دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی استراتژی های سازگاری با شرایط در فیجی: ارزش های اجتماعی و فرهنگی - الزویر 2018

abstract

The Fiji Islands in the South Pacific are highly exposed to climate-induced hazards and have experienced several flood and cyclone events in recent years. Drawing on a series of field studies in the lower Ba River Catchment on Fiji’s main island Viti Levu, the objective of this paper is to determine how climate adaptation strategies – employed by indigenous Fijian communities and households – are influenced by socio-cultural values and access to resources, information and power. Our multi-method approach has been conceptually informed by Agrawal and Perrin’s (2008) climate adaptation framework and included semi-structured interviews at the household level, and participatory hazard mapping with diverse focus groups at the community level. Our study finds that due to diverse value-based assessments of livelihood opportunities and climate-related risks, communal and household adaptive strategies can differ widely, even in a very localized cultural context. We also show how decisions to relocate from ‘risky environments’ are influenced by a combination of local power relations, attachment to cultural and social space, and the provision of external assistance. Our findings comment on the need for disaster risk reduction strategies to recognize how different groups and households respond to climate-related events in distinct socially determined ways.

Conclusion

Our analysis of highly situated climate adaptation strategies suggests that institutional attempts to link adaptation to disaster risk reduction must recognize how adaptation occurs relative to place. This calls for strategic approaches to adaptive planning that acknowledge diverse subjectivities, complex ideas of acceptable risk, and nuanced approaches to change. The attempt to integrate highly complex adaptation strategies into standardized disaster risk reduction frameworks requires a consideration of ‘‘who is driving the frameworks” (Nalau et al., 2016: 9) and to what extent these frameworks can accommodate diverse values, traditions and social structures. While climate change adaptation may lead to positive overall change for some, such as improved housing and community infrastructures, the disaster itself and the processes which produce it should never be legitimized by the ability of people to ‘successfully adapt’ (de Shalit, 2011). To do so would be to treat an adaptive preference—actions undertaken in the context of limited choice— as a fully autonomous decision. While we recognize the autonomy involved in adaptive decisions, we should also bear in mind the way in which these decisions are shaped by limitations on the choices available. Through a focus on specific adaptive strategies undertaken in three communities within the same district of Fiji, this study has attempted to understand adaptation within a highly localized cultural context and to examine how these adaptive practices have contributed to the building of long-term community risk reduction. This has demonstrated the likely challenges of rolling out adaptation programs across diverse contexts and hence the need for external actors to recognize the diversity of adaptation strategies used by local actors. Expanding the breadth of what counts as an adaptive strategy can help policy makers to recognize the importance of engaging with diverse local practices rather than attempting to shape practice according to a standardized metric of disaster risk reduction and adaptation. This is particularly important in Fiji’s current policy discourse around relocating hundreds of communities from ‘at-risk’ locations to ‘safer’ spaces.