Supporting transformative climate adaptation: community-level capacity building and knowledge co-creation in South Africa

作者：Gina Ziervogel, Johan P. Enqvist, L. Metelerkamp, J. van Breda · 发表于：Climate Policy · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1080/14693062.2020.1863180 · 被引用次数：157 · 研究领域：Business

ABSTRACT Calls for transformative adaptation to climate change require attention to the type of capacity building that can support it. Community-level capacity building can help to ensure ownership and legitimacy of longer-term interventions. Given that marginalized communities are highly vulnerable to climate risk, it is important to build their capacity to adapt locally and to integrate their perspectives into higher-level adaptation measures. Current adaptation policy does not pay sufficient attention to this. Using a Cape Town-based project on water governance in low-income urban settlements, this paper explores how a transdisciplinary research project supported capacity building. Our findings suggest that knowledge co-creation at the community level is central to the capacity building that is needed in order to inform transformative adaptation. The collaborative methodology used is also important; we illustrate how a transdisciplinary approach can contribute to transformative adaptation where knowledge is co-produced to empower community-level actors and organizations to assert their perspectives with greater confidence and legitimacy. We argue that if capacity building processes shift from the top-down transferal of existing knowledge to the co-creation of contextual understandings, they have the potential to deliver more transformative adaptation. By considering diverse sources of knowledge and knowledge systems, capacity building can start to confront inequalities and...