TITLE:
Consolidating Contestation and Conflict through Community-Based Adaptation (CBA)
AUTHORS:
Sebastiaan Soeters, Annelies Zoomers
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change Adaptation, Community-Based Adaptation, Exclusion, Conflicts, Resilience, Social Capital, Kenya, Ghana and Burkina
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.5 No.11,
November
22,
2017
ABSTRACT: 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.