Sentence and Paragraph Length in Writing Argumentative Essay This week you will be writing a draft of the Argument Essay. More details about this assignmen

Sentence and Paragraph Length in Writing Argumentative Essay This week you will be writing a draft of the
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assignment sheet posted under Resources and Materials. Global Environmental Change 36 (2016) 124–138
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Global Environmental Change
j our na l ho mepa ge: w w w .e l s e v i e r .c o m / l o c at e / g lo e nvcha
Social capital, trust, and adaptation to climate change: Evidence from
rural Ethiopia
Christopher J. Paula,*, Erika S. Weinthala, Marc F. Bellemareb, Marc A. Jeulandc,d
a
Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708, USA
Department of Applied Economics and Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy, University of Minnesota, 1994 Buford Avenue, Saint Paul, MN
55108, USA
c
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, Box 90239, Durham, NC 27708, USA
d
Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore
b
ARTICLEINFO
ABSTRACT
Article history:
Received 27 August 2015
Received in revised form 7 December 2015
Accepted 22 December 2015
Available online 11 January 2016
Climate change is expected to have particularly severe effects on poor agrarian populations. Rural
households in developing countries adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change both individually
and collectively. Empirical research has shown that access to capital—financial, human, physical, and
social—is critical for building resilience and fostering adaptation to environmental stresses. Little
attention, however, has been paid to how social capital generally might facilitate adaptation through
trust and cooperation, particularly among rural households and communities. This paper addresses the
question of how social capital affects adaptation to climate change by rural households by focusing on the
relationship of household and collective adaptation behaviors. A mixed-methods approach allows us to
better account for the complexity of social institutions—at the household, community, and government
levels—which drive climate adaptation outcomes. We use data from interviews, household surveys, and
field experiments conducted in 20 communities with 400 households in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Our
results suggest that qualitative measures of trust predict contributions to public goods, a result that is
consistent with the theorized role of social capital in collective action. Yet qualitative trust is negatively
related to private household-level adaptation behaviors, which raises the possibility that social capital
may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private adaptation. Policymakers should account for the potential
difference in public and private adaptation behaviors in relation to trust and social capital when
designing interventions for climate adaptation.
ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Climate change
Trust
Social capital
Adaptation
Ethiopia
1. Introduction
Climate change is expected to have a profound impact on
livelihoodsaroundtheworldbycausingmoresevereweatherevents,
rising sea levels, and higher average temperatures (IPCC, 2014).
Building resilience to climate change depends upon improving
existing options for adaptation, especially among vulnerable
populations, such as poor rural households in developing countries.
Those households adapt to the risks and impacts of climate change in
many ways, both individually and collectively (Adger, 2003;
Tompkins and Eakin, 2012). The ability of households and their
communities to adapt, however, is conditionedbya myriad of factors
thatareofteninshortsupplyforruralhouseholds, includingaccessto
* Corresponding author. Fax: +919 681 7748.
E-mail addresses: cjp2@duke.edu (C.J. Paul), weinthal@duke.edu
(E.S. Weinthal), mbellema@umn.edu (M.F. Bellemare), marc.jeuland@duke.edu
(M.A. Jeuland).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.12.003
0959-3780/ ã 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
financial, human, physical, and social capital. While access to all
types of capital is critical for building resilience and fostering
adaptation to environmental stresses, little attention has been paid
to the role of social capital which, following Ostrom and Ahn (2003),
we define as the value of relationships that facilitates cooperation
and collective action through trust. In the absence of other forms of
capital, social capital may be particularly important for promoting
adaptation to new threats from climate change by furthering
cooperation and collective action.
This paper addresses the question of how social capital affects
adaptation at the household and community levels in poor rural
communities in developing countries. Specifically, we (i) assess the
role of social capital in poor, rural communities in the Ethiopian Rift
Valley, (ii) test multiple survey and experimental measurements of
social capital both qualitative and quantitative, and (iii) evaluate the
relationship of our various measures of social capital to individual
household and collective community adaptation behaviors.
