, soil quality, irrigation infrastructure, and relative position within an irrigation system. As a result, policies that assume all farmers are able to engage in diversification are unlikely to have the desired impact. Of the farmers whose fields can support diversification, poor market access, market instability, limited government support, and relatively high input costs reduce diversification rates. In addition to creating a supportive institutional environment for the cultivation of other field crops, leveraging existing water management institutions to identify and support farmers with fields suitable to diversification could decrease agricultural water demands and increase water access for farmers unable to engage in diversification.
•Farmers are reluctant to diversify away from rice despite increasing uncertainty in water access.•This reluctance stems from field unsuitability and low institutional support for other field crops.•A supportive institutional environment and targeted diversification in suitable fields support agricultural adaptation.
A growing literature seeks to explore the factors shaping adaptation to climate change. In collectively managed common pool resource systems, there is often a tension between behavior that benefits ...the individual and actions that benefit a larger group. Resource users in sustainable systems must therefore work together to ensure outcomes that are beneficial to the group as a whole. However, in the face of changing social, political, and environmental conditions, community norms may change, leading to the emerging of new behavioral patterns. Understanding when and why people decide to act in ways that benefit the group as a whole can help policy makers better target policies or change incentives to promote desired outcomes. This research seeks to build on research in common pool resource management and multilevel selection to understand how and why collective pressures shape individual adaptation behavior. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews of farmers in Sri Lanka, this study confirms that collective management practices in Sri Lankan irrigation systems significantly influence farmer’s potential adaption behaviors. Based on farmer’s explanations of their own behavior, we hypothesize that farmer’s belief in the ecological necessity of cooperation and explicit government support for collective action are important drivers of collective action. Given the influence of community rules and norms, we conclude that efforts at adaptation are more likely to be successful if they target farmer organizations and communities as a whole rather than individual farmers.
Anticipatory action (AA) is a growing area of climate and disaster risk management that emphasizes the use of climate services and risk analyses to predict where crises might strike and enable action ...to prevent or mitigate impacts before disasters occur. Based on interviews with stakeholders involved in Red Cross Red Crescent (RCRC) AA programs in 18 countries, we identify common benefits and challenges associated with AA programs. We find that RCRC AA programs have built capacity within National Societies, leading to more proactive operations and expedited humanitarian response. Initial investments in AA can also develop key partnerships and facilitate later scaling-up by other organizations. AA can also overcome common challenges in climate services by providing a framework and decision-making and resources for early action. Despite these benefits, AA practitioners struggle with challenges common to climate services, development, and humanitarian aid, including local project ownership, capacity and infrastructure, integration with existing systems, data availability, forecast uncertainty, and monitoring and evaluation. Given these challenges, we reflect on how AA might be able to address challenges of ownership and capacity building and what donors can do to facilitate shifts toward longer-term capacity building.
Humanitarian organizations are increasingly interested in using seasonal forecasts to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of potential disasters before they begin. El Niño teleconnections increase ...the predictability of flooding and drought events in Southern and Eastern Africa, providing humanitarian stakeholders with advanced warning of potential weather events. This study draws on evidence from key-informant interviews with humanitarian organizations and government officials in five African countries (Zambia, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi) to better understand how national, regional, and international humanitarian organizations respond to climate and weather warnings. We find that organizations looked to data from past El Niño events to develop contingency plans and gradually implement response activities but that few organizations attempt to monitor and evaluate their activities or use forecasts to help people capture additional benefits. Although they would like greater specificity and higher forecast skill, humanitarians largely trust international forecasts. Access to intermediaries, contextualized data, and flexible funding, and well-established social protection mechanisms facilitate action. Based on these results we recommend that future efforts focus on developing capacities and complementary, localized, information that will help actors translate the forecasts into action. Future research is also needed to understand whether action leads to desired impacts.
Taking the importance of local action as a starting point, this analysis traces the treatment of participation of local and community actors through the three international frameworks for disaster ...risk reduction (DRR): the Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World, the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR). The study finds a concerning shift away from valuing local community input and toward promoting technological advances. Community actors went from valued partners with their own expertise and relevant beliefs in Yokohama Strategy to “aid recipients” to whom tailored risk information must be transmitted (in SFDRR). This shift may reflect the top-down nature of negotiated international agreements or a broader shift toward investments in technological solutions. Whatever the cause, given widespread recognition of the importance of local knowledge and participation and growing recognition of the importance of intra-community differences in vulnerability, it suggests the need for reconsideration of both the discourse and the practice of involving community-level actors in DRR planning and implementation.
