Facilitating Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Among Smallholder Farming Communities

This course is the second of a series of three training courses that IIRR is organizing for members of Asia Zone Emergency and Environment Network (AZEECON) to build and strengthen their capacities to facilitate community-level climate change work. The first training program was conducted in Cambodia and featured discussions on climate science and the impacts of changing climate on food supply.

The course is designed to deepen the understanding of key trainers of Azeecon-member organizations of the challenges to agriculture brought about by changing climate. The course features lessons from community-level actions and the work of other organizations in Odisha to address these challenges. Participants will be given opportunities to learn first-hand through community visits to sites in Odisha featuring scalable adaptation and mitigation practices. Despite its long coastline and abundant natural resources, Odisha is still one of the poorer states of India. Various development interventions are currently being implemented in the state and most have already integrated climate change adaptation and mitigation in their pro-gram agenda.

Course Objectives

• Deepen the communities’ basic and working knowledge on climate change including causes, effects and impacts;
• Gain experiential knowledge on various ground-level actions that facilitate adaptation and mitigation of
• climate change challenges particularly to community-based interventions on food security, agriculture, nutrition, livelihoods and natural resources management;
• Articulate the philosophy, concepts and principles of community resilience and community-managed approaches to gain resilience in the context of climate change; and
• Develop an action plan designed to support food security programs in the communities they work with.

Module 1: Development Challenges in a Changing Climate

This module is a review or refresher session on basic climate science and the principles of adaptation, mitigation and resilience-building. The module concludes with group sharing among the participants their respective organizations’ adaptation and mitigation initiatives.

Module 2: Food and Nutrition Security: New Challenges

This module deepens the understanding of participants of food security and nutrition issues in South and Southeast Asia and focuses on changing climate as a major driver of change. Participants will analyze climate change impacts on food supply and share their analysis through workshops and plenary presentations. This is a two part module; the first part focuses on climate change impacts on food security ad nutrition. Discussions will focus on analyzing food security trends in the region. The second part focuses on vulnerabilities and resilience building.

Module 3: Community-based Actions Towards Building Adaptive Capacities and Resilience

This module features participants learning various technologies, practices, strategies and mechanisms to address climate change impacts. Participants will visit project sites with considerable outputs and/or outcomes that highlight adaptation and mitigation practices and will interact with community members and development workers in theses sites. Interactions will focus on how specific technologies, practices and strategies facilitate community-based adaptation while reducing climate change impacts. Discussions will highlight the varying thematic interventions based on different agro-ecological system in Odisha.

Module 4: Participatory Approaches to Food Security Programming in a Changing Climate

This module is a review of participatory approaches relevant to food security and climate change adaptation or mitigation programming. This will be highlighted by sharing IIRR’s experiential knowledge base in programs development along the lines of agriculture, food security, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation or mitigation.

Module 5: Action Planning

This module assists the participants do action planning guided by a prepared planning guide.