Understanding collective adaptation to climate change in socio-culturally diverse contexts

Wannewitz, Mia (2023): Understanding collective adaptation to climate change in socio-culturally diverse contexts: general conceptual models and empirical insights from Jakarta. Dissertation, LMU München: Fakultät für Geowissenschaften

Abstract

The intensifying and more frequent impacts of climate change, coupled with unequal urban development, require more dedicated and integrated approaches to adaptation. Recognizing climate change as a collective action problem necessitates a shift for researchers and policymakers, moving from focusing solely on individual needs and capacities to a more social perspective. This shift is most urgently needed in highly exposed and vulnerable coastal cities, where climate change already has severe impacts. To effectively address future adaptation needs, understanding local visions, needs, and capacities related to climate change adaptation is imperative. This entails considering another characteristic of these particular high-risk locations that has been rather neglected in the research on climate change adaptation so far. Socio-cultural diversity significantly influences risk perceptions, vulnerabilities, and behaviors, thereby shaping the formation of social groups and their behaviors in response to climate change. Despite some academic attention to the psychological influences on (collective) climate change adaptation, empirical evidence as well as theoretical and conceptual debates are lacking – especially for socio-culturally diverse contexts like cities. With this study, I aim to address these gaps by conceptually and empirically examining the phenomenon of collective adaptation in socio-culturally diverse, high-risk contexts. Therefore, this study will answer several pertinent research questions: Is there evidence for collective adaptation? Which groups form to adapt collectively? What motivates them to become and stay actively engaged in collective adaptation? And if and how do differently adapting groups interact? I apply a mixed-method approach combining deductive and inductive methods to develop a comprehensive framework that conceptualizes the emergence of collective adaptation in socio-culturally diverse contexts from a social psychology perspective. The framework covers the entire collective adaptation process encompassing the development of risk-based social identities, their materialization into groups, their activation, and potential types of adaptation in socio-culturally diverse settings. I empirically tested and validated the framework through data from Jakarta, the highly exposed, urbanized, and socio-culturally diverse capital city of Indonesia. Through semi-structured interviews, expert elicitations, and a representative survey of kampung cooperatives – a collective phenomenon in high-risk neighborhoods in Jakarta – I examine the validity of the three sequences of the developed conceptual framework. The results provide evidence for the socio-cultural diversity among the most vulnerable. Furthermore, I am able to demonstrate that in the face of climate risk, only three out of many social identities become salient in highly exposed and diverse neighborhoods in Jakarta. Materialized into groups and networks, they largely differ in their collective adaptation capacities. The results also indicate that the materialization of identities into groups is insufficient for explaining their collective actions, given a high share of inactive group members. Against this background, the study identifies a set of temporally differentiated motivating factors. Initial triggers motivate group members to start becoming active; long-term motivators keep them engaged over time. A few identified general facilitators contribute to both, the initial activation as well as long-term engagement. Lastly, the developed conceptual framework illustrates that the interaction of differently adapting groups is mediated by multiple influencing factors which ultimately affect urban adaptation patterns. While the empirical findings and their implications are mostly relevant for Jakarta or very similar cultural contexts in which social trust, reciprocity, and mutual support are strong societal values, the more abstract conceptual framework for collective adaptation is applicable more broadly. It is based on underlining socio-psychological factors that influence engagement in collective adaptation and is hence independent of varying context conditions. Overall, this study expands the current knowledge on collective adaptation in multiple ways. The conceptual framework and its sequences address the lacking theoretical and conceptual discussions around the topic. It also represents a valuable analytical lens and can guide future scientific work on collective adaptation as its sequences can be well operationalized, informing data collection and analysis. At the same time, the empirical findings resulting from the application of the conceptual framework differentiate the current understanding of urban adaptation to climate change in Southeast Asian coastal cities, particularly in terms of soft adaptation options, heterogeneous collective capacities to adapt, and collective adaptation actions. It emphasizes the importance of considering socio-cultural differences and diversity in shaping adaptation behaviors and interactions. Both, the conceptual and the empirical insights are also valuable for policy development and the practical facilitation of socially just urban adaptation strategies.

• Dokumententyp: Dissertationen (Dissertation, LMU München)
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik ; 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 550 Geowissenschaften
• Fakultäten: Fakultät für Geowissenschaften
• Sprache der Hochschulschrift: Englisch
• Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 19. Oktober 2023
• 1. Bericht­erstatter:in: Garschagen, Matthias