Kupang: Social Adaptability and Vulnerability across an urban rural continuum in West Timor
Date
2016
Authors
Liu, Saryaskus Paulus
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Abstract
To date, research on the vulnerability of human systems has
tended to focus on the physical impacts of climate change and
variability, rather than on social impacts. Emphasis has also
been directed to these impacts at the national, regional or
sectoral level, rather than at the community level. While these
valuable contributions have provided useful assessments of the
impacts of climate change, they have provided only a limited
understanding of how societies or communities are susceptible to
climate change. Such research also fails to take into account the
forces contributing to the vulnerability of human systems other
than the bio-physical.
This research addresses an apparent gap by examining social
adaptability and vulnerability to the problems of climate
variability in Indonesia. Taking two districts in East Nusa
Tenggara Province in Indonesia as case studies, this research
concludes that social vulnerability to climate variability and
change in the study areas encompasses disruption to livelihoods
and a decline in social entitlement, reflected in economic
failure, food shortage and hunger. Such vulnerability is shaped
by environmental degradation, poverty and access to key
resources. Erratic rainfall, persistent drought, El Niño and La
Niña episodes are the most common types of climate-induced
events that pose significant risks in the research study sites.
Disruption of livelihoods, in particular loss of crops and
harvest failures, leading to food production decline, are the
most common physical impacts of these events. These events have
social consequences for human welfare, especially food insecurity
and hunger (ordinary and extra ordinary), and manifest themselves
in terms of a widespread uptake of coping strategies.
This thesis contributes to theory by advancing our understanding
of vulnerability to climate change through shedding light on the
present problems of climate variability and its significant
social consequences. This study suggests that building adaptive
capacity is imperative to address people’s vulnerability to
climate variability. However, the nuances of local vulnerability
and capability must be understood clearly. Measures have to be
put in place carefully if adaptation policies are to be
effective. Another significant contribution of the study is
through its use of an integrative approach that builds on an
inter- disciplinary perspective; this is considered an
appropriate approach to discover a wide range of determining
factors that explain how local communities and individuals are
vulnerable and how they cope with the impacts of climate
variability and change. The main implications of the research
findings for policy focus on the importance placed on directing
the people’s adaptive responses to the root causes of
vulnerability rather than solely to the physical impacts of the
climate induced events. It is only through responding to these
causes that vulnerability can be addressed.
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Climate Variability and Change, Social Vulnerability, Adaptation and Livelihoods
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Thesis (PhD)
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