Operationalising Community Resilience to Climate Change in Developing Countries: A Grounded Delphi Method (GDM) Approach


 Background

Climate change and its impact have taken centre stage in contemporary political economic discourse. Climate change is posing complex problems that far outweighs the solutions suggested by the conventional analytical tools used for guiding responses to major environmental challenges. This is particularly the case in developing countries like Nigeria. Unsurprisingly the concept of community resilience towards climate change has received a great deal of attention from researchers and policy makers. However, community resilience is a contested concept, which leads to disagreement about the methods of achieving it. The nature of community resilience makes the measurement of the efficiency of the policies designed to increase community resilience problematic, particularly in developing countries where limited funds must be prioritised.
Methods

The research presented uses a Grounded Delphi Method (GDM) to identify how experts in Nigeria define community resilience and reach a consensus on its measurement in Nigeria’s context and other developing nations. The data collection involved three rounds of Delphi with a panel of 21 experts, the first round employed semi-structured interviews, following the exploratory Delphi approach, and subsequent rounds employed online surveys.
Findings:

The findings indicate that there is a process of stages that communities need to go through to become resilient to climate change. These begin with coping with climate change, followed by adaptation to climate change with the final stage being transformation in the face of climate change. Twenty indicators are identified categorised under eight elements that are suitable for measuring community resilience at the different stages of this process. It is interesting to note that the experts in Nigeria who participated in the study excluded notions of transformation in their conceptualisation of community resilience illustrating a potential gap in their perceptions of the requirements for how communities can become fully resilient.
Conclusion

This research provides a method of prioritising specific, measurable indicators to inform policies designed to reduce the impacts of climate change by supporting community resilience in the context of developing countries with limited funding.


Abstract
Background Climate change and its impact have taken centre stage in contemporary political economic discourse. Climate change is posing complex problems that far outweighs the solutions suggested by the conventional analytical tools used for guiding responses to major environmental challenges. This is particularly the case in developing countries like Nigeria. Unsurprisingly the concept of community resilience towards climate change has received a great deal of attention from researchers and policy makers. However, community resilience is a contested concept, which leads to disagreement about the methods of achieving it. The nature of community resilience makes the measurement of the e ciency of the policies designed to increase community resilience problematic, particularly in developing countries where limited funds must be prioritised.

Methods
The research presented uses a Grounded Delphi Method (GDM) to identify how experts in Nigeria de ne community resilience and reach a consensus on its measurement in Nigeria's context and other developing nations. The data collection involved three rounds of Delphi with a panel of 21 experts, the rst round employed semi-structured interviews, following the exploratory Delphi approach, and subsequent rounds employed online surveys.

Findings:
The ndings indicate that there is a process of stages that communities need to go through to become resilient to climate change. These begin with coping with climate change, followed by adaptation to climate change with the nal stage being transformation in the face of climate change. Twenty indicators are identi ed categorised under eight elements that are suitable for measuring community resilience at the different stages of this process. It is interesting to note that the experts in Nigeria who participated in the study excluded notions of transformation in their conceptualisation of community resilience illustrating a potential gap in their perceptions of the requirements for how communities can become fully resilient.

Conclusion
This research provides a method of prioritising speci c, measurable indicators to inform policies designed to reduce the impacts of climate change by supporting community resilience in the context of developing countries with limited funding.

Introduction
Climate change events such as heavy rainfall, oods, storms, drought and heat waves are affecting many parts of the world. The impact of any given shock at the community level depends on the magnitude of the hazard, the community's vulnerability to that shock and their capacity to withstand it. For most catastrophic cases, a shock can completely overwhelm a community to the point of collapse. Ultimately, the impacts of climate change vary according to geographical locations as some regions are affected more negatively than others (Wood et al. 2014; Tolentino-Arevalo et al. 2019). Also, the impacts of climate change at the community level are linked to vulnerability to shock and resilience capacity of the affected individuals (Proag, 2014;Tambo, 2016;Ullah et al. 2021).
The concept of community resilience has been increasingly discussed in academic and policy domains working and what is not? Without measurement and study there is no learning and without learning there is no forward progress other than that which might occur accidentally. To address this gap for policies aiming to increase resilience in the face of climate change, this research paper illustrates how community resilience can be de ned and measured in the context of Nigeria. The approach adopted is also relevant to other developing countries with similar social, economic and demographic contexts.
The remainder of this paper is divided into ve sections. Following this introduction, section two presents an overview of earlier attempts to de ne and measure community resilience. Section three outlines the research methodology used. Section four presents the results, section ve discusses the signi cance of the research ndings and section six concludes the paper.

