Community Capitals as Community Resilience to Climate Change: Conceptual Connections

Abstract

In the last few decades, disaster risk reduction programs and climate initiatives across the globe have focused largely on the intimate connections between vulnerability, recovery, adaptation, and coping mechanisms. Recent focus, however, is increasingly paid to community resilience. Community, placed at the intersection between the household and national levels of social organization, is crucial in addressing economic, social, or environmental disturbances disrupting human security. Resilience measures a community’s capability of bouncing back—restoring the original pre-disaster state, as well as bouncing forward—the capacity to cope with emerging post-disaster situations and changes. Both the ‘bouncing back’ and ‘moving forward’ properties of a community are shaped and reshaped by internal and external shocks such as climate threats, the community’s resilience dimensions, and the intensity of economic, social, and other community capitals. This article reviews (1) the concept of resilience in relation to climate change and vulnerability; and (2) emerging perspectives on community-level impacts of climate change, resilience dimensions, and community capitals. It argues that overall resilience of a place-based community is located at the intersection of the community’s resilience dimensions, community capitals, and the level of climate disruptions.

Resilience of an Earthquake-Stricken Rural Community in Southwest China: Correlation with Disaster Risk Reduction Efforts

“…This might be partly because participants with higher income were more likely to participant in resilience-building activities [52]. The economic well-being of a community has already been widely recognized as a core component of community resilience [17,53,54]. Zhu [55] argued that the extent to which a community could endure the impact of or recover from a disaster largely relied on its economic condition, such as economic capital, income security, and multiple income structures.…”

“…Resilience can be considered at different levels including individual, family, community, state or ecological system [1,15]. DRR programs have paid growing attention especially to community resilience across the world because communities are widely recognized as the first social units to be affected and to respond when a disaster strikes [16,17,18,19]. In the United States, for example, community resilience has become a fundamental feature of homeland security and disaster management policy and planning, and has been placed as a critical component of public health, the practice of which requires close collaboration among different sectors and groups, and their partnerships with communities [20,21,22].…”

“…Researchers and practitioners are still being challenged to deal with the resilience of a community at the conceptual level (i.e., defining and identifying resilient actions), the operational level (i.e., modeling the resilient behavior of communities in a framework), and the empirical level (i.e., collecting and analyzing data on community resilience) [17]. Thus, this study contributes to the understanding of community resilience in the Chinese context using recently collected empirical data.…”

Climate change: health effects and response in South Asia

“…35 In recent years, increasing attention has been given to building community resilience to respond to these problems. 24 Considering the geographical, cultural, …”

“…Its communities have dealt with climatic variability for centuries, and indigenous local knowledge and practices are time tested and align with local needs and priorities. 24 The people have developed ways to adapt their everyday lives to be flood resilient through practices such as cage culture for fish farming, "floating gardens" for vegetable cultivation, disaster resilient shelters, and "floating classes" for children affected by floods.…”