Role of Social Capital and Relational Well-being in Shaping the Community Level Responses to Tropical Cyclones among the Small-Scale Fisheries Communities in Chilika Lagoon, India

Abstract

Small scale fisheries (SSFs) are more vulnerable to calamities brought on by natural hazards, changing climatic conditions, and climate change due to their proximity to the seashore. Dealing with these challenges is an added burden to already existing vulnerabilities, injustice and marginalization faced by them. The Indian subcontinent with a vast coastline extending up to 7516 kms (about 4670.23 mi), is vulnerable to world’s 10% tropical cyclones, especially in the places adjacent to Bay of Bengal (BoB). Asia’s largest and world’s second largest brackish water lagoon, adjacent to BoB - Chilika lagoon, situated in Odisha state of India is extremely prone to catastrophic events, causing around 5-6 cyclones hitting the coast annually. SSFs who depend on the lagoon for their livelihood are on the forefront suffering from the repercussions of cyclonic activities. While resilience against events like cyclones is usually analyzed in terms of economic and infrastructure aspects, there is a lack of focus on the intrinsic material aspects contributing to community resilience in the face of climate related disasters. This research fills this gap by analyzing the community resilience of SSF’s in Chilika Lagoon through the lens of social capital and relational well-being. Social capital measures the different links or connections a community has within and outside of their network that helps them build effective response strategies through collective action at the time of crisis. Communities with high social capital can bring community members together for better preparedness, emergency support, response, and recovery efforts. Nevertheless, it is not the existence of all these linkages that matters, but the quality and balance of all these ties are imperative. For instance, the effectiveness of these could be hindered in a community level resilience if it lacks the ability to address the power imbalance, social inequality, and trust. Thus, relational well-being measures the quality of various networks through characteristics such as trust, reciprocity, support, and network dynamics which create a sense of motivation to work collectively. The study employs a qualitative case study approach and multiple data collection tools such as semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, and focus group discussions. The key findings present the various challenges faced by the communities in various systems like social, economic, environmental and physical and their interconnectedness, role of social capital and relational well-being in the various community level response to deal with the crises, the lack thereof due to power imbalance, social inequality, caste system and political power and finally providing recommendations to ensure tailored context specific approaches to enhance the community resilience against disasters like tropical cyclone in the future.