This article, based on fieldwork in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Kenya, provides an overview of different types of climate change adaptation interventions that are currently being implemented to enhance local community’s adaptive capacity and resilience. We show that CBA interventions, whilst measurably successful from the interventionist perspective, are often structured to cause new scarcities, competing claims and ultimately, various forms and intensities of conflict. We conclude that, instead of targeting “communities” or other groups of “beneficiaries”, the inter-connectedness of multiple (and at times competing) social groups (men and women, the elderly and youth, hunters, loggers, pastoralists and sedentary crop farmers etc.) in relation to the use and distribution of natural resources should be the point of departure for strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity.
Climate change is today regarded as a fundamental development issue. This is especially true in the world’s most marginal areas, where even incremental climatic changes may threaten large numbers of peoples whose livelihoods are highly exposed to both sudden-onset climate shocks, such as droughts and floods, as well as slow onset changes, such as increasing temperatures and/or changes in annual precipitation patterns [
In this article, based on in-depth field research in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Kenya2, we focus on three case studies of CBA interventions in semi-arid and sub-humid belts in Africa (dry-season farming in northern Ghana, small-scale irrigation in southern Kenya and agro-forestry in western Burkina Faso), focusing on how these solutions to adaptation deficits are also a new source of exclusion and conflict. In analysing CBA interventions, we use social capital as a lens through which to understand the impact of CBA on changing social relations within and between communities.
The article proceeds with a theoretical overview, followed by three case studies of CBA interventions implemented in semi-arid and sub-humid regions in Africa. After the discussion, we conclude by exploring ways forward in making climate adaptation interventions less conflictive and more inclusive, focussing upon adapting current thinking around employing social dynamics of landscapes as points of departure for future adaptation programming.
In the context of climate policies, there is currently an increase of new programmes and projects which aim to help local communities to become less vulnerable and deal better with the adverse consequences of climate change. Focusing on the large numbers of interventions being carried out since the early 2000s, it is striking that (even though being hitherto embedded in top-down structures and discourses), there is today “a rush by climate change practitioners to be involved in Community-Based Adaptation” [
CBAs serve as a continuation of earlier community-based development trajectories [
Strengthening social capital is therefore a primary ambition of CBA interventions. Despite the positivity attributed to social capital as a panacea to many developmental gaps, literature on social capital increasingly problematizes it, with several authors noting that social capital may have “perverse”3 affects [
Whilst empirically, the distinction between bonding and bridging social capital may be difficult to meaningfully distinguish, it is safe to say that development actors implementing project-based, CBA interventions in semi-arid and sub-humid regions in Africa focus largely on bonding social capital [
Despite bridging social capital receiving little attention as a construct for adaptation practice, it is important to better understand how these are mutually linked. Building on previous work by Narayan and Woolcock4 [
Our model
toring committees, facilitating (climate) information distribution structures and perhaps, participatory structures of inclusive management of new technologies, such as water pumps and irrigation systems, and ensuring access to certified seeds. Targeted communities (or “beneficiaries”) are helped to benefit from a series of advantages in using natural resources (land, rivers, other water bodies, such as dugouts or dams, crop residues etc.), which they may well share with neighbouring communities and/or other social groups, such as hunters, foragers, pastoralists etc. If the CBA is successful, bonding social capital is further strengthened, and the quality of governance is improved. In this article, we explore the implications of different types of CBA interventions for bonding capital (e.g., shift to increased internal cohesion, benefit sharing within the group), while analysing the direct and indirect effects for external relations, and more particularly, the availability and functioning of bridging social capital. Focusing on three case studies of CBA interventions which are aimed at strengthening “bonding capital”, what are the implications for the adaptive capacity (inclusion, exclusion) and resilience of non-target-groups? How to prevent that developments go in the wrong direction (P3, instead of P2)?
