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

Meet some of the people that are taking action across the globe to build resilience for their communities using the LoCAL mechanism.

A 2021 review found that only 46% of finance committed from international sources for climate adaptation was intended to give agency to local actors. Of this amount, there was little evidence of local actors fully leading adaptation interventions.

Community-based aquaculture projects in a locally managed marine area in Madagascar provided small-scale fishers with alternative income streams to ease the pressure faced by fishing communities such as declining fish stocks and climate change. This research shows that participants accepted the new governance model which involved changing open access to private access because of the benefits – such as more predictable income generation, and benefit-sharing across the community.

Agricultural production in Bangladesh is affected by salinity increase, water logging, and land erosion caused by sea level rise, and this is resulting in increased economic vulnerability. However, existing measures that are designed without considering local context, existing community-led adaptations, and local perceptions do not target the needs of coastal communities.

This research explores locally led responses to climate change in Thai Binh, Vietnam. It argues that climate adaptation should provide an opportunity to question developmentalist values that drive unsustainable relationships to nature. The paper explores 'surviving well' in the context of climate interventions in Thai Binh and how local responses adapt and listen to non-human entities, highlighting how this could inspire non-exploitative relationships to the environment.

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.

This paper aims to understand how citizen participation in climate adaptation is governed in Norrkoping, Sweden, and how this impacts local capacity for transformative climate adaptation. It found that path-dependencies in past and contemporary governance of climate adaptation, and citizen participation were a barrier to transformative climate adaptation. To counteract this, the paper suggests the following to better enable citizen participation in climate adaptation: broadening the geographical boundaries of deliberations; redefining the target groups; co-designing participation targets, approaches and evaluation; and developing new ways to analyze and act on the patterns in the citizen inputs received.

This paper argues that area-based approaches (ABA) to disaster response is key in strengthening people-centered recovery and local resilience. It utilizes four principles to review recovery efforts in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu: people-centered responses, adaptive processes, multi-sector collaboration and reflective practice. The research gathered data through a literature review and key informant interviews. Despite finding examples of community leadership and locally tailored social protection schemes, it concludes that significant progress can be made to address common problems such to ensure projects are contextually grounded and are coordinated with other efforts. 

This report is based on a summary of regional dialogues held in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean. The discussions took place between September and October 2021, bringing together civil society, the private sector and government representatives. The events aimed to recognize arising challenges and lessons when implementing locally led adaptation projects and to use this knowledge to inform scaling LLA. The dialogues showcased 11 cases of LLA in practice and discussions revolved around funding, decision-making, the value of local knowledge, social inclusion and more.

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

This paper explores the grassroots initatives through three case studies in Bangladesh, an informal settlement in the Philippines and Vanuatu. It argues that LLA proves to be an equitable, effective and sustainable approach to adaptation and proposes nine drivers of LLA that focus on empowering local actors to design their own adaptation pathways to improve grassroots initiatives.

This paper highlights the need to not only address the scarcity of good quality climate data in many places in the world but also to embed this into a broader climate services ecosystem, demonstrating how this has been achieved through the Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initative.

In Nepal, communities face significant hurdles in scaling up locally led adaptation (LLA) initiatives due to limited capacity, lack of knowledge, and inadequate funding. Case studies from three municipalities (Dullu, Rajapur, and Bheemdatt) reveal a lack of attention from local governments, hindering community integration into local adaptation strategies. With less than two percent of total annual municipal budgets allocated to scaling local initiatives, communities also face insufficient funding to effectively advance LLA efforts.

The Indigenous Fijian (iTaukei) women have skills, knowledge, and unique local and traditional experience that can increase the resilience of the community, but face barriers that prevent them from contributing to decision-making in the community. Interventions that are culturally accepted and support the role of women in decision-making are necessary.

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. 

Understanding social norms and power dynamics at the local level needs time and resources that current project life cycles rarely allow. This research, based on the Devolved Climate Finance mechanism implemented in Tanzania, finds that community power dynamics and social identities must be integral parts of programming to ensure that the trade-offs between (and within) resilience and well-being dimensions do not lead to maladaptation.

Since the quality and quantity of finance for LLA is systematically tracked this paper provides metrics that governments can use to assess LLA finance and how well it supports local agency and decision-making. The analysis is based on adaptation tracking and financing in nine countries, literature reviews and expert consultations. Suggested tracking and reporting systems include budget tagging, expenditure reviews and integration with policy processes such as the National Adaptation Plan (NAP).

Forest cover in Nepal has nearly doubled from 1992 to 2016, from 26 percent to 45 percent, thanks to community management of forests. The devolution of forest management in the country has proved to be a great success, conserving and regenerating forests while providing communities fruits and medicines, regenerated land for grazing, and fuelwood. Community forests now occupy nearly 2.3 million hectares—about a third of Nepal’s forest cover—and are managed by over 22,000 community forest groups with 3 million households.

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.

A literature review conducted on over 70 evaluation materials suggested that although local actors are involved in adaptation interventions, they are often not included in the decision-making surrounding the finance design and implementation. The paper concludes that efforts to increase LLA should focus on encouraging flexible approaches to program design and including local actors in decision-making from start to finish.

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

The launch of a LLA community of practice, to track progress and strengthen learning against the LLA Principles, informed by both what has worked and what has not, to derive learning from failure as well as success.