Context

Climate change does not affect everyone equally. Physical geography, together with social, gender, economic, political and cultural factors, shapes both the severity of the impacts that people and ecosystems experience and whether they face them from a position of vulnerability or resilience. Top-down approaches that impose climate adaptation solutions at a local scale have a history of failure. Locally led adaptation (LLA) shifts decision-making power over adaptation to local actors, so that communities shape their own path to resilience. It is most effective when it is grounded in people's human rights and driven by the knowledge, priorities and needs of local people, especially the most marginalised groups.

This local knowledge and experience are central to any climate response. The IPBES Transformative Change Assessment defines transformative change as deliberate, system-wide shifts in views (ways of thinking, knowing and seeing); structures (ways of organising, regulating and governing); and practices (ways of doing, behaving and relating). It traces the current environmental and social crises to three underlying causes: disconnection from and domination over nature and people; the inequitable concentration of power and wealth; and the prioritisation of short-term, individual and material gains. Read this way, the problem does not lie in a deficit of local capacity but in the dominant configurations of views, structures and practices that reproduce those causes — including within the systems set up to finance and govern adaptation. In this way, transformation depends on funders, governments and international organisations recognising the values and knowledge these communities already hold as a legitimate basis for decisions. 

FFLA and CDKN are exploring whether locally led adaptation is transformative in this deeper sense: whether it shifts who participates and who merely validates, who controls resources and under what rules, whose knowledge counts, who sets the pace of the work, and how the socio-political context shapes what relationships are possible at the local scale.

Project objectives

CDKN focuses on amplifying and strengthening local leadership, voice and capacities for inclusive, climate-resilient development. With its mission to improve the wellbeing of the most climate-affected people in the Global South, especially marginalised groups, CDKN has long embraced the ethos of locally led adaptation. Through this work, CDKN is exploring the transformative potential of locally led adaptation efforts across LATAM, Africa and Asia, and how they are shifting views, practices and structures in ways that shifts power and decision making to the local level. 

Project activities

• Exploring transformative change across CDKN and LLA allies in peer exchange sessions both virtually and in person
• Conducting a study of transformative change in LLA, mapping actors, conducting interviews across Africa, Asia and Latin America, analysing preliminary findings per region, conducting regional feedback sessions for Africa, Asia and Latin America and consolidating regional findings in a global synthesis
• Mobilising and sharing short videos from actors exploring what transformative change means in their own context
• Engage in communications and sharing events to share findings from the study

Project outputs

Contact

For more information, please contact:

Ameil Harikishen on email amei@southsouthnorth.org or LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/ameil-harikishun-42923594 

Claudia Benavides on e-mail claudia.benavides@ffla.net or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudia-b-760a49261/

Karen Hildahl on e-mail karen.hildahl@ffla.net or LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/khildahl