In dryland regions of sub-Saharan Africa, scarcity and unpredictable environmental and ecologically conditions, including extreme weather, have had a profound effect on shaping local livelihood patterns and portfolios [
Despite this complexity, CBAs in dryland regions in Africa ordinarily employ singular perspectives, linking single natural resources to single livelihoods/com- munities/gender/ethnicity etc. This mode of operation represents efforts to make complex realities more legible in order to arrive at outcomes related to streng- thening adaptive capacity, but also, for instance, for purposes of measuring, monitoring and evaluation, a requirement whose importance should not be understated. Furthermore, in conducting research for this article, it is clear that in some cases, CBA interventions do recognise that one natural resource may be used by more than one livelihood. By and large, however, instead of focussing on the inter-relational and benefit-sharing dynamics of different livelihoods around, or competing uses of, the natural resources which are to be manipulated (made more effective, efficient or used more intensively in a sustainable manner), CBA interventions tend to treat those livelihoods as separate, or otherwise unconnected and the problem of singularity largely persists.
With this in mind, we present three case studies, each based on in-depth field work and data collection carried out between 2014 and 2016.
The first case study is an adaptation intervention in northern Ghana which sought to strengthen the adaptive capacity of a single livelihood, dedicating a natural resource (a stretch of low-lying, largely unfarmed land) to one livelihood (dry-season watermelon farming), with no regard for competing claims over land emanating from other livelihoods, notably pastoralism, equally dependent upon that same tract of land for pasture and water. The second case study, from southern Kenya, focusses upon an adaptation intervention which acknowledges the existence of two user groups of a new developed water infrastructure (farming and pastoralism), but makes no effort to strengthen the interconnectedness of those livelihoods, socially, economically, ecologically or indeed, in terms of governance structures. The third case focuses upon a forestry intervention in Burkina Faso. Whilst a committee has been established to manage forest resources in a participatory way (recognising a plethora of forest resource users), the loggers association dominates decision-making, and largely dictates how forest resources are used at the expense of both local fishermen, as well as pastoral communities, who have different (competing) definitions of “sustainable forest management”. We discuss each of the case studies in terms of reformulations of social capital and the potential for new dynamics of conflict.
Methodology and Selection of CasesThe cases were selected based on a number of criteria. Each of the cases selected was required to be located in African drylands. African drylands only pose a series of unique climate change challenges (climate change “hot spots”). African drylands are also the focus of increasingly large sums of financing earmarked of strengthening the adaptive capacity and resilience of vulnerable groups. Each case quite obviously had to focus upon a defined adaptation intervention. Prior to the selection of cases, analyses of emerging adaptation regimes in Burkina Faso, (northern) Ghana and (southern) Kenya were conducted to identify adaptation the major contours and foci of adaption discourse and practice in each of the sub-regions. In Burkina Faso, reforestation as a means of combatting desertification was identified as a dominant adaptation discourse and practice; in northern Ghana, dry-season farming has been identified as a way of reducing exposure to rainfall variability (since it depends on irrigation, rather than directly in rainfall), as well as a means for diversifying income (and livelihoods); in (southern) Kenya, building irrigation and pastoral infrastructure in the form of water sources, has emerged as an important adaptation rhetoric in the context of pastoral sedentarisation and group ranches.
Having identified comparable case studies, we set out a cross-case methodology for the purposes of comparability, focussed on a combination of ethnographic methods (in depth interviews, participant observation and Focussed Group Discussions (FDGs), coupled with an extensive survey (N > 100 in each of the cases). We developed the survey around social capital, seeking to understand how different adaptation interventions implemented in African drylands changed relations within and/or between communities (target beneficiaries vs non-beneficiaries). We built the survey around indicators for the central tenants of social capital i.e. levels of trust, reciprocity, collective action, association, flows of information and communication, social cohesion and inclusion and empowerment and political action. We used previously developed surveys by Grootaert et al. loosely as a point of departure for developing our own survey [
Finally, in each case study, Focus Group Discussion (FDG) were held with relevant groups. In most instances, beneficiaries were isolated from non-benefi- ciaries, in separate FDGs, although in some instances FGDs were held containing both groups. The combination of in depth interviews with key informants, FGDs, participant observation and an extensive survey, enabled both a certain level of depth in research findings, as well as a level of confidence for generalising findings regarding the impact of adaption interventions on inter-and intra- community relations to a broader level.
