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Do you know? How to enhance social resilience and adaptability through diversity!
As global climate change and ecosystem challenges intensify, various societies and ecosystems are facing tests of resilience. Research shows that improving social resilience and adaptability, especially through diversity, can effectively cope with future uncertainties, which has aroused the interest of many scholars and policymakers.
Adaptive capacity is the ability of systems, institutions, humans, and other organisms to adjust themselves to potential harm, exploit opportunities, or react to consequences.
In the context of ecosystems, adaptive capacity often depends on the genetic diversity of species and the biodiversity of a particular landscape or bioregion. Especially in socio-ecological systems, adaptive capacity is considered to be closely related to the following characteristics: first, the ability of institutions and networks to learn and store knowledge and experience; second, the importance of creative flexibility in decision-making, transformation and problem solving; third Third, there are responsive power structures that take into account the needs of all stakeholders.
Building adaptive capacity is particularly important in the context of climate change, as it provides the potential for societies to make the adaptations they need to adapt to future conditions.
Adaptive capacity provides resilience to disturbances, allowing ecological and human social systems to reorganize with minimal loss of functionality. The resilience of ecosystems lies in original productivity, maintenance of biomass and biodiversity, and the stability of the hydrological cycle; the resilience of human social systems is reflected in the stability of social relationships, maintenance of social capital, and economic prosperity. However, as the climate changes, the future climate will likely be very different from the present, so developing adaptive capacity is a prerequisite for reducing the potential negative impacts of climate change.
Adaptability can be enhanced in a variety of ways, including building a diverse asset base, a sound institutional environment, and flexible decision-making processes.
According to the Overseas Development Institute report, the Local Adaptation Capacity Framework (LAC) highlights five core features for improving adaptive capacity: diversity of asset base, appropriate institutional environment, ability to generate and evaluate information, and encouragement of innovation institutional environment and a governance structure that can flexibly respond to changes.
Advantages include a stable and prosperous economy, full access to technology, and equitable resource distribution, all of which are enablers for building adaptive capacity.
A stable and prosperous economy is essential because it can better manage the costs associated with adaptation, and generally better-off and wealthier countries are better prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change. In addition, clear delineation of roles and responsibilities, equitable resource allocation of social institutions, etc., can help to resist barriers to adaptability.
Adjustment barriers are divided into internal and external, with internal barriers often being driven by personal or community beliefs and perceptions.
For example, many people are reluctant to move from flood-prone areas because they depend on their livelihoods, and internal barriers may also include doubts about the severity and urgency of climate change. Taken together, understanding these barriers can help us assess our collective ability and potential to adapt.
By strengthening the resilience and adaptability of society, we can effectively respond to future challenges, which is particularly important in the context of climate change.
Many development interventions, such as social protection programs and the promotion of social safety nets, can play an important role in improving adaptive capacity. Social inequality and institutional deficiencies remain major bottlenecks to adaptive capacity. Therefore, when different societies face future challenges, how can they effectively use diversity to enhance their own resilience to cope with the various challenges brought about by climate change? Is this a question we must think about?