Although scholars have recognized the potential importance of
social capital, most work on the role of social capital in adaptation
C.J. Paul et al. / Global Environmental Change 36 (2016) 124–138
to date has been theoretical or based on case studies or small
samples (Adger, 2003; Pelling and High, 2005; Wolf et al., 2010).
The gap in applied research on this relationship is evident in
reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that
state “the capacity for collective action is a critical determinant of
the capacity to adapt to climate politics,” yet only have evidence for
the loss of social capital in conflict (Adger et al., 2014). Empirical
work on this topic is particularly challenging because social capital
and climate adaptation are both complex phenomena with a
variety of potential mechanisms and effects (Adger et al., 2005;
Ostrom and Ahn, 2003). Furthermore, there is limited work on how
social capital relates to adaptation behaviors. Most of the empirical
literature focuses on the positive benefits arising from social
relationships and trust while ignoring the possibility that the
complexity of mechanisms and scales of social capital may in some
cases reveal a “dark side of social capital” (Bagnasco, 2008; Deth
and van Zmerli, 2010; Portes, 1998) which promotes negative
outcomes for certain groups.
The levels and methods for measuring key variables may also
have an influence on the relationships between trust, social capital,
and outcomes. For example, trust can be measured using surveys
(by asking about trust in general or about trust in the context of
specific transactions) and experimental approaches (by simulating
trust-based transactions and rewarding subjects accordingly). The
measurements obtained using these different methods may not be
consistent with one another, and may be differentially influenced
by a variety of other characteristics that also affect adaptation
(Bouma et al., 2008; Naef and Schupp, 2009; Ostrom, 2005). In
addition, alternative measures may only be relevant to one or more
specific levels—individual, household, and community—of social
capital and adaptation (Smit and Wandel, 2006; Tompkins and
Eakin, 2012).
In order to better test empirically the relationship between
social capital and trust at the household and community levels, and
climate change adaptation, we combine multiple methods of data
collection, including semi-structured interviews, surveys, and field
experiments. This mixed-methods approach allows us to better
account for the complexity and scales at which alternative
institutions influence climate adaptation behaviors (Adger et al.,
2005; Poteete et al., 2010; Vaccaro et al., 2010), and to consider the
relevance of different measures of trust and social capital.
Our analysis suggests that these different measures may be
indicative of different constructs, and it reveals that survey
measures of trust are more strongly related to observed behaviors.
We also find evidence of a mixed effect of social capital in climate
adaptation: social capital is associated with increased cooperative
outcomes, but also with reduced private household-level adaptation.1 Though our analysis can obviously not identify causal
relationships between various measures of social capital and
adaptation to climate change, our results raise the possibility that
social capital may, paradoxically, be detrimental to private
adaptation, depending on which effect dominates in household
behavior.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. We begin in
Section 2 by describing climate adaptation and defining the
phenomenon of social capital and its mechanisms. In Section 3, we
describe our study site in the rural Rift Valley of Ethiopia, and the
specific methods used to evaluate social capital and adaptation.
Next, we provide a description of the data in Section 4 and, in
1
Throughout the paper, we use the term “private adaptation” to refer to
household-level adaptation, noting that some of these household-level behaviors
do involve limited cooperation with other households (e.g., sharing of tools).
Community-level or “public adaptation” behaviors represent contribution or
participation in the provision of community-level public goods.
125
Section 5, we discuss our results in testing of each of the
hypotheses, showing that while social capital is important in
collective adaptation activities, it is negatively related to private
household adaptation. We then conclude in Section 6 with
potential policy implications and directions for future research.
2. Climate adaptation, social capital, and collective action
Climate adaptation, “the process of adjustment to actual or
expected climate and its effects” (IPCC, 2014), is a process that is
both bio-physical and human. While humans have always needed
to respond to a changing environment, the current period of global
climate change strains human capacity for adaptation because of
the combined rapidity and severity of the changes it entails.
