Household-specific barriers to citizen-led flood risk adaptation

• Published in: Climate Action 2024-01, Vol.3 (1), p.112-12, Article 112
• Main Authors: Howard, Ben C., Awuni, Cynthia A., Agyei-Mensah, Samuel, Bryant, Lee D., Collins, Alexandra M., Yidana, Sandow Mark, Yiran, Gerald A. B., Buytaert, Wouter
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 704/106/242; 704/844/1759; 704/844/2175; 704/844/841; 706/689/694/2739/2819; Adaptation; Climate adaptation; Climate Change; Climate Change Management and Policy; Climate effects; Earth and Environmental Science; Emergency communications systems; Environment; Environmental Economics; Environmental Politics; Environmental risk; Floods; Households; Intervention; Low income groups; Social Policy
• ISSN: 2731-9814; 2731-9814; 2731-3263
• DOI: 10.1038/s44168-024-00198-y

Adaptation is essential to mitigate the effects of climate change, such as increasing flood risk. In response to widespread maladaptation, citizen-led approaches are increasingly championed, whereby people on the frontline of climate change determine their own objectives and strategies of adaptation. Enabling equitable and effective citizen-led adaptation requires an understanding of the barriers for different groups of people but this is currently lacking, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Using responses to a co-produced household survey ( n  = 286) in Tamale, Ghana, we show that barriers to citizen-led adaptation interventions ( n  = 11) differ between households which we relate to important components of adaptive capacity. Overall, awareness, education, and networks are the most important barriers, but resources and time are important for poor households of fewer members. Barriers also differ between interventions and overall structural interventions are preferred over behavioural. This work can inform policies and actions to support effective and equitable citizen-led adaptation.