Water Security: Community Adaptation to Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change poses major challenges to local communities throughout the world as to how best to adapt and innovate. This panel draws on a team of experts that have done community-level climate adaptation research in multiple ecological settings in North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia to identify methods that can work in terms of successful adaptation. Drawing on the community capitals framework for talking about community organization, the panel will address how natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial and built capital are affected by climate change and how different groups can mobilize these different resources to proactively respond. This includes looking at gender, income, age and other social differences in terms of both vulnerabilities and the resources needed for change and adaptation. The panel will discuss how different groups can respond collectively as a community to increase their overall repertoire of adaptions and become more resilient to various water security challenges.