Climate change and Environmental
Degradation Risk and Adaptation
assessment
Step 3
Community
Knowledge
Consult communities
• Share & verify
our findings
• Understand
community
coping strategies
• Participatory
responses
Consult communities
Participatory research
 Focus groups
 Community mapping, including
mapping natural resources
 Seasonal calendars
 Historical time lines
 Transect walks
 Use of ranking/ matrices
 Storytelling/ poetry/ street
drama
Consult communities
Participatory research
Refer to your question list
 Explain what you’re doing
 Ask them about CC & ED
 What changes observed?
 How have they adapted?
 Is it getting worse?
Consult communities
CASE STUDY
Community project in
Bangladesh Ignoring
certain people’s views
can lead to serious
environmental hazards
being overlooked
In Bangladesh, rural communities in coastal and riverside areas have
embarked on riskreducing activities, designed to help them cope better with
the devastating impact of cyclones. Contingency plans have been
developed, volunteers trained etc, and community confidence increased.
However, at the conclusion of a recent project assessment, villagers
confided that their real priority was the day-by-day erosion of their land and
loss of livelihood, as sea levels rise and encroachment accelerates.
Consult communities
Example
A group of staff from the Somuni Women’s Rehabilitation
Programme were able to use findings of a PADR exercise that had
been conducted in the mid-altitude zone during the previous year.
They also conducted new community-based research in one floodplain community. During this research the team spoke separately to
groups of older women and younger women, who each helped to
develop seasonal timelines and community maps. Questions they
asked were:
– How has the weather changed since you were children?
– How have crop types and crop yields changed since you were
children? In the last ten years?
– How have other natural resources (eg trees, water, plants,
animals) changed since you were children?
– How have occurrences of landslides changed since you were
children? In the last ten years?
– How does this affect your workload today?
– How has the community responded and adapted in the past to
these environmental changes?
Consult communities
- our responsibilities
 Help communities make their
own decisions
 Don’t take all their knowledge
and leave them with nothing
 Help them realise their own
capacities and build on them
Consult communities
Complete Part 1 b of the CEDRA
report format
1b
Community
Experiences
• Seasons are not as they used to be. The rainy season is
unpredictable, shorter and rainfall is more intense
• Crops are failing due to waterlogging and crop pests breeding
faster. This means more work for us younger women
• Our health is suffering because there is not enough food due
to crop failures, and we are the last ones to eat (older
women)
• We can list 8 species of animals and 12 species of plants that
have disappeared from this area over the last 10 years