In the face of climate change, development and humanitarian practitioners increasingly recognize the need to anticipate and manage multiple, concurrent risks. One prominent example of this increasing ...focus on anticipation is the rapid growth of Forecast-based Financing (FbF), in particular within Red Cross and Red Crescent (RCRC). To evaluate how anticipatory efforts managed multiple compounding risks during the COVID-19 pandemic, we examine how 14 RCRC Societies adapted their Early Action Protocols to COVID-19. Though many National Societies successfully adapted to the onset of the additional hazard of COVID-19, we find that multi-hazard risk management can be improved by: proactively developing guidelines that enable rapid adaptation of existing plans; more flexible funding mechanisms; surge capacity to provide additional human resources; and increasing local capacity and ownership for implementation to ensure supplies, skills, and decision-making authority are available when communication or travel is restricted. These findings align with wider recommendations for improving development, humanitarian, and climate adaptation practice towards local capacity and agency. They also add urgency to broader calls for more flexible disaster financing and more practitioner-oriented investment in climate risk and multi-hazard management.
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) programs seek to reduce loss of property and lives as the result of extreme events. These programs invest significant resources in collecting context-specific, ...participatory information and developing scientific (forecast) information to help them achieve their goals. This is despite significant evidence that such information does not contribute as easily or as directly to stated DRR goals as is generally assumed. Using the Policy Sciences social and decision process frameworks, this research maps program decision processes that seek to produce and use participatory and climate-related information. I begin by evaluating each program in terms of it stated goals and identifying the primary factors that shape project decision-making, influence the use of information in each program, and shape program outcomes. I conclude that although the two programs seek to produce and use very different kinds of information, they share two fundamental characteristics. First, both programs rely on deficit-model theories of change. Those designing and implementing the programs assume the production and use of information will automatically contribute to better decision-making and hence to desired outcomes. Secondly, these limited understandings of project dynamics allow project stakeholders to neglect the role power, accountability, and the incentives they created in shaping program decision-making and implementation. Although both programs seek to empower users and beneficiaries, they fail to establish monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms that ensure those beneficiaries can influence essential program decisions and outcomes. I conclude that given the structures of accountability common to many development programs, donors will likely have to take responsibility for ensuring downward accountability to the users or beneficiaries they seek to empower. By clarifying the relationship between information and the decision-processes in which its production and use are embedded, this research can help program managers develop and fund more effective programs. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of programs with more detailed, nuanced theories of change and greater attention to incentives and downward accountability.
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) programs seek to reduce loss of property and lives as the result of extreme events. These programs invest significant resources in collecting context-specific, ...participatory information and developing scientific (forecast) information to help them achieve their goals. This is despite significant evidence that such information does not contribute as easily or as directly to stated DRR goals as is generally assumed. Using the Policy Sciences social and decision process frameworks, this research maps program decision processes that seek to produce and use participatory and climate-related information. I begin by evaluating each program in terms of it stated goals and identifying the primary factors that shape project decision-making, influence the use of information in each program, and shape program outcomes. I conclude that although the two programs seek to produce and use very different kinds of information, they share two fundamental characteristics. First, both programs rely on deficit-model theories of change. Those designing and implementing the programs assume the production and use of information will automatically contribute to better decision-making and hence to desired outcomes. Secondly, these limited understandings of project dynamics allow project stakeholders to neglect the role power, accountability, and the incentives they created in shaping program decision-making and implementation. Although both programs seek to empower users and beneficiaries, they fail to establish monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms that ensure those beneficiaries can influence essential program decisions and outcomes. I conclude that given the structures of accountability common to many development programs, donors will likely have to take responsibility for ensuring downward accountability to the users or beneficiaries they seek to empower. By clarifying the relationship between information and the decision-processes in which its production and use are embedded, this research can help program managers develop and fund more effective programs. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of programs with more detailed, nuanced theories of change and greater attention to incentives and downward accountability.
A growing literature seeks to explore the factors shaping adaptation to climate change. In collectively managed common pool resource systems, there is often a tension between behavior that benefits ...the individual and actions that benefit a larger group. Resource users in sustainable systems must therefore work together to ensure outcomes that are beneficial to the group as a whole. However, in the face of changing social, political, and environmental conditions, community norms may change, leading to the emerging of new behavioral patterns. Understanding when and why people decide to act in ways that benefit the group as a whole can help policy makers better target policies or change incentives to promote desired outcomes. This research seeks to build on research in common pool resource management and multilevel selection to understand how and why collective pressures shape individual adaptation behavior. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews of farmers in Sri Lanka, this study confirms that collective management practices in Sri Lankan irrigation systems significantly influence farmer’s potential adaption behaviors. Based on farmer’s explanations of their own behavior, we hypothesize that farmer’s belief in the ecological necessity of cooperation and explicit government support for collective action are important drivers of collective action. Given the influence of community rules and norms, we conclude that efforts at adaptation are more likely to be successful if they target farmer organizations and communities as a whole rather than individual farmers.
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