Gendered Experiences of Adaptation to Drought: Patterns of Change in El Sauce, Nicaragua

The changes men and women in a rural community in Nicaragua say they have implemented over the past decades differ in ways that relate to their vulnerability to drought. Short-term coping was more common among the women, especially the female heads of households, while adaptive actions were more common among the men. The Community Capitals Framework offers a tool to understand the differences. A gendered culture meant that the division of other types of capital (natural, human, social, financial, built, cultural, and political) as well as the division of labor in the case study area were also highly gendered. These gendered inequalities in access to and control over different forms of capital has led to a gender-differentiated capacity to respond to climate change, men being able to adapt and women experiencing a downward spiral in capacity and increasing vulnerability to drought. Resumen Los cambios que hombres y mujeres en una comunidad rural en Nicaragua dicen que implementaron en las últimas décadas difieren en aspectos relacionados con su vulnerabilidad a sequía. Medidas para hacer frente en el corto plazo fueron más comunes entre las mujeres, mientras medidas de adaptación fueron más comunes entre los hombres. El Marco de Capitales de la Comunidad es una herramienta útil para entender esas diferencias. La persistencia de una fuerte cultura patriarcal implica una división desigual del trabajo y de acceso a y control de capitales marcadas por el género. Estas desigualdades generaron una capacidad diferenciada por género para responder al cambio climático, resultando en hombres siendo capaces de adaptarse y mujeres experimentando una espiral descendente en la capacidad y un aumento de vulnerabilidad a sequía

Women’s vulnerability to climate-related risks to household water security in Centre-East, Burkina Faso

Variable climate conditions, resulting in periods of water scarcity and longer dry spells, or intense rainfall events, have serious implications for water and sanitation services. Climate change threatens to exacerbate these hazards, increasing risks to household water security, and associated impacts on health, wellbeing and livelihoods. These risks are not evenly distributed across individuals and communities, and there is a particular need to understand women’s vulnerabilities and responses to these risks due to disproportionate impacts of poor water and sanitation conditions. This study used mixed-methods data collection to assess how vulnerabilities to climate-related risks to household water security are produced and vary among women in the Centre-East region, Burkina Faso, as well as capacities to respond. Gendered water-related roles and norms were found to drive vulnerabilities for women in the case study site particularly related to increasingly inadequate water availability during the dry season. Other social differences such as Mossi and Peul ethnicity which influence ways of using water, also contributed to women’s differential vulnerability and capacities to respond. These findings show there is a need to consider how the development of ‘climate resilient’ water and sanitation services take social drivers of vulnerability into account

Understanding variation in national climate change adaptation: securitization in focus

Climate change is recognized today not just as a pressing and prominent issue on government agendas but also one that has been increasingly ‘securitized’ in a variety of national and global settings. We know little, however, if climate change adaptation, as a subset of climate action, has followed a similarly securitized path. This article addresses that question, exploring not only if climate change adaptation has been securitized but also what type of securitization – threat-oriented or risk-oriented – has emerged. Turning our empirical focus to three national settings of Norway, Sweden, and The Netherlands, we look for signs of securitization as well as whether securitization has been facilitated, shaped, or even blocked by existing governance features in each setting. We use this study to link the securitization literature with environmental governance approaches by building a novel analytical framework. Our findings show some intriguing and unexpected patterns, including evidence of risk-oriented securitization couched nevertheless as ‘business as usual’. We contribute to the growing debate on securitization in environmental governance while also casting new light on national climate change adaptation processes.publishedVersio

Vulnerability and vulnerable groups from an intersectionality perspective

In general, the identification and protection of vulnerable groups in the case of hazards or when a crisis unfolds is an issue that any crisis and disaster risk management should address, since people have different levels of exposure to hazards and crises. In this article, we promote the application of the intersectionality perspective in the study of vulnerable groups, and we call for intersectionality as a guiding principle in risk and crisis management, to provide a better and more nuanced picture of vulnerabilities and vulnerable groups. This can help national and local authorities and agencies to formulate specific guides, to hire staff with the skills necessary to meet particular needs, and to inform vulnerable groups in a particular way, taking into account the differences that may coexist within the same group. Intersectionality allows us to read vulnerability not as the characteristic of some socio-demographic groups. It is rather the result of different and interdependent societal stratification processes that result in multiple dimensions of marginalisation. In this vein, we argue that research should focus on 1) self-perceived vulnerability of individuals and an intersectionality approach to unpack vulnerable groups; 2) cases of crises according to the level and/or likelihood of individual exposure to hazards, to better nuance issues of vulnerability.publishedVersio

Division of Capitals - What Role Does It Play for Gender-Differentiated

This article explores the gender differentiation of vulnerability to the drought situation within a rural community in the dry zone of Nicaragua. Case study work demonstrates that women and men use different strategies to cope with drought in the short term, and to adapt to the recurring El Niño induced events in the longer term. These strategies combined constitute the livelihoods of the rural poor in the dry zone of Nicaragua—livelihoods that change at times of drought to reduce its impacts. The article uses the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) to look at what resources women and men in the case study area have lost and to analyze what capitals are most central for the coping and adaptation capacity. A gender perspective is applied to see what difference in access to capitals between men and women exist and what that means in terms of gender-differentiated vulnerability to drought.</p

Culture and Capacity : Drought and Gender Differentiated Vulnerability of Rural Poor in Nicaragua, 1970-2010

This dissertation interprets gender-differentiated vulnerability to drought within a rural community located in the dry zone, la zona seca, of Nicaragua, a region that has been identified by the government and NGO sector as suffering from prolonged and, since the 1970s, more frequent droughts.  A combination of gender, capitals, and vulnerability demonstrates the value in using a multidimensional perspective to look at the socioeconomic and cultural contexts that form the capacity individuals have had to reduce their long-term vulnerability to drought in Nicaragua.  Due to the place-based characteristics of gender as well as vulnerability the analysis is mainly based on people’s stories about the history of their lives.  Based on these stories a local level picture is created of the households’ situation over time, how their work strategies and management of resources have varied, and how they perceived changes in capacity and vulnerability in relation to continuity and change in the climate.  The issue of adaptive capacity, which currently is less covered in research on gender and vulnerability and recognized in the literature as in need of more attention, and how it distinguishes itself from coping capacity in relation to vulnerability, is placed at the center of analysis.  In an additional analysis of how Nicaragua’s hazard management policies look upon the role and importance of interaction among societal levels and actors in reducing hazard vulnerability I show how the discourse has moved from emergency response to risk management with an increased emphasis on capacity building.  However, the recognition to differentiated vulnerability is lacking which risks hampering a successful vulnerability reduction.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Accepted. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p

Interactions in hazard management policies: the case of drought in Nicaragua, 1976-2010

The literature on adaptive and multi-level governance calls for interactive hazard management to increase societies’ resilience. This paper maps the hazard management policies in a poor and hazard-prone country—Nicaragua—and examines what role the government gives to interactions among different actors at different societal levels. A new analytical framework is developed that includes scope and direction to capture unidirectional or mutual interactions that are either horizontal or vertical. This enables a more complex analysis of interactions than that found in previous research. The review shows that the historical change in the role given to interactions, as a result of a focus on short-term emergency response being complemented by long-term risk management, mainly lies in how they are characterised—with more participants and other types of content categories—and the awareness that interactions other than mutual ones can be positive. This illustrates the complexity of the issue of interactions.</p