Individuals must make complex decisions about adaptation that
determine the consequences of climate change for livelihoods
under increasing uncertainty, for example that arising from
changes in water availability, variability in crop yields, and greater
extremes of natural disasters. By definition, constraints on
adaptation, which are a function of financial, human, and other
forms of capital, would appear highest for disadvantaged
communities.
Adaptation occurs at individual, household, community, and
larger institutional scales (Adger et al., 2005). In this paper, we
consider three potential levels of adaptation: household, community, and government. At the private household level, adaptation
takes forms such as technology adoption, migration, or changes in
livelihoods. Community level adaptation may occur through
collective action, the ability of a group to achieve a common
interest, and the provision of public goods (Olson, 1971; Poteete
et al., 2010; Tompkins and Eakin, 2012). Collective action facilitates
the pooling of resources, knowledge, and efforts for community
responses. We treat collective action as a broad description of
cooperative interaction. External interventions such as government programs and interventions can affect adaptation, with or
without the input of households and communities, but do not
always benefit rural areas because of the lack of infrastructure or
state reach, the ability of governments to implement programming
and exert power (e.g., Herbst, 2000). The degree of cooperation in
rural areas is thus potentially more important in determining
outcomes.
Explanations for the emergence of collective action have
focused on factors such as group size, leadership, and incentives
(Olson, 1971), but the value of cooperative social relations and how
precisely they emerge remains critical and unclear (Ostrom, 1994;
Ostrom and Ahn, 2003). Theories of social capital arose out of work
such as that investigating the resources of social networks and the
function of social structures (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988;
Portes, 1998). These theories have been further developed and
applied to diverse fields including economic activities, sustainable
development, and natural resource management (Dale and Newman, 2010; Dale and Onyx, 2010; Fukuyama, 1995; Pretty and
Ward, 2001). Ostrom and Ahn (2003), moreover, specify three
components of social capital: institutions, social networks, and
trustworthiness. Institutions are the social, economic, and political
“rules of the game” that govern interactions (North, 1990); they
mediate relationships, and thus influence the outcomes of
individual and collective behavior (Agrawal, 2009). Opportunities
for cooperation thus arise from the web of relationships that make
up social networks (Ostrom and Ahn, 2003). The relationships in
these networks are commonly classified as: bonding, the close ties
within a group; bridging, the ties between groups; and linking, the
vertical relationships across hierarchies (Szreter and Woolcock,
2004; Woolcock, 2001). Dense and stable networks facilitate
generalized reciprocity and “trustworthiness,” which are all
characteristics that facilitate trust (Putnam et al., 1993).
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C.J. Paul et al. / Global Environmental Change 36 (2016) 124–138
Trust, the confidence that others will act on commitments
reliably and with reciprocity, is a core mechanism of social capital
for collective action (Ostrom and Ahn, 2003; Putnam, 2001). Trust
is dependent upon characteristics of individuals and their setting,
including institutions, the nature and extent of social networks,
and individual characteristics. Trust may also be related to an
individual’s tolerance for risk, since trusting another individual
may in many cases carry risks (Schechter, 2007). In the face of
threats from climate change, trust affects households’ confidence
that they can rely on others for resource sharing, conflict
resolution, and sustained cooperation. As a result, higher trust
may enhance opportunities for adaptation (Adger, 2003).
As an example, the sharing of farm equipment can help
illustrate the nature of relationships between trust and social
capital. In many situations, farmers may have short-term demand
for more physical capital than they personally own. Individuals
who are well endowed with such physical capital must decide
whether to loan or lease farming equipment to their neighbors, a
decision that is influenced by multiple aspects of social capital,
including bonding social capital and trust. Bonding social capital
helps groups leverage their resources more effectively by sharing
risk and cost (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). Here, trust functions
to aid the lender or lessor to make a decision based on a history of
past interactions with the potential borrower (i.e., his or her
trustworthiness) (Fafchamps, 2004; Platteau, 2000, 1994a, 1994b),
on his or her own perceptions, or on other community members’
perceptions of the borrower’s trustworthiness. Thus, social networks may contribute information about agents’ trustworthiness,
and may provide recourse in the event that the terms of the
transaction are violated. Meanwhile, existing institutions structure
transactions, for example by specifying the time over which a loan
is allowed, the conditions of enforcement of the agreement (e.g.,
returning the equipment on time), or the terms of reciprocity.
