Social capital and institutional complexity in Svalbard: the case of avalanche disaster management
Disaster Prevention and Management
ISSN: 0965-3562
Article publication date: 8 April 2022
Issue publication date: 9 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Resilience can be understood as the ability of communities to adapt to disturbances in a way that reduces chronic vulnerability and promotes growth. Disaster scholars assert that resilience is developed through a set of adaptive capacities across multiple domains, including society, the economy, the built and natural environments, and sociopolitical institutions. These adaptive capacities have been thought to be networked, but little is known about how they are connected. The authors explore how institutional capacity and social capital intersect to influence change adaptation, using a case from the Artic: Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use case study methods that integrate original interviews of Longyearbyen residents with news articles and public documents to analyze emergent themes related to institutional capacity, social capital and disaster risk reduction.
Findings
Analyses reveal that implementation gaps in hazard and disaster programs and policies, coupled with high turnover of staff in key positions, have created accountability issues indicative of low institutional capacity and weak social capital between the public and government. Additionally, high turnover of the population of the community, within the context of the legacy as a mining company town, is accompanied by social divisions and low trust between diverse cultural groups in the community. This lack of social capital provides little support for institutional capacity to effectively mitigate risk posed by climate change.
Originality/value
This study illuminates institutional capacity building needs directly related to disaster resilience for cases of complex institutional arrangements and developing democracy.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: Data collection was undertaken as part of the REGIMES project, funded by the Research Council of Norway, under grant number 257628. The objective is to assess the consequences geopolitically and socially of changes to ecosystem goods and services under climate change in Svalbard. https://regimes.w.uib.no
Citation
Tiller, R.G., Ross, A.D. and Nyman, E. (2022), "Social capital and institutional complexity in Svalbard: the case of avalanche disaster management", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 425-439. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-05-2021-0168
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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