Earlier Attempts To De ne And Measure Community Resilience
Ogah (2021) conducted a systematic review which identi ed the three main ways in which community resilience is de ned in the literature published between 2007 and 2018. These are coping capacity, adaptive capacity and transformative capacity. Coping capacity refers to the short-term ability of a community to cope with the impact of climate change (Ogah 2021). Community resilience as adaptive capacity is associated with long-term timeframes and implies that some learning or change in condition occurs which enables a community to become resilient. Transformative capacity is the capacity of a social, economic and environmental system to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure, while retaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation (Jacobs and Cramer, 2017, pp.1). Transformative capacity is associated with changes in the deep structures that lead to vulnerability and risk, as well as the root causes of the issues. These de nitions of community resilience are based on the stages and process which a community needs to go through to become resilient. This paper, therefore, explores how community resilience is de ned by government experts involved in climate change policy process in Nigeria, to understand the process they follow and the stage which they are in towards becoming resilient.
Ogah (2021) identi ed 49 indicators (Table 1) under eight elements (social, economic, demographic, infrastructure, institutional, environmental, training and awareness, health and fatality). The most frequently used elements for measuring community resilience were the social, economic and infrastructural and the least used were environmental, training and awareness and health and fatality. Since all elements are interlinked, increasing the positive indicators in only one or few elements will hinder the overall resilience of a community as the omitted components might create new vulnerability and impact on a community's resilience (Constas et al. 2014;Quinlan et al. 2015). Therefore, and although this might not be possible due to institutional and nancial limitations, policy should seek to increase the indicators levels for each element (Islam and Walkerden 2017). Therefore, policymakers need to prioritise some elements and their indicators depending on speci c situation in addressing an impact (Engle et al. 2013). Given the need for prioritisation, our research seeks to understand how policies designed to increase community resilience in Nigeria can be prioritised as a case study for developing nations.

Methodology
A Grounded Delphi Method (GDM) which incorporates features of Grounded Theory and Delphi is superior to the traditional Delphi approach as it "improves the rigour of theory building in Delphi studies, while the consensus, or force ranking, aspect of Delphi assists in improving the relevant level of importance of categories derived from Grounded Theory" (Howard, 2018, pp. 6). In Grounded Theory, the theory should emerge rather than be built (Okoli and Pawlowski, 2004). Expert selection is key to the success of research employing the Delphi method as participants are highly relevant to the questions asked, which ensures their interest throughout the Delphi process (Donohoe, 2011 Following the exploratory Delphi approach the data collection began by conducting a semi-structured interview with each member of the expert panel. The interviews, conducted between March to April 2019, lasted between thirty minutes and one hour. They were designed to understand how the members of the expert panel de ned community resilience and the indicators they thought might be used to measure levels of community resilience in the context of Nigeria. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed manually using open coding. A further two rounds of Delphi were conducted using online surveys to reach a consensus between experts on how competing issues can be prioritised to improve community resilience in developing countries. These were used to assess a list of pre-de ned indicators from the Delphi for measuring community resilience to climate change. Respondents gave answers using a 5-point Likert-type scale which allows for a degree of opinion in responses, and therefore, quantitative data can be obtained (Asun et al. 2016;Bryman, 2016). The criteria of checking the agreement rating of the impact assigned to the responses included: 5 very important; 4 important; 3 moderately important; 2 slightly important; and 1 unimportant. The data were reviewed to remove errors and then analysed with Microsoft Excel. In measuring for consensus, the methods of standard deviation, weighted mean and interquartile range (IQR) were used as also recommended by Bailie (2011)

Delphi round one
Of the experts interviewed 12 de ned community resilience in terms of adaptive capacity (a situation characterised by exibility), 5 de ned the concept in terms of coping capacity (a process characterised by stability) and 4 de ned it in terms of a combination of coping and adaptive capacity ( Table 2). The capacity of community to cope or resist the risk to climate change. Capacity to adapt to the impact of climate change.

E
The ability of an area or community to work against a particular problem. To put in place measures of combating a particular problem which may be affecting their communities.

G
The ability of the community to withstand the impact of climate change. How equipped the communities are to adapt to the impact of climate change.

I
The ability of the community to understand and be able to guard themselves on the impact of climate change.

J
The ability of a particular community to withstand the severity of the adverse impact of climate change. The capacity of the society to adjust and readjust to the adverse impact of climate change.

K
The ability of the community to put up adaptive measures in place against climate change.

L
The ability of the community to adjust and adapt to the impact of climate change.
M How the community can resist the impact of climate change? It just to make them take precautions, prepared and to plan for the impact of climate change.

