Adaptive capacity and livelihood resilience: adaptive strategies for responding to floods and droughts in South Asia

Strengthening the adaptive capacity of populations at all levels from the local to the global is among the most important challenges facing development. The results of our research point, among other things, to the critical importance of transboundary flows of information, funds, goods, services, ideas and often people in determining the adaptive capacity of local populations. The Adaptive Strategies Project is the result of a unique collaboration between local organizations, research institutions and international organizations working across South Asia. It represents an initial attempt to understand and disaggregate the factors which enable communities to adapt to floods, droughts and climatic variability by examining the courses of action households actually take during flood and drought. The case studies analyzed in this publication have been conducted in drought- and flood-affected regions of India and Nepal.