As an urban planner in Kenya, I’ve participated in many planning processes. They usually begin in neat boardrooms, with maps, policy reviews, and stakeholder workshops. Homa Bay, on the shores of beautiful Lake Victoria, was different. 

In Kenya’s South Rift, Maasai communities are blending tradition with innovation to restore land and protect wildlife. Through women-led seed banks and rotational grazing, they are building resilience where people, livestock, and nature thrive together.

GCA intern Taylor Black discusses how possibilities for LLA to transform climate adaptation for the better are vast, but that realizing this vision requires dismantling entrenched barriers and fostering equitable collaboration.

Most community engagement methods fail to effectively integrate the voices of local communities. Here's how this can change.

GCA's Global Lead on LLA, Anju Sharma, reflects on the first Community Based Adaptation Conference without colleague, friend, and pioneer of the CBA tradition, Saleemul Huq.

The way we talk about climate change influences how people understand the message and what actions they might take. Effective communication strategies for inspiring audience action are examined.

On the International Day of Forests, we highlight why empowering communities to safeguard forests is a win-win for communities and climate change.

To strengthen climate resilience of low-income communities, adaptation plans must address how heat impacts their lives and livelihoods.

Communities play a critical role in REDD+, a forest conservation strategy that aims to reduce emissions that can be sold as credits to raise money for forest protection. REDD+ projects often include components for the benefit of the communities, such as a focus on alternative livelihoods and provision of health care and education. While some Indigenous-led organizations support REDD+ because it provides an avenue to fund their climate-related conservation work, other groups say it’s not the answer.

In the current scenario, there is a clear hierarchy in funding, knowledge, and technology flows. And experts—researchers, practitioners, all the way up to extension workers—are used to a prevailing status quo with regard to how power and knowledge flow when projects are implemented. The ‘expert’ has to become a facilitator or a listener in the face of uncertain and complex change.

The language and expressions shaping the climate change conversation often don't resonate with the realities of the most affected communities. This needs to change.

On World Day of Social Justice, GCA’s Global Lead on Locally Led Adaptation, Anju Sharma, recounts the ways in which climate justice and social justice go hand in hand and how locally led adaptation can ignite the transformation needed to “overcome barriers and unleash opportunities for social justice,” the theme for this year’s United Nations observance.

Effectively combining the power and agency of local communities with financial, scientific, and technical resources from the national and global level. This is the magic we need, to race against the climate adaptation clock. 

The activities of the GCA's Global Hub on LLA will provide genuine opportunities to vulnerable communities to become leaders in adaptation instead of just being recipients of top-down funding from the central government or international donors; and leverage large-scale investment in adaptation through LLA from major funders, writes Saleemul Huq.

Adaptation clinics, piloted in Bangladesh by BRAC, provide a one-stop solution with a simple philosophy: farmers know how to farm and they understand conditions are changing, but they need advice on how best to respond and access to tools to prepare for the future.

Mini cyclone shelters are two-story climate-resilient structures that serve as homes on a daily basis, and shelters during cyclones or tidal surges.

Failure to address local contexts might result in maladaptive trajectories. Locally led adaptation and nature-based solutions are potential options for effective adaptation to climate change.

Women demonstrate a unique knowledge and skill set when given the opportunity to actively participate in disaster planning and emergency response.

Hundreds of adaptation activities and investments have not helped or made things worse, according to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While there are many reasons for these past failures, a major reason is that almost all those investments were top-down.

If all sectors in Bangladesh can join forces to work together effectively, the country can become the world leader in LLA.

The world has much to learn from ‘local adapters’, who keep building resilience and learn to live from one crisis to the next.

The successful implementation of LLA requires adequate funding, and capacity building at all levels. 

The launch of the annual Gobeshona Global Conference provided a platform to review progress on the ten-year journey to promote and enhance locally led adaptation.

Three local climate leaders in East Africa on the frontlines of two crises are leveraging the trust and expertise from years of community leadership to safeguard their communities. Their actions in addressing COVID-19 illustrate the need for local leadership in longer term crises like climate change.

An interview with the Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), Saleemul Huq.