O
The ability of a community to apply the available resources to adapt, respond to, withstand, and recover from adverse situations.

R
It means the ability of the community to utilise the available resources to respond to and respond to negative situations and disaster.

Scale of in uence
Direct quote of community resilience de nition Experts Community resilience is the ability of communities to prepare for anticipated hazards, adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruption as a result of climate change.
T Community resilience is the sustained ability of a community to utilise the available resources to respond to and recover from adverse situations.

U
Coping and adaptive capacity

Peoplecentred
How people are able to adapt or cope with climate change. B

Community
The way communities tend to guide against further disaster or coping and adaptive strategies of communities to deal with disaster. a feedback mechanism of the community to get back to itself after a climate event. The ability of a community to adjust or readjust themselves from prevailing situations or the environmental problems they face.

D
The ability of the community to adapt to the impact of climate change. Putting things in place to reduce the effect of climate change on communities. How communities are able to cope with the impact.

P
The ability of a community to adapt and cope during a disaster and to return to its previous state.

Q
The questions asked during the interviews were based on how the experts understood community resilience and how it is measured Hence indicators which are relevant to measuring community resilience and reducing the impact of climate change were identi ed and subsequently categorised into the following eight elements: infrastructural; training and awareness; environmental; social; economic; demographic; institutional, and health and fatality (Table 3). Interviewees most frequently referred to infrastructural and training and awareness elements. Institutions Enforcement of good land use planning 3 Equal distribution of responsibility 7 Synergy and harmonisation of policy 3 Health and fatality Access to health assistance and facilities 4

Delphi Round Two (Survey)
The indicators for measuring community resilience identi ed in round one of the Delphi study formed the basis of the survey conducted in round two of the Delphi study. The data from the survey was analysed based on the resulting Weighted Average (WA), Standard Deviation (SD) and Interquartile Range (IQR) as presented in Table 4. These different methods can be used to measure the importance of each indicator and achieve consensus (Murphy et al. 1998;Bailie, 2011). This method of weighting is acceptable for consensus (Hasson et al., 2000).   Rayens and Hahn, 2000). Furthermore, the standard deviation of the individual response to each indicator (≥ 1) was calculated in this study. A standard deviation between 0 and 1 is considered a strong consensus while that more than 1 re ects a weak consensus (Goldman et al. 2008). The standard deviation analysis in this research shows that only 59% of the experts agreed, indicating that consensus was not reached among the expert group on the 17 indicators within Delphi two. As indicated in Table 4, the standard deviation analysis identi ed seven indicators for which there was no consensus as follows: Adequate domestic and industrial waste facilities (SD = 1.10 > 1); Access to credit (SD = 1.23 > 1); Renewable energy (SD = 1.33 > 1); Enforcement of good land use planning (SD = 1.14 > 1); Ecological funding (SD = 1.06 > 1); Inter-community relationships (SD = 1.27 > 1); and Access to healthcare assistance and facilities (SD = 1.19 > 1).
The Interquartile range less than or equal to one (< 1 or = 1) is considered as strong consensus whereas an IQR more than one (> 1) is considered a weak consensus (Murphy et al. 1998). The IQR is very important as it is computed by using data lying along the rst quartile (25%) and the third quartile (75%), and measures the mid-spread or the middle 50% of responses (Musa et al., 2015). Similar to the ndings of the standard deviation, the IQR shows that there was no consensus for three out of the 17 community resilience indicators. These were adequate domestic and industrial waste facilities (IQR = 2 > 1); Access to credit (IQR = 1.25 > 1); and Renewable energy (IQR 2.25 > 1) ( Table 4). The main purpose of using a Delphi method is achieving a signi cant level of consensus from the expert panel on each of the community resilience indicators, which this Delphi round failed to achieve.    change is critical in the face of uncertainty and the expected increase of climate change impact in the future (Ziyath et al. 2013). The measurement of community resilience indicators is not meant to be used to compare one community against another. Preferably, it should be used as a relative measure within each community to identify better where investments and resources could be effectively applied to address their challenges. As such, this research identi ed elements and indicators relevant to developing countries that can be prioritised for measuring the effectiveness of current policies designed to support community resilience to climate change. Figure 1 shows the nal eight elements from Table 7 . Speci cally, coping capacity is de ned as consisting of seven elements (social, economic, infrastructural, institutional, demographic, environmental and health and fatality) that drive the resources, the capacity to prepare, absorb and recover from an event. The coping capacity indicators focus on short term strategies after a climate event. However, to improve community resilience, it is not simply about the short-term response strategies but nurturing and fostering stakeholders to engage in positive and sustainable strategies that build on the three capacities. The de nition of adaptive capacity consists of six elements (training and awareness, social, economic, institutional, infrastructural, and environmental) that drive the processes that aid changes through learning, reorganisation and adaptation of communities to plan and respond to climate event.
Transformative capacity includes two elements (institutional and infrastructural) that involve changes in the deep structures that cause vulnerability and risk (Table 8). Transformative capacity also includes the institutional mechanism, regulations, infrastructure and social protective mechanism that create enabling environment for change. The main difference between the review indicators (Ogah, 2021) and the indicators identi ed by the experts is that the indicators from the review are more generalised as identi ed from different publications, context and scale. In contrast, the experts in the current study identi ed the indicators that are needed for the communities in developing countries and indicators that should be prioritised due to inadequate funding in the implementation of policies.

