Climate change, conflict, and the squeeze on natural resources due to population growth and environmental degradation are intensifying poverty and vulnerability for many people. Local, autonomous adaptation to these challenges is often overlooked by national government and the international development community in their efforts to manage climate change. This paper examines climate-related adaptive capacities – of people, businesses and eco-systems – and suggests a new agenda, supporting individuals and institutions within their local context.
Development has always been about how people manage risks. Climate change is altering the landscape of risk, in terms of livelihoods, food, health and energy security, and natural resource management. What are the human and institutional implications of climate risks? Inclusive governance is an essential framework for adaptive capacity, and must incorporate complex, multi-level relationships to support enhanced climate adaptation.
How do interfaces at local, national and international scale facilitate or impede adaptation to climate change? Existing social, political and economic power structures all impact the potential for adaptive capacity at each level:
- There are enormous challenges in local capacity building: decentralisation shifts heavy responsibilities to local organisations, but few additional resources have been allocated to meet them, and the ability to access new funding is limited, especially within the poorest and most risk-prone areas.
- Effective investment involves promoting structures of inclusive governance to ensure that the poor can gain access to services and social protection mechanisms, and engage in natural resource management.
- Inclusive government must reduce vulnerability by building capacity to provide appropriate leadership, active engagement within civil society, service access (especially information, technology and capital services) and the mobilisation of a dynamic business environment facilitating sustainable livelihoods.
- Local institutions and organisations are key actors in directly influencing the vulnerability of households. They operate within norms that frame their response and sometimes deliver adaptation; however they also operate within wider structures (national and international) which partly inform local priorities and provide political, donor-related and commercial incentives.
Neither climate change adaptation nor disaster risk reduction can remain obscure technical processes; both must become integral parts of development. Adaptation priorities need to be set by those who must adapt; priority must be given to facilitating their demands.
- Adaptation initiatives must build enabling institutional environments that facilitate ownership and ensure accountability of states, donors, and other actors.
- Adaptation initiatives must address inequities and the political and economic structures that create them.
- Local ownership is the starting point for effective dialogue, cooperation and sub-local policy formulation of the wider scales (national and global) of adaptation. Those involved in development must be wary of undermining autonomous adaptation and local adaptive capacity.
- Sustainable adaptation must be integrated into ongoing national and local development strategies and processes, with coherence between formal regulatory frameworks and central investment strategies, and plans and processes already underway locally.
- Adaptation should be built on what is known about pro-poor development, but with a new risk-aware approach, particularly concerning agricultural services and social protection.
