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Does External Funding Help Adaptation? Evidence from Community-Based Water Management in the Colombian Andes

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Abstract

Despite debate regarding whether, and in what form, communities need external support for adaptation to environmental change, few studies have examined how external funding impacts adaptation decisions in rural resource-dependent communities. In this article, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to assess how different funding sources influence the initiative to adapt to water scarcity in the Colombian Andes. We compare efforts to adapt to water scarcity in 111 rural Andean communities with varied dependence on external funding for water management activities. Findings suggest that despite efforts to use their own internal resources, communities often need external support to finance adaptation strategies. However, not all external financial support positively impacts a community’s abilities to adapt. Results show the importance of community-driven requests for external support. In cases where external support was unsolicited, the results show a decline, or “crowding-out,” in community efforts to adapt. In contrast, in cases where communities initiated the request for external support to fund their own projects, findings show that external intervention is more likely to enhance or “crowds-in” community-driven adaptation.

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Notes

  1. 17 water associations were excluded in the analysis: in 8 cases it was impossible to complete the interviews (it was not possible to contact the WUA leader or they did not want to participate in the study). In 9 cases associations were exceptional: 8 cases did not use surface water sources and one WUA was exceptionably large (the WUA exceed 1,300 users compared to the median number represented by WUAs in the region, 86) that made adaptation strategies difficult to compare.

  2. It is pure coincidence that the number of household surveys (n = 111) is the same as the number of WUAs surveyed.

  3. For example, if a community had received unsolicited gifts that addressed 10 of the possible 11 strategies to cope with water scarcity, there would be little that they could do on their own (there is only one remaining strategy that they could potentially implement).

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) North American Regional Meeting. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 2010. This research would not have been possible without the support of National Science Foundation (DDIG# 0926584), Inter-American Foundation, Proyecto Páramo Andino, and University California Santa Barbara. The author would like to thank the Water User associations leaders for sharing their time and opinions with him; Fundación Humedales, CAR e Instituto Humboldt for their support in Colombia, and specially to Johanna Pisco y Mario Hernandez for their incredible help during fieldwork.

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Murtinho, F., Eakin, H., López-Carr, D. et al. Does External Funding Help Adaptation? Evidence from Community-Based Water Management in the Colombian Andes. Environmental Management 52, 1103–1114 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-013-0156-z

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