Climate change has become one of the greatest threats to mankind nowadays. For many years, several national and international policies and practices have been adopted for climate change adaptation and mitigation actions. Yet, only 10% of global climate finance reaches local communities and institutions.
Hence, an effective strategy is needed to involve the local actors who are at the frontlines of the climate crisis. Here, locally-led adaptation (LLA) can be of use. LLA keeps the local people at the heart of any decisions by valuing their local and ancestral knowledge. Local communities' lived realities and intergenerational wisdom has been found to be effective to resolve issues of the triple crisis – climate change, poverty, and nature.
History of developing locally led adaptation (LLA)
The term “locally-led adaptation” (LLA) was first proposed during the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019. However, the notion of LLA was embedded almost 20 years ago, to combat the climate crisis with the help of adaptation techniques by the local communities.
A team of esteemed climate scientists contributed significantly in the initial stage to the idea of adapting to climate change rather than working on mitigation techniques, especially in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).The primary agenda of the team was to combine hands with LDCs and make them realize the severity of the climate crisis.
The team started working initially in four sub-regions across 48 LDCs. These sub-regions included some Southern and Eastern African countries such as Francophone, Lusophone, and Portuguese-speaking countries, along with some South Asian Countries such as Bhutan, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos.
In the beginning, the group of climate scientists started working with partners who already implemented some sort of local-level adaptation interventions. Later, the team of scientists started to collaborate with the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) Group -- representing the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations.
In 2000, the LDCs group came into existence through the recognition of UNFCCC. Later in 2001, during Conference of the Parties (COP) 7 at Marrakesh, Morocco, the LDC group successfully received “the LDC fund” and “the mappers” to begin the journey of adaptation.
Since then, the LDC partners each year have met at COP to discuss various matters related to climate change, health, and agriculture. Simultaneously, the necessity of “capacity building exercise” on climate change increased, which led to the formulation of “community-based adaptation” (CBA) in 2005. Through the concept of CBA, the nations realized that all the development efforts for poverty eradication will eventually become useless if climate change is not taken into consideration.
CourtesyLater, more networking was conducted with the civil society and the second conference of CBA took place in 2007, in Bangladesh. However, while implementing community-based adaptation (CBA) activities, it was noticed that the local communities had limited involvement in the decision-making process.
To fill this gap, a new concept was introduced called locally-led adaptation (LLA). The UNFCCC's LDCs group is emphasizing the call for a locally-led response in their “LDC 2050 Vision,” delivered through the LDC Initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR). The LDCs have aimed to spend 70% of their climate finance at the local level by 2030 and invited climate funders to partner with them to deliver this goal.
Similarly, to maintain synergy with the LDCs Group, the Global Commission on Adaptation highlighted the urgency of locally-led adaptation action in its flagship report, “Adapt now” in 2019. The commission's Locally Led Action Track (LLAT), established in 2021, was created on a decade of foundational work by IIED, Slum Dwellers International, Huairou Commission, International Center for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), and many others on financing for adaptation, accessing the basic resource, and urban services in vulnerable communities.
To strengthen the LLAT objectives, IIED worked with WRI, ICCCAD, and more than 50 other stakeholders at events over 2019 and 2020 to create a set of eight principles for LLA action. LLA ensures that a fruitful relationship is built between local communities, civil societies, and the local government with the central government bodies.
Hence, making the top-down approach ineffective by involving the local communities to exercise individual and collective control over defining, prioritizing, designing, monitoring, and evaluating adaptation actions.
The COP26 Resilience Hub Synthesis Report highlights how locally-led adaptation is crucial for transformative and equitable climate actions. The report also signifies how realistic and equitable adaptation actions can be conducted by involving women, youth, disabled, displaced, and indigenous peoples during the design, decision-making, and implementation phase.
It will be crucial to witness how this COP27 will build a pragmatic roadmap to implement LLA at local, national, and regional levels.
Fatema Akhter is working in the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) as a Researcher. Her areas of research interests include locally-led adaptation, loss and damage, gender and environment. She can be reached at [email protected].
Dr Saleemul Huq is the Director of International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University, Bangladesh. Email: [email protected].
Afsara Binte Mirza is working as a Research Officer at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development. She can be reached at [email protected]
