Collective action among communities for early adoption of top-down adaptation policies

Abstract

"This thesis, through two essays, examines how policy interventions for climate adaptation can foster collective action for vulnerable communities as well as the configuration of conditions at the community level that leads to early adoption and collective action, respectively. It studies the case of a centrally sponsored adaptation interventions for communities of agriculturalists, pastoralists, and fishers in Kachchh, Gujarat. Under the National Adaptation Fund for Climate Change (NAFCC), the adaptation intervention implemented by the State Government agency aims to build adaptive capacity of the three communities. The first essay studies how policy instruments drive collective action for a given economic nature of collective adaptation goods provided through government interventions. By focusing on NAFCC interventions requiring collective action across the three communities of pastoralists, fishers, and agriculturalists of Kachchh, the essay examines how the free rider problem is tackled at the policy plan, implementation, and adoption stage. The study finds that adaptation goods that require collective action for its uptake can have club good characteristics or the relatively well-understood common pool resource properties. The study further highlights the role of beneficiaries in co-producing these two kinds of collective adaptation goods depending on the incentives they face. Through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the second essay studies the configuration of conditions that lead to early adoption and collective action among nearidentical, same-sized 20 farmer groups that received a shared underground tank to harvest rainwater each as adaptation solution funded by NAFCC. The study finds that these conditions are connected to factors that impact cost of transforming the status quo for the group and their internal norms. Sole reliance on farm income and costlier coping mechanisms involving migration in the past are found to be necessary conditions (but not sufficient) for early adoption of planned adaptation and collective action by farmer groups. Further, five sufficient configurations for early adoption and two sufficient configurations for collective action are identified. The study finds that communities devise their own rules and arrangements to tailor the collective adaptation interventions to meet their adaptation needs which are embedded within the policy framework of the intervention and local social and political context that influence their legitimacy."