Community as Solution to Climate Change: Understanding Informal Arrangements to Complement Formal Adaptive Social Protection
27 Pages Posted: 10 Oct 2024
Abstract
This ethnographic report argues that informal social protection continues to be the first source of support to minimise climate change and disaster losses. Literature suggests that informal social protection takes place within social settings including complex social ties and capital that are formed and connected to each other through rights and obligations to help each other and share risks. Informal protection can be seen as the ability of communities to protect their collective interests against all types of insecurity issues, including climate and disasters. While climate change can also compromise informal arrangements and social capital. Unfortunately, there is barely research on informal social protection in the context of the global conversation around ASP. More comprehensive and transformative approach to adaptive social protection are needed minimise climate loss. This research examines how communities explore opportunities for protection from climate and disaster risk based on the context of Sumba, where the traditional slavery system remains. We asked how communities access informal social protection including social capital to complement formal social protection in the context of climate change and disasters. Utilising ethnographic interviews during December 2023-May 2024, we found that during recent climatological disasters, communities diversified various forms of protection from kinship, lordship, loan sharks, middlemen, cooperative, banking as well as other forms of reciprocal transfers. This research suggests that without recognising the rich and yet dynamic nature of informal protection, formal ASP might not be transformative and, therefore, less effective due to the complex nature and interaction of formal and informal protection.
Keywords: Adaptive Social Protection, Informal Adaptation, climate change adaptation, community adaptation, disaster risk reduciton, non-economic loss
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