Stories of Resilience: Lessons from Local Adaptation Practice

The second edition of ‘Stories of Resilience: Lessons from Local Adaptation Practice’ finds that global and national systems are not changing fast enough in response to the needs of local communities, who are racing to adapt to climate change and secure their survival.

While local adaptation leaders are working hard to transform lives and livelihoods in the face of the changing climate, their gains are precarious. The lack of an enabling environment (legislative, financial, institutional, technical and capacity-related) means they are unable to securely lock in such transformations.

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) have collaborated with community leaders to showcase the brilliant work they do in building local adaptation (LLA) solutions across challenging contexts around the world.

The 2023 edition focuses on the many ways in which local communities innovate to use the materials closest to hand and their own hard work to adapt – from regenerating hillsides, coasts, degraded farmlands and urban green spaces, to recycling waste into wealth.

The findings of this report are based on over 200 stories – of progress and of gaps – submitted by champions of locally led adaptation, as well as deeper exploration of 19 locally led initiatives around the world. The stories show that local communities regard people’s rights, particularly those of marginalised groups, and locally led adaptation as two sides of the same coin – where fundamental rights are eroded, people’s adaptive capacities are also weakened. Recognition and enforcement of rights must be at the centre of climate change adaptation.

The study outlines recommendations for global and national policymakers on how they can best support locally led adaptation:

Support holistic adaptation efforts: Funders and governments must change how adaptation finance works, instead of expecting local communities to reframe how they experience the negative impacts of climate change. They must be smarter about recognising the cascading impacts of climate change on marginalised groups in society and supporting communities to explore multiple pathways to climate-resilient development such as tackling gender-based violence and convening mutual support activities for psychosocial resilience. They must be willing to provide patient, predictable resources for LLA that directly address the social norms and structural power relations which currently perpetuate disproportionate burdens, and which widen the gender development gap.
Empower decision-makers at the local level: For truly transformational adaptation to take place, global policymakers, national and local governments, and all providers of finance must urgently support the devolution of decision-making authority and finance to the local level; and meaningful partnerships between communities and local governments to create an enabling environment that allows locally led adaptation to flourish.
Restore and protect degrading ecosystems: The resilience of poor communities is strongly linked to the resilience of ecosystems. Support community efforts to regenerate their environments and prioritise their rights and needs over those of external actors through supportive legislation, finance, institutions, and technical and capacity support. Governments and the private sector, including transnational corporations, must become more aware of the climate risk to communities from natural resource degradation and prioritise their rights to manage ecosystems over short-term profit.
Respect diversity in community approaches: Local communities often have their own processes and methodologies for group decision-making and consensus building, co-construction of knowledge, co-design of plans, and evaluative and accountability functions. These should be endorsed and supported, instead of further stretching the limited capacity of communities by expecting them to adopt and conform to donor practices. Learning by the community and by different social groups facing specific adaptation and social-political challenges must be the first priority.
Recognise and support efforts by individuals and institutions at the local level: Communities around the world are implementing adaptation through in-kind contributions, including voluntary labour. The economic value of these contributions is vastly under-recognised. Local leaders are being highly entrepreneurial in mobilising local resources for adaptation, and local institutions such as museums, schools, colleges, public health providers, churches, and other faith institutions are stepping in to fill gaps and use their social capital to promote locally led adaptation. Simple but effective ways of channelling support to such initiatives are critical.
Promote human rights as core to adaptation: Women, younger people, older people, people living with disabilities, and marginalised ethnic and Indigenous groups are confronting the unequal impacts of climate change – depending on people’s different capabilities and vulnerabilities – as well as unjust responses to climate hazards because of discrimination in society. Adaptation responses may also be discriminatory. Local adaptation leaders are courageously pushing for recognition and realisation of their human rights as part of rounded locally led adaptation approaches. Confronting discrimination is essential for many people to be able to thrive, and doing so widens the leadership pool for local adaptation.