Understanding the role of social capital for climate resilience.

该项目旨在提高我们对社会资本（SC）在撒哈拉以南非洲小农社区气候适应能力中的作用的理解。SC描述了个人在不同层面上与其他个人、群体和机构之间的联系，这种联系可以增强对气候冲击和其他外部因素的抵御能力。随着气候变化，生态系统可能变得越来越重要，因为需要加强恢复能力，以适应不断变化的极端水文气候并促进发展。该项目建立在先前工作的基础上，该工作已经确定了不同类型的SC（键合、桥接和连接）的重要性，并强调了SC随时间和空间变化的潜在意义。该项目将利用现有家庭调查数据的代理数据，探索粮食安全如何在空间尺度上、国家之间和国家内部发生变化，以了解粮食安全如何与社会经济因素相关。通过使用来自多年调查数据的代理，研究不同类型的SC如何随时间变化以及它们如何从一种类型转变为另一种类型，将探索SC的时间动态。将重点放在教育机会上，这是一个假设的增强SC的关键因素，例如通过多样化和扩大网络，这可能对恢复力很重要。数据分析将通过实地工作得到验证，并了解当地情况，可能将重点放在马拉维、肯尼亚和/或加纳的社区，并与这些国家的合作者建立联系，他们将提供宝贵的当地知识，并将研究结果的潜在影响置于背景中。

This project aims to improve our understanding of the role of social capital (SC) for climate resilience of smallholderfarming communities in sub-Saharan Africa. SC describes the connections that individuals possess at differentlevels with other individuals, groups, and institutions, which may provide increased resilience to climate shocks andother external factors. SC may become increasingly important with climate change as resilience needs to bestrengthened to adapt to changing hydroclimate extremes and facilitate development.The project builds on previous work that has identified the importance of different types of SC (bonding, bridging,and linking) and highlighted the potential significance of changes in SC over space and time. The project willexplore how SC changes across spatial scales, between and within countries, drawing from proxy data fromexisting household survey data, to understand how SC is related to socioeconomic factors. The temporal dynamicsof SC will be explored by examining how different types of SC change over time and how they transition from onetype to another, using proxies derived from available multi-year survey data. There will be a focus on access toeducation as a key factor hypothesized to enhance SC, such as through diversifying and broadening networksthat may be important to resilience. The data analysis will be validated by fieldwork and to understand localcontexts, likely focusing on communities in Malawi, Kenya and/or Ghana, and linking to collaborators in thesecountries, who will provide invaluable local knowledge and contextualise the potential impact of the researchfindings.