Abstract
At their core, donor-funded climate and disaster resilience programmes provide goods and services to help build assets and minimise the impact of shocks and stresses on people’s lives and livelihoods. Little is known, however, about the way local risk governance systems and the broader institutional arrangements, in which they are embedded, mediate people’s access to these services and therefore lead to improved resilience. Drawing on Social-Ecological Systems theory, we explore those characteristics of risk governance systems believed to be more favourable for building resilience at the community level in different developing country contexts. These include: diversity; polycentricism and connectivity; decentralisation and flexibility; participation and community engagement; and, learning and innovation. This review paper proposes a conceptual framework and assesses the evidence linking risk governance and access to the services needed to build resilient outcomes, drawing particularly on evidence from the Sahel and Horn of Africa. In doing so, we can start to understand where the entry points might be for strengthening resilience and the conditions needed for community-level initiatives to be brought to scale from the bottom up.
Highlights
Risk governance refers to both the institutional arrangements and policy processes that shape risk reduction and management approaches (Renn, Ortleb, Benighaus, & Benighaus, 2011)
Based on the examples provided in the literature for the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions and elsewhere, Table 1 offers a concise, if simplified, representation of the principal resilience outcomes associated with ecosystem services, climate forecasting services and financial services, in rural regions and the resilient governance characteristics most likely to promote these
Most examples can be found in the field of natural resource management, where there is a longer history of interventions aimed at building resilience relative to financial or climate services
Summary
Risk governance refers to both the institutional arrangements and policy processes that shape risk reduction and management approaches (Renn, Ortleb, Benighaus, & Benighaus, 2011). Most formal risk governance systems were centralised and response-focused, based on chains of command (Britton, 2001). These were disconnected from local, informal efforts to manage everyday risk (van Voorst, Wisner, Hellman, & Nooteboom, 2015). Decision-makers are recognising that multi-level governance is required to manage the range of risks faced by communities in developing countries (Pahl-Wostl, 2009). These include climate change and disasters, conflict, environmental degradation, land use Politics and Governance, 2016, Volume 4, Issue 4, Pages 62–73 change, food insecurity and human migration and displacement, as well as interacting effects (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2014). Strengthening of risk governance at the local level, both in terms of decision-making and fiscal representation, is thought to be key in promoting equitable and resilient development (Wilkinson et al, 2014)
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