There has been increasing examination of resilience as a concept applicable to climate adaptation. In this paper, resilience is used to explore the layers of responses to past and present climate stress. It examines the factors and circumstances that may hinder or enhance resilience, providing insights into past and present adaptation processes that may be relevant for adaptation to future climate change. Specifically, this paper tests the value of social capital in influencing resilience to climate stress. While there are many examples where social capital influences resilience to climate stress, this paper aims to determine the relative importance of different types of social capital for enhancing resilience, by exploring how relationships of exchange and reciprocity influence responses to climate stress. This study involved case studies of specific communities in the southwest coastal region of Bangladesh. This case study highlights a complex rather than a uniformly positive relationship between social capital and enhancing resilience to climate stress. Specifically, it identifies four types of social capital-based support (with monetary support as a subset) and the interlinkages among the types (and processes) of social capital with diverse effects on resilience. It emphasizes the moral and ethical importance of reconceptualizing resilience with an emphasis on the most vulnerable, as resilience approaches that fail to recognize the differentiated nature of resilience, risk reinforcing vulnerability. Westernized concepts have 2 important benefits, but crucial limitations when applied to the particular conditions, value sets and modes of community working in the south. The uncritical importation of social capital needs to be treated with caution, especially in the context of climate adaptation.

This paper aims to understand how environmental stressors influence people's livelihood options in the coastal belt of Bangladesh. We argue that environmental stressors such as cyclones, riverbank erosion, salinity intrusion, and floods have negative impacts on people's lives by reducing their livelihood options. Twelve in-depth interviews (Livelihood Histories) and twelve Focus Group Discussions (FGD) based on two Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools (Village Timeline and Contextual Change) were carried out in three different sites in coastal Bangladesh were conducted under the study. Our study finds that when there are insufficient adaptation strategies to environmental stressors, many people turn to livelihoods banned by the government. These 'illegal livelihoods' include using fine mesh nets to collect shrimp fry in the rivers as well as logging in the Sundarbans. These people are often the poorestand vulnerable, and law enforcement only exacerbate their vulnerability. We end by concluding those that have turned to 'illegal livelihoods' as a result of detrimental environmental stressors should be viewed as a special category of vulnerable people by policymakers, and steps need to be taken to ensure resilience to different environmental stressors.

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Perceptions of climate change play a critical role in determining the degree to which people are at risk throughout the world. The significance of culture in understanding why people perceive and respond to climate change in particular ways is largely ignored in mainstream climate change adaptation. This paper applies a critical realist approach to examine the sociocultural structures and causal mechanisms for inaction or (in)effective action between at-risk people and the organisations responsible for dealing with climate change. The findings reveal that there are varying context-specific sub-narratives among heterogeneous groups of people at risk and organisations that lead to inaction or (in)effective action in response to climate change, often independent of risk perceptions and with unforeseen consequences for the vulnerabilities of at-risk people. Specifically, sub-narratives may create parallel and/or conflicting climate-related perceptions and respective responses, legitimise unequal resource distribution, and justify the suppression and/or capitalisation of sub-cultural and/or individual risk perceptions.

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