Scaling local and community-based adaptation

This paper makes a case for local actions and community-based adaptation (CBA) by showing what adaptation success looks like at the local and community level. It recognizes that successful adaptation is process-driven and requires longer-term engagement along a full spectrum of actions, including visioning, planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and learning.

This paper identifies key enablers and barriers for successful adaptation actions at the local level, focusing on climate information and knowledge sharing as critical enabling factors, and also examining capacity development, institutional arrangements, and financing. It recommends that local action and CBA be locally led to ensure that adaptation and adaptation financing truly address the priorities and needs of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and encourage equity and social justice.

According to this paper, certain key factors can enable the scaling-up of local actions and community-based adaptation measures. These include:

• investing in longer-term strategies for strengthening a range of capacities (e.g. technical, institutional, social) at the local level;
• designing financing mechanisms that allow resources to reach the local level in a flexible manner;
• embedding adaptation considerations within decentralization planning and within broader government and institutional reforms.

This paper is part of a series of background papers commissioned by the Global Commission on Adaptation to in-form its 2019 flagship report.