Case study 1: The commercialisation of dry-season watermelon farming in northern Ghana: One natural resource, one user group
In 2010, a prominent International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO) implemented an adaptation intervention in number of communities in northern Ghana. The project sought to strengthen the local adaptive capacity of targeted communities. Whilst the Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) project was designed to be highly participatory, and thus have different foci and emphasis in each of the communities, the basic premise across the communities was to facilitate the establishment of a community-based micro-finance system which was to help people to diversify income and become less dependent on rain-fed farming. This coupled with access to new climate information (daily, as well as seasonal forecasts) was to ensure that people were equipped to make informed decisions (and actions) manage uncertain climate changes. Group members who made regular payments into the facility were, subject to various conditions stipulated in group constitutions, able to take loans from the facility. This would provide a reliable source of financing for group members, allowing them to timeously buy inputs for farming, pay school fees and medical insurance, buy food during the lean season, and a number of other drivers of adaptive capacity and resilience.
One of the target communities was Farfar, a rural, Bimoba5 community 15 kilometres south of the town of Garu, the capital of the Garu-Tempane district in Ghana’s Upper East Region (UER). In Farfar, access to finance through the community based micro-finance facility was coupled with a drive to commercialise dry-season watermelon farming on a low lying tract of land located at the base of the Gambaga escarpment, 7 kilometres south of the community centre. This commercialisation had been indicated as a high priority in the Community Adaptation Action Plan (CAAP), which was created with a heavy emphasis on participation at the start of the project. This type of prioritisation is fundamental to Community-Based Adaptation (CBA), since CBA is premised on the assumption that environmental knowledge, vulnerability and resilience to climate impacts are embedded in societies and cultures, and suggests therefore that the focus of adaptation interventions needs to be on empowering and supporting communities to take action based on their own decision-making processes [
From the project’s point of view, the impacts upon the target community, Farfar’s watermelon farmers, have clearly been very positive, with obvious signs that community members are not only wealthier (increase in the asset base), but are also using proceeds from dry-season watermelon farming to increasingly diversify livelihoods into, for instance, small-scale transportation (diversification). Zooming out, however, it is becomes visible that the sudden uptake of lucrative dry-season watermelon farming, created through the implementation of new community structures and other asses of the CBA, has also resulted in increasing conflicts between the watermelon farmers and nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralists. These pastoralists belong largely to the Fulani ethnicity (in contrast to the farmers, who, as noted, are Bimoba), a largely Muslim ethnic group specialised in pastoralism, and spread across West and Central Africa. In West Africa, they customarily move large herds of cattle southwards from the Sahelian regions in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, into Ghana (and other coastal countries), in search of greener pastures and water during the dry-season, when the Sahel itself can no longer sustain their cattle. The “bush” which today has made way for commercial watermelon farming, provided in the past, refuge, and excellent pasture, being also situated adjacent to an otherwise fairly inaccessible stretch of perennial river. Whilst Farmer-Fulani conflicts are not at all new, they are new in terms of this tract of land, and according to both farmers and Fulani, such conflicts are increasing, both in frequency and intensity. Quarrels between farmers and Fulani are especially frequent during the dry-season, between November and April, when cattle are prone to destroying watermelon harvests in search of pasture and water, sometimes spilling over into violent confrontations. Some years are worse than others, depending on the number of Fulani who come to the area, but farmers interviewed for this study noted with unanimity that clashes with Fulani were on the increase. Increasingly farmers carry arms to their farms and sleep on their farms, since Fulani often move their cattle during the cooler nights. When asked what farmers saw as the major threat to watermelon farming, many noted “Fulani” [
Clearly, relations between farmers is strengthened through sharing of resources (such as water pumps and generators), sharing of knowledge and information, such as appropriate seed varieties and farming practices, as well through arrangements for communal labour during the harvesting of watermelon (they are difficult to carry, and the loading bays may be several hundred metres away). In other words, bonding social has been infinitely strengthened, as too has the adaptive capacity of watermelon farmers, as well as Farfar as a whole. Simultaneously, relations with Fulani pastoralists have broken down. The risk of conflict is notably higher than prior to the sudden uptake of dry-season watermelon farming, and there are no apparent efforts to reconcile pastoral and farming livelihoods. The strategy of farmers (encouraged also by the rhetoric of the local assemblymen) is to “sack Fulani from the area”.
Case study 2: Introducing irrigation in pastoral landscapes in Narok county, Kenya: One natural resource, two user groups.
