Community engagement to resolve climate adaptation conflicts: utilising consensus-building, joint fact-finding strategies and cognitive frames analysis

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with climate adaptation in resource-dependent communities, particularly where potential adaptation strategies incorporate a high degree of uncertainty and potential conflicts. Resource-dependent communities rely upon livestock, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and energy, and include hunters and gatherers who directly utilise the natural environment. Resource-dependent communities are among the most vulnerable of groups having to deal with the cumulative impacts of threats such as climate variability, climate change, commodity market price shocks, disease outbreaks and political insecurity disrupting production systems. This vulnerability extends to both developed countries (e.g. Randall and Ironside 1996) and developing countries (e.g. Thomas and Twyman 2005). The relationship between resource-dependence, vulnerability and poverty is well-established, although the level of vulnerability and poverty may be highly variable depending upon the characteristics of both the communities and the resource (Randall and Ironside 1996; Stedman et al. 2004; Eriksen et al. 2008).