Assessing village resilience to climate change

Designing a monitoring method to assess the impact of the project on village community vulnerability

The operational framework developed by the project is based on the three main dimensions of resilience:

Buffer capacities of the system: the assets of the system that allow it to absorb shocks without generating major structural or functional changes in the system. In the case of a social‐ecological system, it is mainly composed of the livelihood assets (human, natural, financial, social, and physical capital),

Vulnerabilities of the system: the risks it is exposed to and the way it is exposed to them, the way it is affected by these risks when they occur, and the responses that can be developed in order to lower the exposure and/or sensitivity to these risks,

Adaptive capacity of the system: its self‐organization and capacity to self‐reorganize, capacity for learning of the people and institutions, capacity to set up relevant strategies and make the most of any opportunities to increase buffer capacities and lower vulnerabilities.

These three dimensions are not independent from one another, they overlap to a large extend: e.g. elements of buffer capacity contribute to shape vulnerability.

Local stakeholders were engaged in selecting indicators that best reflect the village context notably regarding village vulnerability to climate change and economic fluctuations.

A method for data collection and analysis was designed in order to be practical and well adapted to the capacity of the local enumerators and research staff. The method was tested following a collective learning process (i.e. reflexive loops) and validated in the field with the end‐users.

The method is based on an initial assessment of village communities' situation before the beginning of the project (baseline), then again after a few years of development intervention (next planned assessment in 2016-2017)

The method includes the study of intervention vs control villages (i.e. without ant intervention from the project) to avoid attributing to the project changes that would be due to other driving forces.