Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

26 policy failure [42]. For instance, while most of the stakeholders expect farmers to use a potential production surplus to increase their revenues, farmers will use it to increase their food reserves, affecting the policy’s effectiveness. 3.2. Negotiating the Scope of Analysis The power to influence the final outcome is not symmetrical among stakeholders, with those holding key resources being in an advantageous position to impose their own interpretations in the final scope. System adaptation will “influence social relations, governance and distribution of resources in any given population or place” [39] (p. 2). However, as shown in this case, there is not always agreement about the changes and the scale at which those changes should be made. Those with higher level of influence in the scope of analysis might not be those directly affected by its outcomes. For instance, the small-scale farmers in Huehuetenango are the stakeholders directly affected by potential decisions about how to enhance resilience, but they are also those with the least influence on the decision-making process (see Figure 5). Power differences have contentious repercussions considering that those with a higher level of influence have different strategic agendas than those suffering the larger impacts of the policies implemented. This is particularly relevant since there is a clear difference between the farmers’ interpretations and those held by the rest of the stakeholders. Considering the different interpretations of resilience, the power to set agendas about what issues are to be addressed needs to be an important consideration during the PSP. Competitive agendas and mental models set the scenario for a game of power where different stakeholders seek to impose their own agendas on the scope of the analysis that will follow. The allocation and distribution of the access to natural resources have been, historically, an expression of power tension between different groups [14,39]. While building the resilience of the system outcomes, the resilience of the institutions and relationships defining those outcomes are also enhanced [43]. Many stakeholders perceive the resilience analysis as an opportunity to gain power or to influence the system towards their own interests [14]. This power might be exercised in many ways. For instance, stakeholders might scope the problem in isolation, ensuring their interpretations are the only ones represented. Alternatively, some groups could try to undermine those with competitive or opposite views by diminishing their credibility as shown in this case. For instance, note the comment above from NGO delegate 2 in which the delegate undermines farmers’ practices because they have no formal education. Any analysis that does not account for these tensions would result in an incomplete understanding of the scope of potential responses [14,44]. In short, recognising that there might be different interpretations of resilience implies accepting the PSP as a negotiation and political process. Seeing the PSP as a negotiation forum means that practitioners need to acknowledge the social and political factors (e.g., inequality and legitimacy) shaping the scope of analysis and need to be transparent about the implications of these factors on their recommendations. Otherwise, the resilience analysis risks being used, possibly inadvertently, as a way to legitimise the power of particular groups and to impose particular means to manage natural resources [43]. 3.3. What Are the Potential Implications? There are at least two implications resulting from the flexibility of resilience to interpretation. First, it seems unlikely that a proper analysis would result in a PSP that does not account for the many different interpretations of resilience in each particular context. If the scope of analysis has been defined by only a few groups, it risks being too narrow, excluding important elements from the analysis and reducing the range of solutions explored. For instance, the analysis might focus on short-term solutions, ignoring important feedback loop mechanisms of the system. Alternatively, a pure systemic view of the problem might fail to recognise uncertainty and might oversimplify decision rules and human behaviours. Second, stakeholderswhohave a different understandingof the problemwill rarely support or get actively engaged in the implementation of a solution that is not addressing their initial understanding of the problem [45]. The contribution of any solution is null if those ultimately responsible for implementing them are not willing to do so [46]. For instance, stakeholders might sabotage the policies proposed at the end of the analysis by refusing to participate in the implementation (e.g., training and the introduction of new practices) or, even worse, by explicitly opposing them (e.g., demonstrations against the introduction of new seeds). 3.4. Potential Avenues for Mitigation Recommendations are not conclusive, but it is possible to outline avenues for further development with the aim of reducing the potential drawback of power in the PSP. A possible avenue is to advocate for more participatory settings. So far, the SES literature has extensively discussed stakeholders’ participation as a requirement for the enhancement of resilience in the SES. However, very little has been elaborated on the role of participation in the formulation of the problem as such. Facilitated modelling approaches, such as Group Model Building [47] or Cognitive Mapping [48], might contribute to mediating this process (e.g., by introducing the CLD as a transitional object that helps to leverage power differences) [49,50]. These methods contribute in leveraging the power between groups by forcing participants to make their assumptions explicit in a diagram that is challenged by the group [47,51,52]. In this case, the diagram is used to jointly represent the problem definition shared by and agreed upon by different stakeholders through a process of negotiation and dialogue [49].