This paper is based on an analysis of three country studies conducted by national research teams in eight research sites in Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique for the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA). It describes the Local Adaptive Capacity (LAC) framework developed for this project, its application during the research and the evidence found about the impact of development interventions on the adaptive capacity of people and communities. ACCRA focused on five dimensions that contribute to adaptive capacity: the asset base (including physical and non-physical assets), institutions and entitlements, knowledge and information, innovation and flexible forward-looking decision-making and governance.
Key Findings:
- All development interventions need an agency lens, i.e. they need to be thought of not simply as delivering a given infrastructure or technology, but as vehicles for expanding people’s range of choices. For any intervention to offer sustainable benefits, consideration is needed at all stages for how different people will use the intervention under a range of possible climate futures. This is impossible without due attention to features which are largely neglected in development planning and interventions, namely power and institutions.
- The five characteristics of adaptive capacity are not stand-alones, from which one or more can be selected for attention; they shape and depend on each other. Taking adaptive capacity on board means understanding these dimensions of people’s and communities’ lives, and designing and implementing interventions in ways that enhance the way in which assets, institutions, innovation, knowledge flows and decision-making contribute to increased agency and more informed decision-making for the long term.
- Working to support agency requires participatory ways of thinking and acting. However, much of what is called ‘participation’ has failed to deliver the intended transformation in relations between development agents and the people they wish to work with. There are practical reasons for this, relating both to deeply entrenched attitudes and also to resources, including funds, time and skills. Getting participation right will require a major investment by many kinds of actors working together.
- Change at system level is required because the necessary changes to development practice which ACCRA has identified are not actionable by any single organisation or individual. The adaptation required by development actors is transformational, not incremental. Platforms will need to be strengthened and created at local, national and international level for negotiating these fundamental changes and paradigm shifts.
Recommendations:
- Governments and development partners do not need to think of designing separate projects for building adaptive capacity, but should rather incorporate into the design of all development programmes a consideration of how people will be able to adapt in the future. Adaptive capacity should be considered in all assessments, planning processes, feasibility studies, agreements with donors, implementation, monitoring, reporting and evaluations.
- All interventions should be designed and implemented based on future scenario planning which includes all the important likely changes – and their interactions – but also acknowledges uncertainties. Intervention design and development planning must build flexibility into programme design and management, and build support for adaptive capacity into planning objectives.
- Planning and intervention design should use people’s own ability and practice of experimentation and innovation as an entry point. This involves understanding how people are currently experimenting and innovating in response to different pressures, and understanding the constraints to innovation and the uptake of new ideas. This includes having an understanding of institutional factors, power relations and other socio-cultural factors.
- Information provision should not stop with giving people facts. All information providers should redefine their role as one of ‘knowledge providers’, whose objectives are more ‘informed decision-making’. Both they and others should support people to acquire the required skills and tools to analyse and use the information provided and to give them the ability to access independently further information from a variety of sources. Frequently, this will entail working with those generating and holding information to ensure that they are better connected to people.
