Voicing resilience through subjective well-being: community perspectives on responding to water stressors and COVID-19

Ecology and Society: a journal of integrative science for resilience and sustainability

article

Kristina Humphreys¹  Johan Enqvist² 

[1] Uppsala University;Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University;African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town

关键词: community-level adaptation;    COVID 19;    Global South;    social-ecological resilience;    subjective well-being;    transformative capacity;    water justice;   

DOI  :  10.5751/ES-13192-270239

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: Resilience Alliance Publications

【 摘 要 】

Interactions among social inequalities, environmental stressors, and shocks are illustrated through communities’ subjectiveexperiences of water-related challenges and responses to crises. This situation is perhaps most visible in the COVID-19 pandemic’simpact on marginalized communities where climate change and systemic inequities are already threatening access to water and sanitation.It is critical to integrate dimensions related to well-being into research about vulnerable communities’ capacities and strategies forcoping and adapting to such crises. Here, we investigate water-related risks to health and well-being using a subjectivity lens, a particularlyuseful tool for understanding community-level resilience to lesser-known stressors and crisis impacts. To inform this study, we usedhouseholds’ self-reported water issues in Cape Town, South Africa’s low-income areas from before the pandemic, in addition tocommunity responses during the pandemic. The findings show how inadequate access to water and sanitation affects people’s healthand well-being, both directly by exposure to wastewater and impaired hygiene, and indirectly by creating stress and social conflict, andundermining subsistence gardening and medical self-care. However, our study also illustrates how grassroots-led responses to theCOVID-19 crisis address these vulnerabilities and identify priorities for managing water to support well-being. The results demonstratetwo ways that subjective perceptions of well-being can help to promote resilience: first, by identifying stressors that underminecommunity well-being and adaptive capacity; and second, by voicing community experiences that can help to guide crisis responsesand initiatives critical for adapting to social-ecological shocks. The results have important implications for enabling transformativechange that aligns efforts to address issues linked to poverty and inequality with those seeking to respond to environmental emergencies.

【 授权许可】

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