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floods illustrates how different types of social capital, combined with strong local governance, can play a vital role in how a community copes with strong climate shocks and subsequently adapts. Social capital and nongovernmental organization involvement in coping and recovery in Nicaragua. Cyclones have caused significant havoc in Nicaragua for 30 years, but no example is more telling than when Hurricane Mitch brought the country to its knees in 1998. Though Mitch never entered Nicaragua, at least 3,800 people died, and between 870,000 and 2 million, or 20 percent to 50 percent of the country’s population, were directly affected (EM-DAT Database 2008; IADB 2000; NCDC 2004). After the disaster the country’s poverty rate stood at close to 50 percent. The hurricane spurred the national government to undertake serious reforms of its disaster mitigation and preparedness policy, which until then had been “highly politicized and homogenized” (Tomlinson 2006), with a big emphasis on public works projects. Particular progress has since been made through collaboration between NGOs and government at the local level. For several reasons, including their own limited capacity and the broad range of natural hazards that Nicaragua faces, the NGOs active in that country have concentrated most of their disaster preparedness efforts on improving the capacity of local communities. The NGOs have also strengthened institutional collaboration among themselves by establishing the Civic Coalition for Emergency and Reconstruction (CCER), which brings together more than 320 nongovernmental and social organizations and networks (Cupples 2004). According to NGOs, communication and collaboration with the government after Hurricane Mitch was difficult. Delaney and Schrader (2000), comparing the national government’s plan with the findings of the CCER social audit, found markedly different priorities for rehabilitation and adaptation in the wake of the hurricane.15 Sixty percent of the government’s plan was tied to road construction, whereas CCER data suggested that only 5 percent of the population considered roads to be the first priority. Instead, people were more immediately concerned with the rehabilitation of agriculture (natural capital) and housing (physical capital). An underlying problem was the lack of a legal framework setting out the roles of each institution at the national and the local level. Consequently, confusion arose regarding different agencies’ responsibilities and chains of command for assigning different functions during emergencies. In this environment, the leadership assumed by municipal authorities became essential