Enhancing Adaptive Capacity to Flooding of Households: Evidence from Lakeshore Communities of Pila, Laguna, Philippines

Abstract

There is a need for households in flood-prone areas to strengthen their adaptive capacities to cope with the negative impacts of climate change. The main objective of this paper is to measure adaptive capacity to cope with the effects of flooding of households in lakeshore communities of Pila, Laguna, Philippines, a municipality with high vulnerability to climate change. The adaptive capacity index (ACI) was estimated by adapting the objective and subjective approaches to adaptive capacity measurements and using both equal and unequal weighting approaches to index estimation with household-level data. We also looked at the levels of adaptive capacity by income group and presented policy recommendations. Overall, the findings of this research suggest that there is a need to prioritize households with low adaptive capacities and be given necessary local government support. Results also suggest the use of appropriate weights for estimating the adaptive capacity index. There were statistically significant differences between the ACIs of households using equal and unequal weighting approaches. Since this study is case-specific, there is a need to conduct further studies using the three weighting approaches and determine how results vary across groups.