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Worldwide, marginalized and low-income communities will disproportionately suffer climate change impacts while also retaining the least political power to mitigate their consequences. To adapt to environmental shocks, communities must balance intensifying natural resource consumption with the need to ensure the sustainability of ecosystem provisioning services. Thus, scientists have long been providing policy recommendations that seek to balance humanitarian needs with the best outcomes for the conservation of ecosystems and wildlife. However, many conservation and development practitioners from biological backgrounds receive minimal training in either social research methods or participatory project design. Without a clear understanding of the sociocultural factors shaping decision-making, their initiatives may fail to meet their goals, even when communities support proposed initiatives. This paper explores the underlying assumptions of a community's agency, or its ability to develop and enact preferred resilience-enhancing adaptations. We present a context-adaptable toolkit to assess community agency, identify barriers to adaptation, and survey perceptions of behaviour change around natural resource conservation and alternative food acquisition strategies. This tool draws on public health and ecology methods to facilitate conversations between community members, practitioners and scientists. We then provide insights from the toolkit's collaborative development and pilot testing with Vezo fishing communities in southwestern Madagascar.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture’.

Worldwide, marginalized and low-income communities will disproportionately suffer climate change impacts while also retaining the least political power to mitigate their consequences. To adapt to environmental shocks, communities must balance intensifying natural resource consumption with the need to ensure the sustainability of ecosystem provisioning services. Thus, scientists have long been providing policy recommendations that seek to balance humanitarian needs with the best outcomes for the conservation of ecosystems and wildlife. However, many conservation and development practitioners from biological backgrounds receive minimal training in either social research methods or participatory project design. Without a clear understanding of the sociocultural factors shaping decision-making, their initiatives may fail to meet their goals, even when communities support proposed initiatives. This paper explores the underlying assumptions of a community's agency, or its ability to develop and enact preferred resilience-enhancing adaptations. We present a context-adaptable toolkit to assess community agency, identify barriers to adaptation, and survey perceptions of behaviour change around natural resource conservation and alternative food acquisition strategies. This tool draws on public health and ecology methods to facilitate conversations between community members, practitioners and scientists. We then provide insights from the toolkit's collaborative development and pilot testing with Vezo fishing communities in southwestern Madagascar.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Climate change adaptation needs a science of culture’.

Abstract The coffee sector generates vast amounts of residues along its value chain. Crop residues, like coffee stems, are burned in the field, used for domestic cooking or coffee drying in processing plants having significant environmental and health implication to rural communities. This research investigated the environmental impacts of replacing current practices with modern bioenergy applications in the Colombian coffee sector. A biomass gasification system to produce decentralised energy from coffee stems was considered, and the environmental impacts of such bioenergy implementation were evaluated. A lifecycle assessment was conducted to quantify the environmental performance of this bioenergy system and compare it to current residues uses and energy needs that feature small-to large-scale coffee farms. The results show that deploying modern bioenergy could result in reductions in 48–86% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and up to 98% less particulate matter formation when current practices and fossil-based energy are replaced. However, negative impacts should be considered as substituting grid electricity, largely generated from hydro-electricity, could increase GHGs by 68% and fossil fuel consumption by 73%. The results also show the relevance of understanding the environmental performance of bioenergy systems compared to reference scenarios; this allowed to evaluate and identify environmental trade-offs from modern bioenergy implementations. To maximise benefits and minimise the limitations of these systems, it is important to conduct whole-system assessments that inform on the wider environmental impacts of using agri-residues for bioenergy generation in a region- and system-specific context.

Abstract The coffee sector generates vast amounts of residues along its value chain. Crop residues, like coffee stems, are burned in the field, used for domestic cooking or coffee drying in processing plants having significant environmental and health implication to rural communities. This research investigated the environmental impacts of replacing current practices with modern bioenergy applications in the Colombian coffee sector. A biomass gasification system to produce decentralised energy from coffee stems was considered, and the environmental impacts of such bioenergy implementation were evaluated. A lifecycle assessment was conducted to quantify the environmental performance of this bioenergy system and compare it to current residues uses and energy needs that feature small-to large-scale coffee farms. The results show that deploying modern bioenergy could result in reductions in 48–86% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and up to 98% less particulate matter formation when current practices and fossil-based energy are replaced. However, negative impacts should be considered as substituting grid electricity, largely generated from hydro-electricity, could increase GHGs by 68% and fossil fuel consumption by 73%. The results also show the relevance of understanding the environmental performance of bioenergy systems compared to reference scenarios; this allowed to evaluate and identify environmental trade-offs from modern bioenergy implementations. To maximise benefits and minimise the limitations of these systems, it is important to conduct whole-system assessments that inform on the wider environmental impacts of using agri-residues for bioenergy generation in a region- and system-specific context.