Presented to the Senate of Canada, Standing Senate Committee

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ADAPTIVE CAPACITY AND SOCIAL COHESION THE NEED
FOR A DYNAMIC APPROACH FOR DEALING WITH CLIMATE
CHANGE
Michael D. Mehta, Ph.D. Associate Professor and
Director Sociology of Biotechnology
Program Department of Sociology University of
Saskatchewan Saskatoon, SK Canada, S7N 5A5 Tel
[phone] Fax [phone] Email
michael.mehta_at_usask.ca Website
www.policynut.com
Presented to the Senate of Canada, Standing
Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, 24
February 2003, Regina, SK.
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Introduction
Although real in its consequences, climate change
is essentially a social phenomenon. As such,
climate change will create winners and losers
by virtue of its direct and indirect impacts on
agriculture, forestry, and other sectors of the
economy. Furthermore, these impacts are likely to
be uneven across regions, time horizons, and
affected individuals. In the context of rural
Canada, climate change is likely to place new,
and magnified, strains on the social fabric.
Consequently, it is necessary to examine the
impacts of climate change on rural communities,
and to assess how climate change affects the
capacity to adapt by disrupting, or altering, the
social cohesiveness of such communities.
Who adapts and to what do they adapt? What
influences the ability of institutions to adapt?
Are there critical thresholds beyond which it is
difficult to adapt? Reference A theory of
adaptive capacity. Tyndall Centre, University of
East Anglia, July 2002.
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Social Determinants of Adaptive Capacity
Adaptive capacity is defined as the ability of a
system, or an individual, to adjust to climatic
variability by minimising the likelihood and
consequences of adverse outcomes. As such,
adaptive capacity is related to risk management.
A hazard is identified, its potential adverse
impacts are assessed, and measures are taken to
reduce the risk. This model of adaptive capacity
builds upon a well-known mathematical definition
of risk.
To reduce risk, safeguards can be adopted to
decrease the probability of an adverse event from
occurring and/or to reduce the impacts associated
with exposure. As such, adaptive capacity is the
ability to access and use safeguards to reduce
risk. A failure to adapt, under certain climatic
conditions, increases risk by making individuals,
and communities, more vulnerable.
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Adaptive capacity is also a function of several
social, behavioural and institutional variables
that have interaction effects.
Clearly, adaptive capacity falls along a
continuum. Assessing degree of trust, wealth,
risk, social characteristics and time horizon can
indicate how much adaptive capacity actors
possess to buffer, and to a certain extent
prosper, under conditions of climate change. In
general, some degree of awareness is required in
order to mobilise this capacity. Actors with high
adaptive capacity and low awareness are likely to
squander, or misuse, this capacity. Conversely,
actors with low adaptive capacity and high
awareness are likely to be under significant
levels of stress due to their inability to effect
positive change.
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Theoretically, a comparison of actors with high
adaptive capacity to those with low adaptive
capacity yields the following observations.

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Although adaptive capacity varies across actors,
it is incorrect to assume that some actors
possess enough capacity to buffer anything
climate change can throw in their direction.
Adaptive capacity is a dynamic property that
actors possess. As such, actors considered
well-adapted under certain conditions, may in a
relative sense become less well-adapted when
these conditions change. Dynamic adaptive
capacity (DAC) can be defined as the capacity of
actors to acknowledge and respond to climatic
variability in a socially responsible,
environmentally sustainable, and flexible
fashion. The promotion of DAC places an
emphasis on maximising the public good. Since
climate change is a product of collective action,
it only makes sense to place adaptive capacity
within a broader social framework. Actors who
build and deploy measures that improve their own
ability to buffer climatic variability must
recognise that some measures may diminish the
ability of others to adapt. In effect, DAC
becomes a collective planning exercise where
social cohesion can be either built or weakened
by particular kinds of decisions taken.

Responding to climate change will require a
significant shift in our base of economic
activity, and changes in how we understand
concepts like progress, economic growth and
environmental sustainability.
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What is Social Cohesion?
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There is little agreement on how to define social
cohesion. This is somewhat startling considering
how widely used this concept is, and how quickly
some claim that social cohesion has declined in
recent years. Jane Jenson suggests that social
cohesion became popular as a topic of discourse
because it illuminates the interconnections
between "economic restructuring, social change
and political action." Furthermore, Jenson notes
that a cohesive society is assumed to be socially
and economically optimal according to a range of
governmental agencies and organisations like the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), and that a decline in
cohesion represents a threat to social order.
Judith Maxwell considers the relationship between
social cohesion and those social conditions that
indicate when a society fails to function
adequately. Maxwell defines social cohesion as
the sharing of values that reduce "...disparities
in wealth and income" while giving people a sense
of community.
Jenson, J. 1998. Mapping Social Cohesion The
State of Canadian Research. Ottawa Canadian
Policy Research Networks. Maxwell, J. 1996.
Social Dimensions of Economic Growth. Eric John
Hanson Memorial Lecture Series, Volume VIII,
University of Alberta.
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• What is the relationship between adaptive
  capacity
• and social cohesion in rural communities?
• Adaptive capacity is a social construct it
  exists only in a relative
• sense, and can be fostered or depleted depending
  on the nature
• of exchange relationships between social actors.
• Adaptive capacity is dynamic such that no one
  actor is perfectly
• adapted to all climatic events. Vulnerability is
  never equal to zero.
• Individual responses to climate change can
  weaken the ability
• of others to adapt, and therefore strain social
  cohesion.
• To reduce this risk, my concept of Dynamic
  Adaptive Capacity
• suggests that adaptation measures need to be
  socially responsible,
• environmentally sustainable and flexible.
• In order to maximise benefit to the public good
  by building
• Dynamic Adaptive Capacity, trust and mechanisms
  for ensuring
• equity are required. A high degree of social
  cohesion is requisite.

• How can efforts at building social cohesion
  improve the
• ability of rural communities to adapt to climate
  change?
• Social cohesion in rural communities reverses
  migration to urban
• areas. This promotes conditions for reinvestment
  in agriculture (a
• necessary condition for adapting to climate
  change).
• Social cohesion exists when equity concerns are
  addressed.
• Laggards should not be rewarded
  disproportionately for adapting.
• Early adapters, and farmers who have sustainable
  practices, should
• not be rewarded differentially. This practice
  creates conditions for
• low social cohesion, and conflict.
• Socially cohesive communities can plan for
  collective adaptation,
• and reduce the number of losers while
  maximising the
• number of winners.

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Conclusion
Traditional conceptions of adaptive capacity are
akin to risk management in several ways. However,
individual measures for building adaptive
capacity have the potential to create conflict,
inequities and overall less collective adaptive
capacity. Adaptive capacity is a social process
with social consequences. To reduce these
undesirable impacts, I propose that the links
between adaptive capacity and social cohesion be
understand more fully. My concept of Dynamic
Adaptive Capacity allows policy-makers and others
an opportunity to evaluate different adaptive
responses in terms of equity, environmental
sustainability, and potential impacts on social
cohesion in rural communities.
Adequate prediction of climate impacts is
further hindered by the fact that these complex
systems will be simultaneously stressed by many
other changes. Reference IPCC, Working Group
II, Second Assessment Report, Summary for
Policymakers Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation
Options, 1995.