Challenges to building social capital through planned adaptation: Evidence from rural communities in Bangladesh

Abstract

Social capital facilitates adaptation to climate change. Planned community-based adaptation (CBA) therefore – often implemented by non-governmental organisations – seeks to engender social capital to strengthen the adaptive capacity of vulnerable communities in the Global South. CBA interventions typically seek to build social capital through the formation of community-based organisations, often led by the most vulnerable groups such as poor women, with the view that these groups will sustain and make efforts to strengthen community capacity to adapt to climate change. This paper presents the results of a research project that sought to understand the challenges of building social capital through group-based CBA interventions in the rural coastal communities of Bangladesh. Drawing on the accounts of four female-led community organisations and their respective communities, we argue that strengthening social capital was obstructed by embedded sociocultural norms and by the assumptions made by external organisations about how to create social capital. This study concludes that CBA needs to frame gender from an intersectional point of view, rather than a simplistic ‘male-versus-female dichotomy’ to build community capacities through female-led collectives. It thus contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature on social capital, gender and community adaptation.