With over 50% of urban residents living in informal settlements in Bangladesh, addressing their vulnerability is a key priority. At this national workshop, participants discussed how supporting secondary cities to plan for climate migration could reduce informality and support economic growth, turning a potential burden into an opportunity.

The GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards spotlight and reward innovative, exemplary, inspiring, and scalable locally led efforts that address the impacts of climate change and build effective climate resilience among the most vulnerable communities, sections of society, and individuals who are at the frontlines of the greatest existential threat faced by humankind. This year, after the success of 2022, we are relaunching the Awards with new categories as we expand our reach and continue to highlight exceptional locally led efforts around the world

One of the most effective ways to keep people cool is often neglected in urban planning. Cities must work to provide cover and reverse the ‘shade deserts’ common in low-income communities.

Resilient local food systems are critical for Kenya to adapt effectively to climate change. Worryingly, a very small percentage of adaptation funding reaches the local level, and decision-making power on adaptation finance is held by national and international players. This study proposes ten entry points to improve finance flows to enable adaptation by local food systems.

How local is "local"? Is local adaptation synonymous with locally-led adaptation? As LLA becomes more prevalent in adaptation practice, there is a risk that its meaning will be diluted to apply to all forms of local engagement in adaptation projects, and existing adaptation projects will be reframed or rebranded as LLA. The authors call for moving beyond rhetoric, incremental shifts and organizational tweaks, to delegating more authority to diverse local actors, and to covering their core costs - not just passing on the responsibility for achieving results.

Initial intentions for community-driven actions were supplanted by ‘community’ being viewed as a place for action, rather than a socio-political entry point. The concept of locally-led adaptation has emerged to try and recapture some of the initial intentions of community-based adaptation (CBA), with a focus on agency, and a re-conceptualization of ‘local’. Care needs to be taken to ensure that it learns from the critiques of participatory development and CBA, and does not lose sight of its intentions over time.

Old but gold: in this 2010 publication, the authors discuss the role of Local and Community Driven Development in ensuring sustainability of investments, and in restoring trust and building social capital. The lessons for effective development interventions drawn out in this analysis are equally relevant to Locally Led Adaptation.

In water-stressed Cape Town, the SenseMaker project once again found that capacity building for knowledge co-creation at the community level empowers local actors and organizations to assert their perspectives with greater confidence and legitimacy, and is central for transformative adaptation.

A Community-based Climate Vulnerability Assessment conducted in Rangamati Hill District in Bangladesh identified three priorities for building climate resilience: preserving the forests through cooperative efforts, reforestation, and public education; promoting sustainable and climate-resistant agriculture, as well as alternative livelihoods and market access; and improving access to clean water and preserving water sources through community-led management. 

How is the Green Climate Fund supporting LLA in Africa? This study finds that there is limited consideration of local needs in adaptation and a misalignment between the scale, impact and speed of projects. The most impactful projects are those that address local needs effectively through interventions that are small scale and closer to the ground – but they take more time to develop and implement. The study highlights the importance of direct access modalities and grant funding to reach vulnerable groups. It finds that Direct Access Entities performed better on average across most LLA Principles.

An analysis of 37 heat action plans in India identifies several opportunities to strengthen them, including to tailor them better to local context; target vulnerable groups; make them more transparent; link them with existing policies; and build capacity to deal with heat incidents more effectively.

In this conversation with the 2022 Winners of the GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards at the 2023 Gobeshona Conference, community leaders and changemakers from the Award-winning interventions shared their experience in planning, designing, and executing locally led adaptation efforts.

At the 2023 Gobeshona Conference, we engaged in a conversation with members of the Mukuru community, and the organizations and local government officials that supported their efforts, to learn more about how they worked together to overcome the formidable challenges that they faced while developing the Mukuru People’s Plan.

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and Mathematica convened a roundtable discussion at the 2023 Gobeshona Conference on data and information needs for Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), and its related challenges and opportunities.

Communities and local governments need the right information, at the right scale, to inform locally-led adaptation planning processes. How can this best be delivered in ways that are more targeted to local needs, and more accessible and usable by local actors? Communities around the world are collecting data to understand their own risks and vulnerabilities. How can their efforts be recognised and supported? This Roundtable convened community representatives and experts to discuss challenges and opportunities to data available for LLA.

1300-1430 GMT on 14 March 2023

The 2022 GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards recognize locally led efforts to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change across four categories: financial governance, inclusive leadership, capacity and knowledge, and local innovation. The four winners of the Awards in 2022, from Asia and Africa, shared their work during Gobeshona 2023.     

10:00-11:30 GMT on 16 March 2023

Locally led adaptation in Ghana is hindered by limited financial resources, limited institutional support to communities, and limited coordination and governance of climate actions at the local level.

Acknowledging Mukuru’s unique developmental and political challenges, planning partners adopted an unconventional planning framework. Enabled by the SPA declaration, it prioritized immediate needs and incremental, iterative improvements. It also adopted alternatives to conventional planning standards to minimize the displacement of Mukuru residents without sacrificing security, health or resilience considerations.

The interdependent, multisectoral challenges in informal settlements like Mukuru require integrated planning. Improvements in no one sector alone can solve them. It is crucial to develop sectoral plans in tandem, working together across disciplines.

A high-level overview of the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA). The Mukuru approach has taught us that improving climate resilience in informal settlements requires the urgent coordination of several key strategies. National and city leaders should take up this approach to building climate resilience and upgrading informal settlements. Key concepts include: the promise of and need for upgrading as a climate resilience strategy in rapidly urbanizing Africa; the need to put communities at the center of planning; and the crucial role of local governments and locally-led action for upgrading and resilience.

Starting in 2017, residents of Mukuru — one of the largest informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya — undertook an ambitious, ground-breaking participatory upgrading process known as the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA). This is the Mukuru story, as told by Jane Weru, Executive Director of the Akiba Mashinani Trust and one of its central champions and stewards; and Dorise Moseti, a community mobilization champion from Mukuru.

Like informal settlements in cities across Africa, Mukuru is vulnerable to climate hazards like extreme rainfall, floods, water- and vector-borne diseases, extreme heat, fires, and water scarcity. This is due to its precarious location, poor infrastructure, and high levels of poverty. Residents also have little say in decision-making processes. As a result, Mukuru lacks infrastructure and resources to deal with climate-related risks. Across Africa, climate resilience in informal settlements requires urgent attention. Locally-led planning efforts under the SPA have addressed existing gaps in service provision. These investments have reduced residents’ climate vulnerability. The SPA serves as an important model for upgrading at scale to build climate resilience in informal settlements.

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.

Living Climate Change was broadcast on BBC Global News in October 2021. Short films created by BBC Media Action teams in Nepal, Bangladesh and Kenya share the untold stories of people living at the forefront of climate change, ahead of world leaders meeting in Glasgow at the UN climate conference, COP26.

Kenya's First Lady Rachel Ruto has voiced her support for The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program, launched by the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA).