The influence of community-based resource management institutions on adaptation capacity: A large-n study of farmer responses to climate and global market disturbances

An underlying understanding among adaptation and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) scholars is the existence of important feedbacks between local resource management institutions and individual adaptive capacity. The relationship between CBNRM and individual adaptive capacity is of global concern given the ubiquity of CBNRM worldwide, the patent impacts of global changes at local levels, and the recent calls for the integration of climate and rural development policies. So far, however, there have not been formal, large-n studies of that relationship. This study aims to fill that gap by testing whether the performance of communitybased water management institutions and communal land regimes have an impact on the effectiveness of farmers’ adaptation responses to climatic and global market disturbances. For this purpose, the study relies on a unique dataset of individual and collective features obtained from water user associations (WUAs) and ejidos in Mexico. According to the regression results, well-functioning community-based water management institutions have a positive and significant impact on individual farmers’ self-reported response effectiveness. The impact of communal land property is also significant but negative. These effects, which hold only in the context of climate disturbances but not market disturbances, can be explained by looking at the support given by the associations to farmers, and issues of communal land marginalization, respectively. Policies that strengthen the autonomy and capacity for cooperation of WUAs and ameliorate structural deficits in communal land regimes shall not only guarantee a long-advocated path for rural development but also help farmers deal with some of the climatic uncertainties that increasingly threaten agriculture.


Introduction
Agriculture worldwide is increasingly exposed to a wide range of climatic and socio-economic pressures, including droughts, floods and plagues, input and crop price volatility and competition over land and water resources (Feola et al., 2015). This has raised concerns about meeting human demands for water and food (Godfray et al., 2010), and given rise to a substantial scholarship on farmer adaptation. A good number of adaptation scholars have focused on the factors that explain the willingness and capacity of individual farmers' to respond to climate change and variability (Feola et al., 2015;Eakin et al., 2006Eakin et al., , 2014Pradhan et al., 2015). Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) scholars, on the other hand, have focused on understanding the capacity of local resource-dependent communities to manage their shared resources cooperatively, and on how socio-ecological disturbances impact that capacity and shape collective adaptations (Anderies et al., 2004;Fleischman et al., 2010;Cox, 2014;Villamayor-Tomas, 2014). An underlying understanding among authors from both traditions is the existence of important feedbacks between CBNRM and individual adaptive capacity (Adger, 2003;Murtinho and Hayes, 2011;Armitage, 2005;Tompkins and Adger, 2004;Adger et al., 2005). The relationship between CBNRM and individual adaptive capacity is of global concern given the ubiquity of CBNRM worldwide, the patent impacts of global changes at local levels, and the recent calls for the integration of climate and rural development policies (Eakin et al., 2014;Klein et al., 2005) to disturbances in community-based resource management regimes. The research questions that drive the research are: Are there identifiable patterns in the way farmers respond to different types of disturbances to their livelihoods? And, do community-based land and water management institutions affect the effectiveness of farmers' responses? To answer these questions the study adopts an integrative approach to the study of adaptation, i.e., one that (1) observes both climatic and socio-economic disturbances (Tucker et al., 2010;Murtinho and Hayes, 2011), and (2) explains the adaptive capacity of farmers (i.e., their capacity to respond to disturbances effectively) and its relation to CBNRM institutions by looking at proximate and more structural factors (Ribot, 2014;Eakin and Lemos, 2006). Empirically, the study relies on a multi-level set of data obtained from irrigation farmers and Water User Associations (WUAs) in Mexico. Studying farmer's adaptive capacity in the context of Mexican irrigation systems is important for several reasons. Irrigated agriculture can represent a "win-win" solution to problems of environmental risk and poverty in rural areas in many countries, if proper natural resource management regimes are in place (Araral, 2013;Kerr, 2007). At the same time, irrigated agriculture −particularly in arid and semi-arid regions-is one of the economic activities where the impact of climatic and non-climatic events is most evident (Boken et al., 2005). Irrigation systems are managed by WUAs in many regions around the world. Indeed, much of the foundations of our current knowledge about community-based natural resource management relies on irrigation management studies (Agrawal, 2001;Poteete et al., 2010). Mexico is a flagship case of the turn towards CBNRM that many developing countries have gone through in the last decades (Subramanian et al., 1997). The process of decentralization in the irrigation sector, which involved most notably the creation and empowerment of WUAs at the local level (Vermillion, 1997), has been profiled internationally as a policy success (Garces-Restrepo et al., 2007;Rap and Wester, 2013). Also, the Mexican productive sector has been exposed to globalization, market liberalization, and climatic risk (Luers et al., 2003, Eakin, 2005, which constitute a typical combination of disturbances in developing regions (Adger et al., 2003;Eakin and Lemos, 2006). Finally, Mexico has one of the world's highest proportions of agricultural land under communal property (the ejido system) −approximately 57% of the irrigable areawhich offers a unique opportunity to study the influence of different combinations of land and water property regimes on adaptation.

Farmer adaptive capacity and community-based natural resource management
Adaptation has been defined as "changes in processes, practices and structures to moderate potential damages or to benefit from opportunities associated with climate change" (Mccarthy et al., 2001). Meanwhile, adaptive capacity (also referred to as adaptation capacity) concerns not the observed changes but the system's predicted ability to carry out those actions to prepare and adapt to future disturbances (Smit and Wandel, 2006;Engle, 2011). Both, however, are intricately related: as Smit and Wandel (2006: 287) put it, "adaptations are manifestations of adaptive capacity". Hence, often adaptive capacity is analyzed ex-post based on the observed effectiveness of particular (adaptation) responses.
The farming sector is particularly vulnerable to disturbances of different kinds, to which farmers need to adapt via a variety of responses. Much is known about the individual factors that contribute to the effectiveness of farmer adaptation responses. Two of the most cited factors include economic resources and access to relevant information. Economic resources protect farmers from debt traps in the aftermath of ecological disasters and allow them to opt for high-cost adaptation investments or favored coping options (Cardona et al., 2012;Eriksen et al., 2005;Liu et al., 2008;Reidsma et al., 2010;Vásquez-León et al., 2003). Having the right information, whether climatic, technological or institutional, increases risk awareness and allows farmers to make strategic choices and planning in preparation for disturbances (Vásquez-León et al., 2003;Phillips, 2003;Patt and Gwata, 2002;Ziervogel, 2004;Nhemachena et al., 2014;Wheeler et al., 2013). Less is known about the role of local collective action institutions, i.e., rules governing land and water resources, on the capacity of farmers to remain in business in the advent of disturbances. This gap is particularly noticeable in developing countries, where collective resource-management institutions are widespread (Agrawal, 2001), and where bottomup adaptation experiences have traditionally been central to the resilience of vulnerable populations (Adger et al., 2003) Water, e.g., irrigation, is managed through community-based, water user associations (WUA) in many countries around the world (Garces-Restrepo et al., 2007). The main function of the associations is to guarantee that their members get the water they need in the right quantity and timing. This depends on the ability of the users, e.g., farmers, to design rules for collective decision-making, water allocation, infrastructure maintenance, and conflict-solving. Monitoring and sanctioning ensure compliance with rules and therefore institutional performance (Meinzen Dick, 2007). In turn, institutional performance strengthens trust among the association members, makes their behavior more predictable and facilitates individual and collective planning (Ostrom and Walker, 2002;Ostrom, 1998;Folke et al., 2005;Grothmann and Patt, 2005). Droughts and other disturbance events increase the stakes over resource use and threaten the ability and willingness of users to cooperate (Blanco et al., 2015). In these contexts, enforcement can again be particularly important to guarantee sufficient compliance levels and the robustness of the management system (Villamayor-Tomas, 2014).
Authors studying the interaction of irrigation management regimes and land property have pointed to a variety of issues, including the positive impact of tenure security on irrigation investments (Hodgson, 2004); the water use efficiency implications of the appropriation versus riparian water rights doctrines (Rosegrant and Gazmuri, 1995), the negative impacts of state-promoted irrigation projects on land distribution and tenure security (Cotula, 2006), the effects of land use changes on water quantity and quality in riparian areas (Meinzen Dick and Nkonya, 2007), and the management implications of uncoordinated land and water management policies (Meinzen Dick and Nkonya, 2007). With very few exceptions, however, the impact of communal and private property of land on irrigation management has been scarcely explored (Akudugu and Issahaku, 2013;Onyango et al., 2007).

Methods
Methodologically, the paper falls in-between the positivist and constructivist approaches to adaptation (Ribot, 2014). Risk is understood as a tangible by-product of specific natural and social disturbances. At the same we recognize that "risks do not directly reflect natural reality but are refracted in every society through lenses shaped by history, politics and culture" (Jasanoff 1999, pp. 139;cited by Ribot, 2014).
Specifically, the paper unfolds as an "anatomy of adaptation" (Smit et al., 2000), which seeks to (1) answer the questions of to what farmers adapt (i.e. specific disturbances), and how (i.e. specific adaptation responses) (Murtinho and Hayes, 2011); and (2) explain the effectiveness of those adaptation responses by looking at both proximate (e.g., WUA performance) as well as structural factors (Ribot, 2014). While the analysis does not look directly at adaptive capacity, we take the effectiveness of the observed adaptation responses as indirect evidence of it.