Unravelling the „capacity-action-gap”: An exploration of the difficult role of adaptive capacity in enhancing flood resilience

Abstract

As climate change advances and extreme weather events get more frequent, responsibilities for managing environmental hazards are newly negotiated. In several European countries, a shift towards individualisation of flood risks can be observed (Butler et al. 2011; Mees et al. 2016; Rauter et al. 2020). Residents are increasingly expected to take adaptive actions to reduce risks and strengthen resilience in the case of extreme events, like floods (e.g. Begg et al., 2017). To assess the adaptive behaviour of households, research typically uses adaptive capacity as the main proxy (Mortreux et al. 2020). However, it is increasingly clear that high levels of adaptive capacity do not necessarily translate into high levels of private adaptation (Mortreux et al. 2020; IPCC 2022: 164). A better theoretical and empirical understanding of the gap between adaptive capacity and action is therefore urgently needed.

This paper addresses the following questions:

(1) What kinds of measures are taken by what kind of households?

(2) What are the most decisive factors explaining why households become active

to protect themselves?

(3) How are the taken measures related to the adaptive capacity of households?

Our study is based on a survey conducted in early 2022 with 1,615 households in a rural region in Southern Germany, which is heavily affected by increasing pluvial floods.

By means of descriptive statistics and regression analysis, different sets of private flood adaptation measures (behavioural and building measures, insurance uptake) are linked to household profiles. Thereby, vulnerability and different dimensions of the adaptive capacity of the household are taken into account.

Being one of the most affluent and dynamically growing regions in Germany, the adaptive capacity of households is comparatively high. Yet, adaptation action remains at a rather low level. Our results, thus, indicate a „capacity-action-gap” (Schubert et al., forthcoming). Classical adaptive capacity indicators such as education, income and social capital are only very weak predictors for adaptation actions. Socio-cognitive variables such as risk awareness and previous flood experience explain the uptake of adaptation measures way better. Furthermore, adaptive capacity indicators bear no own explanatory power; they are only proxies for related constructs such as property ownership and coping capacity.

With these insights into households’ practices and perceptions, we want to contribute to a more nuanced and critical discussion on the trend of individualizing responsibilities in flood risk management. The question is how to achieve a resilient society in the coming years if even those households which are endowed with sufficient resources cannot be expected to adapt out of their own free choice and on their own.