Social capital and adaptation to wildfire in southern Greece

Wildfires are exacerbated by climate change and are a growing concern globally. Adaptation to climate change impacts including increased wildfires requires action at individual, community, and government levels. In this paper, we use the concept of social capital, or the norms and networks that enable collective action, as a lens to understand wildfire adaptation. Specifically, we assess the roles of different types of social capital in fire risk mitigation compared to fire response in southern Greece, which has experienced numerous large wildfires in recent years. To this end, we conducted 33 interviews with 44 rural residents and policy actors. Our findings illuminate a complex relationship between social capital and fire adaptation. We found that overall, social capital, a critical variable in environmental hazard adaptation, has been eroded by depopulation of rural areas and government management characterized by shifts in leadership and a culture of clientelism (or political quid-pro-quo). Bonding social capital influences villagers’ participation in volunteer fire brigades. However, bonding social capital is not sufficient to support proactive preparation for increasingly severe wildfires. Linking social capital, specifically between villagers and government officials, is often undermined by lack of trust and the failure of outsiders to utilize local knowledge. Our findings build on other cases in environmental hazards adaptation, where proactive preparation is often neglected in comparison to response. Additionally, our research adds to understandings of how low trust in state actors affects social capital in the face of environmental hazards.