Biography

Dr. Ralph Matthews is Professor of Sociology, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Coordinator in the Office of the VP Research and International, University of British Columbia. He is President of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee 23, Sociology of Science and Technology, former President of the Canadian Sociological Association and author of six books and 100 research papers.

Dr. Nathan Vadeboncoeur is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral fellow at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. His research integrates the study of risk perception with decision-analysis to explore ways to build community resilience to environmental hazards.

Article Title

Institutional Fit and Climate Change Adaptation: A Case Study from British Columbia and its Relevance to the Caribbean

Abstract

Much recent climate change results from social process. Human behaviour and governance responses affect both its causes and consequences. Likewise, attempts to mitigate climate change or adapt to its impacts also involve social processes.

The past decade has seen expanded interest in studying environmental changes as inclusive socio-ecological systems (e.g. Gunderson and Holling, 2002). Most such attempts simply apply concepts from ecology to social structure and cultural processes. The only uniquely ‘social’ concept used is ‘institution’. However, while asserting that institutional responses are critical to adaptation, little effort has gone into developing a broader framework that incorporates analysis of organization structures and individual action.

Our work in coastal British Columbia, adapts a ‘New Institutional Analysis’ (NIA) framework (cf. Hall and Taylor, 1996; Brinton and Nee, 2001; Young et al 2008) to understanding the ‘Adaptive Capacity’ of communities (cf. Matthews and Sydneysmith, 2010a; 2010b). Unlike studies of resilience focusing on community capacity to survive threats, an adaptive capacity perspective analyses the ability of communities to grow and prosper in the wake of climate risk. Our framework examines both the organizational structures of communities and particularly of levels of government that affect them as well as ‘institutional culture’. However, the primary unit of analysis is individual ‘actors’ operating within these communities and their ability to respond in flexible and creative ways to climate risk. In our paper we use our BC data to demonstrate the usefulness of our approach as well as its ability to provide the integration needed to encompasses both ecological and social contexts. We conclude with a discussion of the applicability of our ‘Adaptive Capacity, framework to assessing the adaptive capacity of communities in the Caribbean.