Abstract & Overview
The contextual nature of adaptation demands insights into the effects of actors' actions, decisions, and negotiations at different levels in the adaptation process to facilitate harmonizing and targeting actions. However, researchers who examine these activities at the micro level of communities and macro level of authorities in Sub-Saharan Africa are sparse. Consequently, using a qualitative approach and the Asset Adaptation Framework, we explored the everyday adaptations to flooding at the micro-levels of households/communities and the macro levels of governments before, during, and after flooding events in two low-income communities in Lagos, Nigeria. At the macro levels of governments, adaptation strategies centered on social reorganization and welfare, i.e., disaster reduction/management, in the temporal dimensions, situating adaptation in the adjustment/transitional flux. At the micro level, the strategies before flooding problematized the categorization of autonomous adaptation as unplanned. During flooding events, there was a difference in assets mobilized at the two levels, while macro-level actors mobilized financial assets for welfare, micro-level actors focused on social assets. After flooding, the positive psychology of self-conscientiousness in human assets aided the emergence of shadow networks that challenged the status quo and shaped each community's adaptation pathway/outcome. Furthermore, the human assets of faith/fate, place attachment, and autochthony used for building long-term resilience and entitlement claims aided a reposition of responsibility on the people's lifestyle by the authorities and supported a stance on adaptation as persistence/transitional. The stance on persistence/transitional pattern at the macro level notwithstanding, the shadow network in one of the communities utilized invited spaces of negotiation for entitlement claims that shifted the status quo and aided a transformational pattern. The highlighted shift in adaptation underlines the need to understand adaptation activities in the different spheres to guide policies, align actions, and facilitate a harmonized and sustainable adaptation.