The 18th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA18) takes place from 6 - 9 May 2024 in Arusha, Tanzania. The CBA conference series aims to bring together a community of practitioners who are collectively seeking to reimagine solutions that enable transformative outcomes, through the agency of communities driving climate action. CDKN will be co-hosting three sessions at the conference.

CBA is a space for the adaptation community to share learning on community-based and locally led adaptation systems, and to explore how to put the principles for locally led adaptation (LLA) into practice, recognising the complexities, innovations and challenges that must be overcome. With a focus on acquiring new skills, sharing experiences and connecting with peers, the conference offers participants four days of discussion, debate, peer-to-peer ‘skill-shares’ and knowledge exchange, through an innovative, dynamic and interactive space, enabling participants to promote climate action. 

CDKN sessions

Scouting, honing, futuring and storytelling: Skills and approaches for knowledge brokering

Date: Monday 6 May
Time: 13:30-15:15
Organising partners: CDKN, SouthSouthNorth

This session will invite participants to experience and learn from different approaches and tools in the knowledge brokering space, which they can then adapt and apply in their own contexts.

Following an interactive plenary activity, participants will choose among honing their skills to facilitate hard conversations, using storytelling to unpack complexity, exploring tools to collaboratively explore the future, learning how to scout knowledge brokering opportunities at community level or using role play as a mechanism to recognise and surface the different values and traits that people bring into the meetings they attend.

The session will end by exposing participants to an approach that can help make meetings more dynamic while ensuring everyone’s voice is heard and truly listened to.

Exploring approaches to democratise the climate change conversation - now and in the future

Date: Tuesday 7 May
Time: 10:50-12:30
Organising partners: CDKN, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Farm Radio International, Uttaran, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

This session will hold a learning conversation on diverse tools and approaches being used to democratise climate science for equitable locally-led resilience actions. Participants will be exposed to experiences ranging from experiential games and interactive radio programming that can help to challenge social hierarchies and spark new conversations, to virtual reality and artificial intelligence to create empathy and explore new solutions. These initial examples will be followed by conversations to better understand how these tools and approaches can help reach and meaningfully engage stakeholders of different ages, literacy levels and genders; how they contribute to strengthen agency to enable different actors to generate and disseminate knowledge; what outcomes they contribute to achieve; how the exponential growth of new digital technologies is changing the way information is produced, communicated and disseminated; and the implications for practitioners and knowledge brokers working in the climate space.

Intersecting realities: What does inclusive locally-led adaptation look like?

Date: Tuesday 7 May
Time: 13:30-15:15
Organising partners: International Development Research Centre (IDRC), CDKN, Climate Just Communities (CJC) project, NIRAS with Disability Rights Watch (DRW), Africa Centre for Trade and Development (ACTADE)

This session will interrogate and attempt to showcase what inclusive locally led adaptation can look like when intersectionality is considered. It will explore effective practice and challenges of amplifying gender equity and equality, disability and social inclusion in Africa. It will highlight the importance of full and effective participation, and especially including persons with disabilities, in co-creating knowledge and inclusive interventions for locally led adaptation. The session will bring diverse voices to share their perspectives and insights. It will foster genuine peer learning with participants, and identify recommendations to advance intersectionality and the decolonisation of climate action and knowledge.