Adaptation
Knowledge Day III
Effective Adaptation –
from Principles to
Practice- integrating
community and
ecosystem approaches
Enhancing adaptive capacity through integrated community and ecosystem
adaptation: Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection & Learning
(MERL)
Kit Vaughan Global Climate Change Advocacy and Policy Coordinator
kvaughan@careclimatechange.org
CARE International
May 18 2012
http://www.careclimatechange.org/
Why is CARE focusing on climate change adaptation?
• 207.6 million people affected by natural
disasters in 2008 -- 30.5 million were
displaced or forced to migrate. In comparison,
just 4.6 million were displaced or forced to
migrate as a result of war and conflict.
• Worldwide, 75 million children – including
41 million girls – do not attend school. Key
reason: girls responsible for collecting water &
firewood. Drought/ disforestation increase
burden.
Because climate change
threatens Development:
CARE seeks a world of hope,
tolerance and social justice,
where poverty has been
overcome and people live in
dignity and security.
• Estimated 87% unmarried women & almost
100% of married women lost livelihoods
when a cyclone hit the Ayeyerwaddy Delta in
Myanmar in 2008.
• Additional cost of climate change adaptation
in developing countries has been estimated
around US$100 billion. uupwards
WWW.CARECLIMATECHANGE.ORG
CARE’s approach to Community-Based Adaptation (CBA)
•
The goal of CBA is to build the
resilience of vulnerable individuals,
households, communities and societies
from the ground up
•
Action is based on local priorities
(taking into account social
heterogeneity) – but not in a vacuum!
•
It starts with local knowledge but also
seeks to integrate scientific
knowledge into decision making
processes
•
Operates at multiple levels and can be
large scale, so long as communities
remain at the centre of planning and
action
CARE’s approach to Community-Based Adaptation (CBA)
CARE sees CBA as a process involving five interrelated components:
•
•
•
Climate-resilient livelihood strategies, including capacity building for planning and improved risk management
•
•
Social mobilization to address underlying causes of vulnerability, eg: gender-based inequality, poor governance
Disaster risk reduction and Management
Capacity strengthening of local civil society and government institutions so that they can provide better support to
communities, households and individuals in their adaptation efforts
Influencing the enabling policy environment through advocacy
Why measure adaptation effectiveness
locally?
•
The biggest burden of climate change is borne by poor and vulnerable
communities, especially women.
•
The impacts of climate risk are manifesting themselves overwhelmingly at
the local, community-level, and will affect sex and ages groups
differentially.
•
Many rural communities depend directly on natural resources, and on the
goods and services provided by healthy ecosystems, for their livelihoods.
•
These ecosystems on which livelihoods depend will also undergo rapid
changes, and their resilience in the face of climate change will hinge on the
capacities of communities to understand and manage these changes.
•
This is why an integrated approach to adaptation, which combines
community-based and ecosystem-based approaches, is needed.
DEFINITION OF AN INTEGRATED
APPROACH:
“Adaptation planning and action that adheres
both to human rights-based principles and
principles of environmental sustainability,
recognizing their inter-dependent roles in
building resilience of both human communities
and ecosystems to climate variability and longterm change”
Accounting for ecological and social complexities
 Many CBA vulnerability assessments look The risk is adverse
effects on larger
at the natural resource, e.g. the forest
ecosystems.
products, without considering the
ecosystem services.
 Many EBA vulnerability assessments fail to The risk is that power
imbalances grow, and
address socio-economic complexities,
especially with regards to the unique needs that benefits of
adaptation are captured
of vulnerable groups.
by local elites
 The community based approach to
adaptation is better at understanding social
When CCA practitioners
complexities and designing socially
can
distinguish
such
sustainable responses
added value, they will
 The ecosystems based approach to
overcome initial barriers
adaptation is better at understanding
to collaboration, to
ecological complexities and designing
achieve better
ecologically sustainable responses
adaptation results for
people and for
ecosystems
Sustain Ecosystem
Services
CLIMATE
CHANGE
A challenge remains: How to measure resilience?
• Buffering capacity: Are the natural systems that mitigate damage from natural
disturbances present (e.g., wetlands that store floodwater, vegetative cover that
protects against landslides during heavy rains)?
• Replication and redundancy: Are critical assets (natural and/or human) present in
multiple places? For example, a region that depends on a single water source for
irrigation or potable water is more vulnerable to disturbance than one with backup or
alternative sources
• Excess capacity: Have humans fully utilized the landscape’s natural resources? If
so, a drought, fire, or other disturbance that destroys necessary resources will have
devastating results. If not, alternative sources of water, food, and land can be utilized
while the system is recovering.
• Susceptibility: Have humans created communities, infrastructure, and production
systems in places where they are likely to be damaged or destroyed by
disturbances? And how can land use planning approaches reduce the exposure of
these assets to future climate impacts?
CARE and IIED partnership
- in collaboration with and with
inputs from:
ACCRA
IDRC CCA
IDS
IISD
Indigo
Practical Action
Mercy Corps
Oxfam
Red Cross/Red Crescent
WRI
Why Participatory M&E for Community-Based Adaptation ?
Overarching goals with new PM&E:
‣ Provide a platform for local stakeholders
to articulate their own needs –
fundamental part of building adaptive
capacity
‣ Measure changes in adaptive capacity
‣
‣
Support the ‘adaptive management’ of
CBA strategies and plans so that local
stakeholders can continue adapting to
the impacts of climate change beyond
the scope of a specific CBA
intervention/project
Facilitate continuous and joint learning
and reflection – particularly important
for CBA due to high degree of
uncertainty
What do you need to measure to verify whether local-level
adaptation interventions are effective?
Outcomes
• Measuring changes in
adaptive capacity
•
Context
Process
and
Tracking
changes in
Practice and non-climate
climate
drivers of vulnerability
Process and
Practice
• Monitoring and evaluating
implementation
The MERL process: What’s different?
A more positive way of tracking
change under uncertainty
‣
‣
‣
‣
‣
‘Risks’ are understood as part of
the process
Process
Learning is actively encouraged and
Practice
Allows greater room for
responding
Informs iterative and flexible
planning
And more active and postive
reporting
Thank you!
For more information:
1. CARE-IIED P-MERL Manual
Tine Rossing (CARE)
rossing@careclimatechange.org
Jessica Ayers (IIED)
Jessica.Ayers@iied.org
2. ELAN Integrated Approach paper
Pascal Girot (CARE)
pgirot@careclimatechange.org
Process
and
Practice