Maji Moto is a Maasai group ranch, located 42km south-west of Narok, the county capital of Narok County, which lies to the south-west of Nairobi. Maji Moto is home to around 11,000 people, the overwhelming majority of whom continue to depend upon pastoral livelihoods systems for survival. The group ranch is a product of the by-now well-documented push by both colonial and post-colonial regimes to semi-sendentarize Maasai pastoralists in order to modernise the agricultural sector, better integrate Maasai livelihoods into the national economy, enable access by otherwise nomadic Maasai to services such as health care and education and preserve land for commercialised wildlife conservation [
From the 1990s, the privatisation or individualisation of land became increasingly formalised, and gathered momentum. This process (the privatisation or individualisation of previously common-pooled land within group ranches in Kenya) has largely been attributed to bottom-up forces seeking to protect land against large-scale acquisition by outsiders [
Unlike the case of dry-season watermelon farming in Ghana, the dam at Mokondani in the Maji Moto group ranch sought to cater for two livelihoods, recognising that water was required both by those fortunate enough to have obtained land close to the dams and therefore able to use irrigation for farming as well as by pastoralists, the backbone of traditional Maasai livelihoods, who required a reliable source of drinking water for their herds, especially after the formation of the group ranch had limited the potential for mobile solutions to water shortages. The dams reconstructed after 2006, in the context of other changes to the distribution of natural resources i.e. privatisation of land, have fundamentally altered relations between farming and pastoral livelihoods around natural resource use [
Case study 3: Community forest management in Burkina Faso’s Tiogo forest reserve: One natural resource, multiple user groups.
The Tiogo forest reserve in Burkina Faso has been subjected to several interventionist regimes, straddling colonial and post-colonial eras. Early attention (1920s) to Burkina Faso’s forests regarded them primarily as sanctuaries for wildlife. There was little or no recognition of the importance of the forest for local communities, who were seen to be a primary driver of deforestation and degradation, and as a result, policies were designed and implemented to protect forests not for local communities’ dependent upon the forest, but rather from them [
Following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, as elsewhere, users of forest resources took up a central position in efforts to preserve and rehabilitate forests in Burkina Faso. In 1993, Burkina Faso’s government re-emphasised participatory management of protected forests and signed contracts with communities living close to forests. “The aim of the new approach was to improve agricultural, forest and pasture resources, help the forests regenerate and reduce poverty” [
In a 2016 study of the Tiogo Forest Reserve, Cosijnse assesses in how far the shift from a focus on loggers alone, to a more holistic understanding of forest user groups has changed levels of inclusion and/or participation in the management of the Tiogo forest [
Despite the formation of a more inclusive CGF, replacing the Loggers Union, with the intention of including more livelihoods in the management of the forest, the Burkina Faso case study found that Fulani pastoralists, fishermen and other minority forest user groups continue to be excluded from decision-making processes regarding forest management. The CGF is dominated by the same leaders who ruled the Logger’s Union (the chairman of the Logger’s Union is now the Chairman of the CGF). The CGF has, as a result, not fostered more cooperation between forest user groups, increased participation or benefit-sharing, as was the intention. Instead, as a result of momentums of dominance (and a lack of attention to those momentums in the establishment of the CGF), lines between insiders and outsiders, or those with and without control over their own access and use of the Tiogo Forest Reserve persist (ibid.).
This article sets out to answer two inter-related questions. Firstly, what is the impact of CBAs on local formations of social capital? And secondly, how do new formations of social capital, shaped by CBAs, relate to conflict?
