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Unravelling local adaptive capacity to climate change in the Bolivian Amazon: the interlinkages between assets, conservation and markets

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Abstract

This paper examines household adaptive capacity to deal with climatic change among the Tsimane’, an indigenous society of the Bolivian Amazon, and explores how exposure to conservation policies and access to markets shape such capacity. We surveyed Tsimane’ adults (77 men and 34 women) living in four communities with different accessibility to the regional markets. The four communities were located in indigenous territories, but two of them overlapped with a co-managed biosphere reserve. We compared households’ capacity for adaptation through indicators of access to social, financial and natural assets, entrepreneurial skills and human resources. We also assessed how conservation and markets condition such capacity. Our results show that, across communities, households clustered in four groups with differentiated adaptive capacity profiles: commoners typically participating in community meetings, vulnerable characterized by low shares of adaptive capacity indicators, leaders typically holding community positions, and subsidized mostly relying in government remittances. Overlap with the biosphere reserve was significantly associated with the adaptive capacity profile of vulnerable households. In contrast, access to markets does not seem to be related to household adaptive capacity. We discuss relevant behavioral and structural factors for current adaptation to climatic changes and priority measures to foster local adaptive capacity in indigenous territories overlapping with protected areas.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Tsimane’ communities for their hospitality and for participating in this research. This research was funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreements n° 282899: “Assessing the effectiveness of community-based management strategies for biocultural diversity conservation (COMBIOSERVE)” and n° FP7-261971-LEK: “The adaptive nature of culture: A cross-cultural analysis of the returns of Local Environmental Knowledge in three indigenous societies (LEK).” Á. F-L was also supported by the Academy of Finland (grant agreement nr. 292765). We also thank the Fundació Autònoma Solidària (FAS) at UAB, the Gran Consejo Tsimane, UMSS and CBIDSI for their support, as well as I. Díaz-Reviriego and I.V. Sánchez for their help during fieldwork. We thank M. Borrós for cartographical analysis, A. Ornelas for statistical assistance and R. Garcia for the development of the climate change metrics in Fig. 1. The Servicio Nacional de Hidrología y Meteorología of Bolivia (SENAHMI) provided climate data. This work contributes to ICTA ‘Unit of Excellence’ (MinECo, MDM2015-0552).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Av Carl Friedrich Gauss, 08860, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain

    Isabel Ruiz-Mallén

  2. Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Edifici Z Carrer de les Columnes, 08193, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

    Isabel Ruiz-Mallén, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares & Victoria Reyes-García

  3. Metapopulation Research Centre (MRC), Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65 (Viikinkaari 1), FI-00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares

  4. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Passeig Lluís Companys 23, 08010, Barcelona, Spain

    Victoria Reyes-García

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  1. Isabel Ruiz-Mallén
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  2. Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares
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Correspondence to Isabel Ruiz-Mallén.

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Ruiz-Mallén, I., Fernández-Llamazares, Á. & Reyes-García, V. Unravelling local adaptive capacity to climate change in the Bolivian Amazon: the interlinkages between assets, conservation and markets. Climatic Change 140, 227–242 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1831-x

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