The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) announced the 20 nominees for the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Awards today. These prestigious awards, which spotlight groundbreaking and scalable locally led efforts, celebrate innovation in addressing the growing impacts of climate change while fostering resilience at the community level. The nominees have been selected in four categories: Nature-Based Solutions, Women's Livelihoods, Citizen Science, and Health.

Of the over 880 million people in the Global South who live in slums, approximately one in three resides in a floodplain. Floods in slums can lead to severe and lasting socioeconomic impacts, such as homelessness, waterborne diseases and mental health issues. Joint endeavors between the government and community members can achieve outcomes beyond traditional flood protection systems and disaster preparedness alone.

Local government officials and representatives from Tom Mboya University gained hands-on experience in Rapid Climate Risk Assessments by completing them for three informal settlements in Homa Bay Municipality. Their training culminated in a four-day workshop where they deepened their understanding of climate risk and learned how to apply assessments in data-scarce environments, integrate climate resilience into urban planning and leverage nature-based solutions.

Homa Bay County Government has begun preparing a climate change adaptation plan that is directly informed by the People’s Adaptation Plan (PAP) developed by its residents. The latter directly encompasses local knowledge, highlights challenges faced by residents due to climate change and proposes solutions for addressing them. In so doing, the PAP will shape strategies proposed in the climate change adaptation plan and help mobilize funding for implementation.

Homa Bay's People's Adaptation Plan was built from the ground up and shaped by data collected by trained community members. The Plan was directly informed by the local knowledge of the County's citizens and it sets out improvements to reduce vulnerability to floods and extreme weather. As GCA prepares to support the County with officially launching the Plan in August 2025, it calls on other counties—and the international community—to follow Homa Bay’s lead.

For the first time ever, Locally Led Adaptation has been embedded within Bangladesh’s national civil service training framework. All public officials will now be equipped with the knowledge to respond to climate challenges in their respective sectors through inclusive, community-driven approaches. This integration is thanks to GCA's partnership with the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre and directly supports the country's efforts to strengthen national resilience against climate change.

"If we want real climate resilience, we have to rethink what expertise looks like – it’s not always people behind a desk or text on white paper," young community mobilizer from Homa Bay tells High-Level participants. "Sometimes, it's a 22-year-old in Sofia with a smartphone, using it not to chat but to map flood-prone homes so her neighbors can be seen, counted and protected."

"Many of our communities were invisible before this process," Mercy Lukio, a resident of Sofia, an informal settlement in Homa Bay County, told a High Level Panel during an Intergenerational Dialogue organized by GCA. "Now we’ve mapped over 21,000 households across Homa Bay. That’s not just data—that’s power. We can’t build resilience in places we refuse to see. And we can’t expect youth to drive solutions without equipping us with the resources, the training, and the dignity we deserve."

Damaris Wanjiku, a student from Tom Mboya University, was trained to support the People's Adaptation Planning process in her County, Homa Bay, Kenya. Addressing a High-Level Panel during an intergenerational dialogue organized by the GCA, she called for recognition, partnership, and long-term investment in young people to enable them to support locally led efforts to deal with climate change.

The Step Change initiative accelerates equitable and inclusive locally led adaptation by fostering southern leadership and climate knowledge brokering. Step Change aims to grow the number of organizations and individuals with the skills to close knowledge-to-action gaps in gender equality and social inclusion, in enhancing access to climate finance, and improving ecosystem-based adaptation.

As another punishing summer edges into Karachi, a Stanford researcher and a former climate minister confront the same crisis—extreme heat—from opposite ends of Pakistan’s most populous city.

Senegal’s mangrove forests have been severely depleted, with devasting consequences: vanishing fish habitats, entire villages being washed away by floods, and women losing their main source of income. How can nature-based solutions address all these challenges at once?

Roughly 490,000 deaths are attributable to heat annually, yet mortality is only the tip of the iceberg. In many countries, formal data often fails to capture the full scope of heat-related impacts. Community-based surveys and interviews are essential for critical insight into health and social consequences that are otherwise missed, and to identify unrecognized symptoms, capture indirect effects, and highlight vulnerable groups.

