Agency, social networks, and adaptation to environmental change

Environmental change is escalating across the globe, threatening the livelihoods and wellbeing of millions of people. Substantial effort and resources have been committed at a global scale to support adaptation projects in affected communities to confront these changes. Yet not everyone has equal capabilities to adapt, guide adaptation decisions, and contribute to envisioning alternative futures. Drawing on theories of agency, social networks, and adaptation and employing a unique time-series dataset including 653 individuals across five Kenyan coastal communities, here we examine how agency over adaptation decisions is socially differentiated and the disparities that exist regarding who is able to bolster their level of agency over time. Our results show that involvement in local environmental decision-making processes, where adaptation to environmental change is negotiated, is strongly associated with feelings of effective power. Yet this power is largely concentrated among older individuals, community leaders, those with greater assets, and those with social ties to leaders – pointing to existing social hierarchies and resource differentials that drive adaptation decisions. The only significant predictor of changes in agency over time was network exposure: individuals with direct contact with those who were actively involved in environmental decision-making (individual agency) were likely to become more involved themselves; yet contact with passively involved partners (proxy agency) led to decreases in agency over time. Our results suggest a dynamic ripple effect in agency through social networks, suggesting that social networks can both catalyse and inhibit perceptions of effective power over adaptation decisions through participation in environmental decision-making. Our findings underscore the importance of social networks in enabling and constraining agency, highlight the role of leadership and power dynamics in environmental decision-making and locally led adaptation, and provide a foundation for future research on fostering inclusive and just adaptation.