When faced with environmental threats, such as worsening
growing conditions, farmers must draw upon social capital, among
other forms of capital, to cope. For example, if additional labor and
tools are needed for terracing a field to cope with stronger
rainstorms, a farmer must determine information about best
practices and find other people to contribute, by hiring them or
leveraging social relationships. In the example, these network
relationships mediate opportunities for information, such as new
or best practices. Bridging social capital allows information to be
shared between groups. Confidence in information can be
determined by linking social capital across vertical levels to
government or outside agencies. Ultimately, groups of high
bonding social capital can act upon this knowledge. The sharing
of information promotes adaptation by combining the human
capital of knowledge with the social capital of networks (Falco and
Veronesi, 2013a). Trust is, moreover, essential for assessing and
acting upon shared information (Creech and Willard, 2001).
Finally, adaptation occurs through cooperation and collective
action supported by social capital. Community-level adaptation
may also depend upon external factors, such as government
institutions and programming, which could complement or offset
the effect of social capital.
Social networks specifically serve multiple types of functions
for adaptation and collective action, as networks can be horizontal
between peers within a community, or vertical across hierarchies
(Putnam et al., 1993). Particularly when higher-level (e.g. statelevel) institutions are absent, the networking function of social
capital supports local institutions and collective action responses
that are needed for addressing community challenges, including
those arising from shocks or crises (Adger, 2003; Bratton, 1989;
Platteau, 1994a,b). Thus, the value of social networks is in both
facilitating trustworthiness and contributing to the possibility of
accessing different (and perhaps collective) resources through
multiple venues (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000).
Social capital does not necessarily have universally positive
effects or serve as insurance mechanisms against adverse shocks.
Social capital may be ineffective if there is a general lack of
resources or knowledge of effective solutions. In this sense, the
community may be the inappropriate scale of action necessary to
adapt; rather, adaptation could depend primarily on choices made
by the individual household (e.g., migration) or by the state (e.g.,
aid programming). Trust may not be enough to overcome the
transaction costs for collective action. There also may be a “dark
side of social capital” (Deth and van Zmerli, 2010), in which strong
social institutions can generate negative outcomes or overpower
formal legal institutions, as in the case of the mafia (Gambetta,
1988). Groups may be isolated and made less diverse by a process
of homophily, the tendency to become more similar, reducing
valuable bridging social capital between groups (Newman and
Dale, 2007). Decisions involving trust and social capital may also be
governed by other decision-making characteristics such as risk
preferences (Schechter, 2007). In other words, an individual’s
propensity to trust may be partially governed by her willingness to
take risks.
Finally, it is important to distinguish between social capital of
households within communities, and bridging (vertical linking) of
social ties beyond communities. Bridging social capital can help
link individuals and households to new ideas and resources beyond
their community, by either substituting or complementing the role
of the state (Adger, 2003). In adaptation, communities that
organize and cooperate can better access external support
(Karlsson and Hovelsrud, 2015). These types of links can enhance
connection with outside organizations and government officials,
generating better provision of resources.
We hypothesize that social capital influences the ability of
households to respond to change. This is because the constituent
parts of social capital, and access to collective action processes,
influence the quality and set of options (or constraints) that
households face when threatened by climate change. Specifically,
trust should be associated with collective action and increased
adaptation behaviors, perhaps due to information sharing,
knowledge mobilization, and resource coordination. Households
with higher levels of trust are likely to possess more social capital
and are hypothesized to unde…
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