Adaptive governance and community resilience to cyclones in coastal Bangladesh: Addressing the problem of fit, social learning, and institutional collaboration

Abstract

Building community resilience to climate-induced disaster shocks requires an innovative, adaptive, and forward-looking approach. However, empirical data on such initiatives is lacking. Adopting an Adaptive Governance Framework, we gathered evidence that collaborative multi-loop social learning by multilevel institutions (local, regional, and national) can significantly enhance community resilience to climate induced disaster shocks and reduce gaps between institutional disaster governance responsibilities and capacities. Following a Case Study approach, we investigated the disaster resilience of two coastal communities in Bangladesh. Our primary data collection techniques were Key Informant Interviews and document reviews. The results of our investigation revealed three key prerequisites for building community resilience to nature-triggered disasters like cyclones or floods: i) the presence of multiple nested institutional structures at the local level; ii) multi-loop social learning at multiple institutional levels; and iii) documentation of lessons learned from each disaster and the application of these lessons to disaster governance at all institutional levels. We documented that bridging organizations play a decisive role in documenting and scaling-up lessons learned from episodic extreme weather events. Therefore, more emphasis needs to be placed on the importance of bridging organizations in scaling up lessons from episodic disaster events into national-level policy and practice.