Training and Awareness Element
Training and awareness is one of the most important elements to measure community resilience to climate change in this study. The element was ranked rst and emphasised three indicators that contribute to measuring resilience level. The learning and awareness indicators measure the number of awareness campaigns, training programmes and local skills available in communities. Adequate resource monitoring and feedback mechanisms were measured by the number of resources and projects that are monitored, and the number of stakeholders that have access to this information and provide feedback. Furthermore, communicating information in local languages, i.e. the number of agencies that give out information in local languages for communities to be able to prepare for and overcome any sudden occurrence, is an essential indicator that measures community resilience in the face of climate change in developing countries. According to Channa and Ahmed (2010), the availability of information and communication during and after an event is very important. The number of awareness campaigns, training programmes and social skills available in communities have positively contributed to developing community resilience (Norris, 2008). The community as a whole should know about climate change hazards and the effects to which they are exposed, as well as how to plan, prepare, cope and adapt. Training and awareness provide various techniques or knowledge aspects that could be applied to actions to deal with any event.

Health and Fatality Element
For communities to be able to meet their needs and achieve better living conditions, the health and fatality indicator is very signi cant. It improves sanitation standards, health assistance and facilities, thereby ensuring the health-related safety and general well-being of community members (Orencio and However, in this study, it is a standalone element that is key to measuring community resilience in communities.

Environmental Element
By improving green spaces, quality of natural resources and protecting biodiversity, environmental indicators activities can have direct implications for local climate change (Mavhura, 2017). They are, therefore, useful community resilience indicators to manage climate change in developing countries. The identi ed environmental indicators are renewable energy sources and sustainable agricultural practices.
These are measured by the percentage of energy demand serviced by renewable energy sources, and the percentage of people involved in agricultural practices that mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Infrastructural Element
Infrastructure is a crucial area for achieving community resilience ( therefore, be implied that building codes have to be supported with other resilient infrastructures. They also claimed that high-density buildings and roads on lowlands would make communities more vulnerable to ood. However, infrastructural indicators are expensive to strengthen; therefore, the resilience of the physical capital of the community largely depends on the economic health of that community.

Institutional Element
Institutional element in uences the capacities of a community to adapt to climate change events and is responsible for initiating and facilitating transformational processes to build resilience (Chung, 2017). Equal distribution of responsibility across government and non-governmental agencies helps to create the opportunity for development and fast track policy activities (Bulkeley, 2010). However, the key to this level of partnership for equal distribution of responsibility with other organisations is the level of coordination and organisation within the community itself (United Nations, 2012). Synergy and harmonisation of policy provide the ability, and builds capacity, to make decisions and implement strategies across a range of responsibilities and services (Tanner et al. 2009). Also, due to the crosscutting nature of climate change governance, most government departments and agencies are often not able to implement policies that need to address climate change problems. Thus, a good synergy and harmonisation of policy will help to bolster community resilience. Furthermore, the role of faith-based organisations can signi cantly engage and empower community members to develop resilience (Niaz, 2006). This is important since most developing countries are multi-religious, with high numbers of religious faith-based groups. Overall, the indicators within the institutional element re ect that top-down to bottom-up approaches should be adopted in creating linkages and planning and preparedness to enable communities to cope and recover from an event (Joerin et al. 2012).

