Extreme heat is reshaping daily life for India’s poorest workers, who have few options but to endure dangerous conditions that threaten their health and livelihoods. Experts say the country must urgently adapt its cities, workplaces and social protections to withstand a hotter future.

Communities on the frontlines of climate change see the impacts every day, yet a new analysis reveals that only a tiny fraction of global climate finance actually reaches or is led by these local actors. Despite growing international support for locally led adaptation, current reporting systems are so limited that less than half a percent of funding can be confidently identified as truly locally driven.

Climate change is already pushing health systems to their limits, with deadly heat and extreme weather putting billions of people and thousands of hospitals at growing risk. Nations are urged to move fast on the Belém Health Action Plan, using proven solutions like early-warning systems and climate-resilient care to protect communities in a rapidly warming world.

How can we redefine “success” in climate adaptation beyond easily countable project outputs? What mechanisms are most effective in bridging the gap between local knowledge and national policy? Why is funding still missing the local actors who deliver the most impact?

Find out in the 2025 Stories of Resilience!

At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, four community-led initiatives from Kenya, India, Peru, and a global heritage network received the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Awards for pioneering responses to climate change. Organized by the Global Center on Adaptation with support from the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the awards spotlight how locally led climate action is driving resilience, from transforming informal settlements through climate-responsive health care to empowering women farmers.

As global leaders grapple with how to fund and scale climate adaptation, this edition of Stories for Resilience calls for a fundamental reset—from short-term projects to long-term power shifts. Offering real-world lessons and tested solutions, it challenges funders and policymakers to rethink what climate leadership looks like in practice.

The four winners of the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Awards show how communities are turning heritage, healing, and local ingenuity into powerful tools for survival and renewal. Their stories reveal that climate resilience is strongest when it grows from the lived experience, leadership, and resolve of those on the frontlines.

The Green Climate Fund’s Locally Led Climate Action framework guides countries and partners in turning climate ambitions into grounded action by shifting decisions, resources, and implementation power closer to local communities. Through clear parameters, practical proposal guidance, and targeted annexes, it helps stakeholders design investments that honor local knowledge and build lasting, context-driven climate solutions.

Join the Global Center on Adaptation at COP30 for the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Award Ceremony, celebrating leaders advancing local climate resilience worldwide. The event will feature distinguished guests, the presentation of awards across four key resilience categories, and the launch of GCA’s flagship report, Stories of Resilience: Lessons from Local Adaptation Practice.

A co-creation workshop on embedding Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) in Community Driven Development (CDD) was launched today in Tamale, Ghana, to strengthen the integration of LLA methodologies into the community-driven planning and investment processes under the World Bank’s Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion (SOCO) Project. 

This report amplifies the voices of displaced communities in Bangladesh, exploring how climate-driven loss and damage intersect with protracted displacement and highlighting civil society efforts toward durable solutions. It features a case study on the work GCA and its partners did with the communities in Mongla Municipality.

Extreme heat in Delhi worsens the health, livelihoods, and mental well-being of more than 300,000 homeless individuals, revealing how lack of adequate housing magnifies climate and psychological stress. Addressing these impacts requires meeting basic needs, building community support systems, expanding access to mental health care, and implementing housing-centered, climate-resilient policies across all levels of government.

Bangladesh’s coastal towns face rising seas, cyclones, and floods that threaten homes and livelihoods, forcing many to migrate to already overburdened Dhaka. Strengthening smaller “secondary towns” offers a safer, more resilient alternative. Through People’s Adaptation Planning, communities—supported by the the Global Center on Adaptation and BRAC—are turning local knowledge into actionable plans for an inclusive and climate-resilient future.

Social protection investments can be a powerful driver of rural climate adaptation and just transitions for the most vulnerable. A review of 23 Green Climate Fund (GCF) projects shows strong potential to scale up these investments while enhancing coordination, inclusion, and long-term support. Strengthening national social protection systems alongside these efforts could make GCF investments even more inclusive, sustainable, and just.

In Bangladesh, rural roads are vital for connecting communities but often worsen flooding and erosion when poorly designed. The Global Center on Adaptation, through the World Bank’s Climate Smart Rural Transport Project, is piloting “Green Roads for Water” to make roads climate-resilient while improving local water management. Central to the effort are Women's Adaptation Labs, where women's leadership is at its core and women collaborate with engineers and hydrologists to shape road designs that boost water security and reduce climate risks.

A national workshop in Dhaka showcased how climate-vulnerable, low-income communities in three towns created People’s Adaptation Plans by mapping risks and identifying their own priority solutions. These community-driven plans will now guide climate-smart investments under the upcoming Bangladesh Smart Cities Development Project financed by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

A five-day co-creation workshop was held in Sylhet, Bangladesh, to jointly develop training content for the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre to embed locally led adaptation into Bangladesh’s civil service training. Participants first engaged with residents of Laksam Municipality to understand how they are benefitting from locally led planning and then went on to develop 12 draft modules for the new training course.

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.

By embracing the principles of locally led adaptation, funders can cut through red tape and give local stakeholders control over how climate solutions are designed and funded. This toolkit lays out practical, simplified actions to help institutions make this shift.

Hot classrooms are increasingly undermining education globally—rising temperatures hamper learning, yet many schools are unprepared and cooling solutions are complex. As climate change drives more frequent heatwaves, the need for sustainable, equitable cooling in schools is becoming urgent.

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.

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.