The role of civil society actors in climate change adaptation

TY - CHAP

T1 - The role of civil society actors in climate change adaptation

AU - Hoff, Jens

PY - 2017/12/15

Y1 - 2017/12/15

N2 - The topic of this contribution are the efforts at building resilience in New York City in the post-Sandy era. A special emphasis is on the role played by civil society actors in the different resilience plans and practices. In order to analyze this role a theoretical framework called ‘the interactionism approach’ was constructed building on a model depicting levels and scopes of actor involvement developed by Hoff & Gausset (2016) and the idea of a ‘resilience cycle’ developed by Nikpour and Lendal (2016) making it possible to analyze barriers to resilience at different levels. Using this theoretical framework, we found that the NYC resiliency plans do not move decisively beyond the ’consultation’ type of actor involvement. Looking more specifically at actions/processes, we saw that even though a lot of attention is given to local communities including their businesses, etc. this has not resulted in a real delegation of more responsibilities to these communities or in more and better facilitation of citizen-driven initiatives. This was seen as a barrier to resilience building in NYC at the system-level. Other barriers to involvement of civil society actors were found to be – at the agency level – the inequity in access to different kind of resources – economic as well as political - among individuals and communities. Such inequity gives rise to different levels of vulnerability in different areas of the city. At the institutional level, the biggest barriers to resilience building were found to be that that there is too little real support for community-based groups and too little facilitation of citizen-driven initiatives. The community boards also seem to have too few competencies and resources to be able to act as an important force in (local) resilience building. Finally, at the system level the lack of delegation of responsibilities and facilitation of citizen-driven initiatives is as barrier. In addition, one can point to a (local) political economy as a barrier, as it creates huge differences in incomes and wealth, which diminishes the capacities of both individuals and communities to build resilience both for themselves and for their communities.

AB - The topic of this contribution are the efforts at building resilience in New York City in the post-Sandy era. A special emphasis is on the role played by civil society actors in the different resilience plans and practices. In order to analyze this role a theoretical framework called ‘the interactionism approach’ was constructed building on a model depicting levels and scopes of actor involvement developed by Hoff & Gausset (2016) and the idea of a ‘resilience cycle’ developed by Nikpour and Lendal (2016) making it possible to analyze barriers to resilience at different levels. Using this theoretical framework, we found that the NYC resiliency plans do not move decisively beyond the ’consultation’ type of actor involvement. Looking more specifically at actions/processes, we saw that even though a lot of attention is given to local communities including their businesses, etc. this has not resulted in a real delegation of more responsibilities to these communities or in more and better facilitation of citizen-driven initiatives. This was seen as a barrier to resilience building in NYC at the system-level. Other barriers to involvement of civil society actors were found to be – at the agency level – the inequity in access to different kind of resources – economic as well as political - among individuals and communities. Such inequity gives rise to different levels of vulnerability in different areas of the city. At the institutional level, the biggest barriers to resilience building were found to be that that there is too little real support for community-based groups and too little facilitation of citizen-driven initiatives. The community boards also seem to have too few competencies and resources to be able to act as an important force in (local) resilience building. Finally, at the system level the lack of delegation of responsibilities and facilitation of citizen-driven initiatives is as barrier. In addition, one can point to a (local) political economy as a barrier, as it creates huge differences in incomes and wealth, which diminishes the capacities of both individuals and communities to build resilience both for themselves and for their communities.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - climate change adaptation

KW - resilience

KW - New York City

KW - actor involvement

KW - interactionism approach

KW - resilience cycle

KW - key resources

KW - community boards

KW - community groups

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042035706&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4324/9781315651354

DO - 10.4324/9781315651354

M3 - Book chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85042035706

SN - 9781138120983

SP - 90

EP - 105

BT - Institutional Capacity for Climate Change Response

A2 - Scavenius, Theresa

A2 - Rayner, Steve P.

PB - Taylor & Francis

ER -