Social Element
The indicators support fast and reliable relationships that constitute a network that can help release ideas, lessen losses and improve the community's self-reliability. In the current study there is a consensus amongst the experts that social indicators like community engagement and empowerment are closely linked. That is, the percentage of people involved in community activities and inter-community relationships or working relationships between two or more communities, are among the community resilience indicators that help to manage climate change in the context of Nigeria. Community engagement and empowerment programmes would not only encourage community members to become responsible but also knowledgeable and aware of their community's socio-economic and ecological status (Cutter et al. 2014; Forest and Milliken, 2018). Therefore, community engagement and empowerment processes are signi cant acts for measuring community resilience. Furthermore, intercommunity relationship is generally based upon the relatability among the people living under similar conditions, providing social supports and assistance, especially in case of emergencies (Amundsen, 2012). The more people are involved in community services, the easier it is for the community to adapt to climate change (Khalili et al. 2015). Also, cooperation between two or more communities on climate challenges helps build more robust and broader community resilience and faster recovery following a climate-induced disaster (Amundsen, 2012; Smith, 2012; Islam and Walkerden, 2017). These measures foster bonding, bridging, linkages and connectedness among the community members, which is very important during a climate event (Aldrich and Meyer, 2014). Thus, the larger the membership in the community, the higher the collective action to support community resilience to climate change.

Economic Element
The economic element plays a vital role in the empowerment of communities to become resilient to climate change (Bach, 2015;Kim and Marcuiller, 2016). This element is assessed from the household level to the entire community and includes community nances for various purposes on different levels that can support the community's goal. Also, there is a consensus on the economic indicators, and they are a signi cant component of community resilience to manage climate change. These include:

Demographic Element
Demographic element is an integral part of community resilience (Akamani, 2012;Bene et al. 2017). It plays a signi cant role in collecting the attributes of the community, which is further used in measuring e ciency in the implementation of policy actions. In this research, the demographic element focused on educational status, i.e. the percentage of the population with school leaving certi cate is an identi ed factor that supports community resilience to climate change. There was a consensus among all the experts that a well-informed individual has the knowledge and skills to put adaptive measures in place to enable community resilience. According to Ainuddin and Routray (2012), educational status gives an abstract idea of how educated and informed the people are towards the knowledge transfer and skills that could be useful during emergencies. Thus, the higher the ratio of the educated to uneducated people in a community, the better placed the community is to cope with climate change. In addition, improving and investing in education will save many lives and enhance community resilience (United Nations, 2012). This element was incorporated into the social element in other studies (Qasim et  This study identi ed an indicator that was not recognised in the published literature. Synergy and harmonisation of policy helps in the interaction between various institutional arrangements or strategies in the planning and implementation of adaptation and mitigation policies. This indicator promotes joint efforts in building capacity, avoiding duplication, broadening knowledge base, encouraging cooperation, providing opportunities and sharing experiences (UNFCCC, 2015). Also, the most mentioned elements were infrastructural and training and awareness. This is different from other literature, where the social and economic elements were mostly addressed. In the context of developing countries like Nigeria, these elements (infrastructural and training and awareness) are given more priority as they are the core areas where resilience needs to be built. This is due to the countries' geographical area, land characteristics, impacts on health more. Encouraging activities to improve this element can enhance the health status of the community members, reassure their lives and increase the number of participants that are t to take part in climate change activities.
Due to the increased number of participants as a result of improved wellbeing, the cost of community resilience activities can be potentially reduced. Some of the activities to support this element would involve seeking help from the surrounding communities, which would lead to inter-community bonding.
This would improve their relationship further, including business activities, and contribute positively to other elements. As a result of such deep interlinkages among the elements, a priority order cannot be assumed without understanding the needs of the communities. Hence it is more appropriate to use the phrase, 'relative prioritisation with respect to the targeted community'. Generally, prioritisation needs two criteria to be considered before analysis: the importance; and the need. While the measurement of community resilience is challenging and potentially constraining (Shari , 2016), the community resilience elements and indicators identi ed here are grounded and coherent for the broader application of community resilience within policy planning processes. Likewise, this could form a basis for the development of policy prioritisation guidance around community resilience applications for developing countries.

Conclusion
Through the GDM process, this study established a set of elements and indicators that represent a consensus-based community resilience capability to reduce the impacts of climate change. Speci cally, eight community resilience elements and 25 indicators were identi ed as integral yet versatile in helping decision-makers to plan towards enhancing community resilience to climate change effectively. Given paucity of funds for policy implementation, the indicators identi ed would help in prioritising actions based on the identi ed gaps in a given community. To this end, this study de ned community resilience as a process of stages that communities need to go through to become resilient to climate change. These begin with coping with climate change (short-term) then progress towards adaptation to climate change (medium-term) with the nal stage being transformation in the face of climate change (long-term). The elements and their indicators provide guidance to enable policy makers plan in climate change readiness for communities to become resilient. Finally, the study provided a methodology by which consensus between experts, on how competing issues may be prioritised to improve community resilience in developing countries, can be achieved. A well-developed and well-resourced exible community planning process represents a fundamental basis for future change to inform policy activities that support community resilience at the local, regional and national level. Figure 1 Proposed community resilience elements and indicators