Community-based adaptation and development practice

Community-based adaptation has emerged as an important new topic in international development. Its distinctive approach, in which responses to climate change are locally developed by the affected population, is increasingly understood as necessary to support those whose livelihoods and lives are most threatened by climate change. Today, intergovernmental bodies and non-governmental organizations alike are engaged in community focused adaptation projects, funded by national and international donors who recognize the significance and urgency of the challenge being faced. These initiatives are supported by a growing body of networks, conferences and publications. Among these, the Community Based Adaptation Exchange online resource centre lists more than 700 members from development, environment and research organizations, while the 2010 International Conference on Community-based Adaptation drew more than 170 delegates from 38 countries, and gave rise to a new global initiative to 'promote the exchange of knowledge about community-level adaptation to climate change'. A year later, at the 2011 conference numbers swelled to more than 300. Community-based adaptation, a topic that was more or less unknown at the turn of the century, now occupies an important place in both climate change and development debates.

Yet for all the rapid growth in interest, community-based adaptation remains a new concept whose meaning is still to be fully understood. Most interpretations agree on the need to increase community understanding of the challenges that climate change represents and to develop responses that build on local knowledge. Awareness raising and participatory approaches are combined with exposure to new livelihood or risk reduction strategies, enabling communities to develop locally appropriate solutions to locally defined problems. The specifics of implementation necessarily vary according to the context and draw on different pools of knowledge and experience. Communities faced with an increased risk of flooding, for example, require access to very different information and technologies to those faced with the emergence of new pests and diseases, or the gradual loss of dependable water sources. This process of supporting communities to develop responses to the challenges they face is a crucial step, and in some interpretations is the goal of community-based adaptation. In these cases, supporting the mechanisms through which communities create changes to their lives and livelihoods is very much a secondary concern to the provision of appropriate adaptation outcomes.

The premise of this book is different. The starting point is that community-based adaptation must be defined by a balance between actions that support the ongoing ability to change, and those that respond to current challenges. While meeting immediate needs will always be a priority, it should not become an end in itself. Rather, current challenges offer an entry point for actions that build the capacity to adapt: the overarching objective is to support the ability of communities to face an uncertain future. Reflecting a growing consensus, adaptive capacity in this book describes the component of an adaptation intervention that prepares communities for a changing climate, enabling them to better secure their own adaptation outcomes.

In community-based adaptation, adaptive capacity draws attention to the processes through which communities are able to make changes to their lives and livelihoods in response to emerging environmental change. As such, adaptive capacity challenges development actors to think in terms of how networks of relationships define the distribution, access and control of material and knowledge assets. It means that the quality of relationships, determined by characteristics such as power, culture and gender, are drawn into the foreground so that interventions can identify the constraints on local decision making, looking across scales rather than at communities in isolation. This perspective demands a shift in thinking away from needs-based programming, having more in common with empowerment-focused development narratives such as rights-based approaches. The increasing risk of four degrees of global warming suggests that frequent livelihood changes and even radical transformations may become necessary for many. In these circumstances, a business as usual approach to development practice is inadequate, and the necessity of securing adaptive capacity is thrown into sharp relief. The alternative to empowering communities to engage in processes of change is to leave them permanently dependent on the whim of governments who have routinely failed the most vulnerable, or on non-governmental actors whose funding and mandate cannot be relied on to provide indefinite support. The purpose of this book is to respond to this challenge, by addressing the need to better understand adaptive capacity, and to rethink development practice in terms of how it can be best supported.

Uncertain futures

At the heart of adaptation lies a paradox. The driving force behind much of the interest in adaptation is the knowledge that climate change is upon us and that the impacts will be felt, first and worst, in the world's most vulnerable communities. Yet, at the same time, these anticipated impacts are poorly understood, and the uncertainty is greatest in many of the world's least developed countries.

While advances in climate science mean that we now have an unprecedented view of the future of the earth system, many of the precise implications remain unclear: predictions of rainfall rates, the likely frequency of extreme weather events, and regional changes in weather patterns cannot be made with certainty (Ensor and Berger, 2009a). Box 1.1 summarizes the multiple forms of uncertainty that make predicting the impacts of climate change so difficult. But the presence of uncertainty should not be confused with a lack of knowledge: the issue is to develop a clear understanding of what climate science is offering. The impact of greenhouse gas emissions is well established and warming of the global climate throughout the coming century is certain. Climate change is already being experienced in many parts of the world, not least through rising sea levels, and climate models are clear in anticipating change at an unprecedented pace and scale. As time passes the emerging science continues to suggest that the changes may be more profound and with us sooner than first thought (Anderson and Bows, 2011).

However, while the global average temperature change can be anticipated with reasonable confidence for a given rate of future greenhouse gas emissions, predicting precipitation patterns and localized weather impacts at decadal to centennial timescales is beyond reach. In other words: 'The take-home message for policy makers is that for regions as small as most countries, knowing the global mean temperature leaves significant uncertainty in the local response....