One in every five residents in the Bangladeshi city of Narayanganj lives below the poverty line. The city is home to approximately 95 slum clusters and is frequently flooded by heavy rains, leading to life grinding to a halt and residents falling sick from polluted water. However, this is set to change as GCA, with the support of Global Affairs Canada, is facilitating the development of People’s Adaptation Plans, which respond to these challenges and are part of the Asian Development Bank’s US$ 155 million Narayanganj Green and Resilient Urban Development Project.

In Mirsarai, Bangladesh, GCA and its partners are working with nine low-income communities to drive a bottom-up planning process and actively map their climate vulnerabilities. The resulting People's Adaptation Plans aim to guide climate-resilient investments under the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank’s Bangladesh Smart Cities Development Project. This approach is redefining what it means to be a "smart" city, where it isn't just about digital innovation alone, but about giving a voice to the most vulnerable and building resilience from the ground up.

Community members from Patuakhali, Bangladesh trained faculty members of the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre on the People’s Adaptation Plan Process and explained how local leadership can make investments in resilience more effective, efficient, and sustainable. This training session took place during a week-long workshop organized by the GCA in Savar, Bangladesh, aimed at developing a course module on locally led adaptation for public administrators across vulnerable sectors in Bangladesh.

The 19th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA19) is taking place from 12-16 May 2025 in Recife, Brazil. The CBA conference is a space for sharing lessons on community-based and locally led adaptation (LLA) approaches, and exploring how to put the principles of LLA into practice. This year's conference is focused on how we can achieve just and equitable adaptation. Conference sessions are grouped under the following three thematic areas: (i) LLA in action, (ii) Urban adaptation, and (iii) Nature/adaptation.

The Global Center on Adaptation is organizing a week-long Training of Trainers workshop for faculty members of the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre, on institutionalizing locally led adaptation (LLA) across sectors in Bangladesh. The workshop initiates a process for developing a comprehensive LLA course module, with support from the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies and the Centre for Participatory Research and Development, which will be embedded in core training programs for Bangladeshi government officials.

Tapping into the knowledge and experience of people in informal settlements is vital to shaping effective investments for climate adaptation in highly complex urban environments. Communities have a vital role as holders of information not captured in official statistics. Community-led data collection can provide disaggregated data for better targeting and delivery of climate adaptation programs; provide new insights into the contexts and conditions for project delivery; and add value to World Bank project context analysis.

The Global Center on Adaptation and the Integrated Research and Action for Development institute held a virtual peer-to-peer learning session that explored integrating Heat Action Plans into the People’s Adaptation Planning process. Participants highlighted how extreme heat is disproportionately affecting women and the urban poor, emphasized the need for community-led documentation of its impact, and called for localized, inclusive, and data-driven urban planning.

The Global Center on Adaptation and the Integrated Research and Action for Development institute held a virtual peer-to-peer learning session that explored integrating Heat Action Plans into the People’s Adaptation Planning process. Participants highlighted how extreme heat is disproportionately affecting women and the urban poor, emphasized the need for community-led documentation of its impact, and called for localized, inclusive, and data-driven urban planning.

Effectively protecting children from the adverse effects of climate change requires considering the interconnectedness of their needs and replacing siloed work with integrated action. Here are some key insights on how children have been impacted in West Bengal, India and how climate action can better respond to their unique vulnerabilities.

Farmers in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh state have turned to water-efficient crops in response to soaring temperatures, frequent dry spells and erratic rainfall. This has enabled them to secure good yields and avoid suffering big losses all the while using 90% less water and 70% less electricity for irrigation.

In the heart of South Africa’s Kalahari Desert, the Pella Food Garden Cooperative—a women-led vegetable production project—struggled to sustain its drought-ravaged land. To combat this crisis, INMED South Africa introduced aquaponics—a cost-effective, sustainable farming method that merges fish farming (aquaculture) with soilless crop production (hydroponics) in a closed, climate-resilient system. These systems use 90% less water than conventional agriculture, rely on rainwater harvesting, and minimize energy use.

Record-breaking extreme heat, reaching 40 to 50°C, is threatening lives, livelihoods, and economies across the Asia-Pacific region. Proposed solutions range from developing and expanding heat forecasting informed by real-time data to empowering community-led initiatives that integrate traditional knowledge with modern science. Given that this threat is not unique to any single country, it is critical that the Asia-Pacific collectively strengthens coordination, deepens community involvement and protects vulnerable populations.