According to the adherents of CBA, this approach will help to make communities more resilient: by strengthening structures (decision-making, innovation, access to information, ability to operationalise information, access to services etc.), communities will be empowered to act and react to ever-changing and uncertain conditions (which is considered more important than top-down interventions). Improving the processes of deliberation is considered more important than one-off increase in the asset base. Strengthening local institutions, increasing access to information and other resources, as well as stimulating collective action, such as facilitating the creation of agricultural by-laws, the distribution of information, lobbying local government for extension and other services and/or the diffusion of new innovations are considered crucial elements for making communities adaptive and resilient. Thus, in line with Adger’s by now famous assertion that “a society’s adaptive capacity is a function of its capacity to act collectively” [
In spite of practitioners very much focusing on the beneficial effects of social capital, our results confirm that social capital can equally have “perverse” effects [
As the three case studies demonstrate, CBA often move away from P2 in the direction of P3 (see
The paper has illustrated how, in their current form, CBA interventions aimed at communities by and large simplify complex realities in terms of the use of natural resources in semi-arid and sub-humid belts in Africa. In doing so, they may well serve as a source of new dynamics of conflict. Crucially, overcoming community-bias is essential if such projects are to maintain legitimacy as a model for development. In order to do so, a shift in focus from target groups, to relationships regarding (competing) use of and access to natural resources is required. In other words, adaptation interventions which alter natural resource use patterns, should take as their point of departure the complex set of relations which exist around natural resource access and use, rather than communities who’s (competing) claim to natural resource use is legitimised at the expense of other claims through the backing of an adaptation intervention (or indeed another development action).
Adaptation interventions should begin with questions of how to strengthen economic, social, ecological and political relations between multiple natural resource user groups (often with competing claims). Taking this as a point of departure produces different types of results, than might be arrived at when taking communities as points of departure. Finding ways to integrate different livelihoods becomes the highest priority. Where this is not possible (benefit sharing) adaptation interventions might seek to introduce mechanisms to redistribute the benefits of adaptation interventions more equally, in order to compensate non-beneficiaries who are negatively affected by the gains made by beneficiaries as a result of adaptation interventions. This may be in financial in nature, but does not have to be. Where farming and pastoralist livelihoods exist, for instance, more systematic efforts might be made to create structures whereby manure from cattle is exchanged for access to pasture and/or water. Each context will offer different potential for strengthening interconnectedness between user- groups in terms of natural resource use but, importantly, such a focus changes the types of actions which might be considered for adaptation (and which might not), and in how far the adaptation intervention is likely to be a source of conflict.
This article showed that “successful” CBA projects, by creating new abundances (e.g. income, water) may well serve as sources of new discrepancies and conflicts. The issue arises as a result of interventions taking a narrow and simplified account of communities whilst it is clear that climate change can only be understood in a context of a shared-resource system and competing claims. As a result of this simplification, selected target groups or “beneficiaries” are helped to strengthen their claims, contrary to the common good of all users and/or environmental interests.
To the extent that project interventions go hand in hand with conflicts, these are often described as unintended side-effects, or unintended outcome. This paper set out to explore the structural causes of such unintended conflicts arising as a result of adaptation interventions. It argues that whilst such conflicts are undoubtedly unintended, they are not unavoidable. Such conflicts arise firstly, because of the tendency of development actors to focus their attention on strengthening the resilience of targeted beneficiary group. Doing so simplifies a reality in which the same natural resources underpin, not one livelihood, many several, each with different definitions of sustainability. The paper argues that the tendency towards singularity is in part the result of limitations in the debate surrounding common-pool resources, which to date, both on the side who have argued that common-pool resource management is doomed to fail, and those who have rebutted that argument, have focussed on groups of homogenous livelihoods. In Africa’s semi-arid and sub-humid belts, in contrast, high levels of both scarcity and seasonality have resulted in a high diversity of livelihoods, both across space and across time and, as a result, natural resources form the bases of a plethora of livelihoods. Using social capital theories, and especially in Narayan’s hypothesis of the relationship between bridging social capital and governance frameworks [
We conclude that, instead of targeting “communities” or other groups of “beneficiaries”, the inter-connectedness of multiple (and at times competing) social groups (men and women, the elderly and youth, hunters, loggers, pastoralists and sedentary crop farmers etc.) in relation to the use and distribution of natural resources should be the point of departure for strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity. Importantly, we are not simply suggesting that such interconnectedness should be better appreciated by adaptation practitioners; they should be the point of departure, and form the focal point of interventionist actions that seek to strengthen adaptive capacity in rural contexts in the global south. Such an approach, in contrast to community-based or target group approaches, are better placed to anticipate and manage unintended impacts, and especially, the potential for conflict arising as a result of changes to the use and the distribution of natural resources between social groups, facilitated directly or indirectly by the CBA intervention itself.
Soeters, S. and Zoomers, A. (2017) Consolidating Contestation and Conflict through Community- Based Adaptation (CBA). Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 5, 174-193. https://doi.org/10.4236/gep.2017.511013