Community Based Adaptation
….seems to be one of the new ‘it-words’ in the climate change world.
In acknowledging that climate change will hit the most vulnerable in our world the hardest, and that we often see a lack of top-down guidance to progress adaptation planning, we have seen the emergence of bottom-up approaches. These range from harnessing local knowledge through initiatives such as participatory GIS, to advocacy, training and knowledge sharing with local groups. Some of the most successful examples are often in the developing countries, such as IIED’s program:
http://www.iied.org/community-based-adaptation-climate-change
In Australia, we have seen the majority of adaptation action occur at local government level, and this is an ever evolving process — given the iterative nature of adaptation. We could do with more support for the community sector to enable increased planning for climate variability and change — after all, the services themselves, as well as the community are vulnerable to the impacts as we have learned in this project:
But we are still talking a lot about CBA, but not really doing it….
I am really interested in building the capacity of already well connected community service organisations and networks to facilitate CBA, and a project that I am involved with is trying to do just that.
Rural People; Resilient Futures is run through the Southern Grampians Shire Council and the Southern Grampians and Glenelg Primary Care Partnership in collaboration with RMIT University. The project is funded by the Department of Environment and Primary Industries Victorian Adaptation and Sustainability Partnerships Grant Scheme. I feel that this is a great example of what can be achieved by using a well-connected community platform to facilitate bottom-up approaches to adaptation planning.
Instead of reading, put your feet up and watch to learn more!
Enjoy!
