Lessons From Adaptation In Practice

In this post we'd like to attract attention to several opinion papers of The International Institute for Environment and Development which is a global leader in sustainable development.

As an independent international research organisation, the Institute links local to global. In Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Middle East and the Pacific, it works with some of the world's most vulnerable people to ensure they have a say in the policy arenas that most closely affect them — from village councils to international conventions.

As governments and other agencies spend more money on adaptation to climate change they want to know that their investments are effective — that adaptation will keep development on track, that there is a fair distribution of costs and benefits, and that climate resilience is being built. But monitoring and evaluating adaptation policy and practice is not easy. Simon Anderson, Head of IIED’s Climate Change Group, discusses the need for an inclusive approach to adaptation evaluation that shares knowledge among all stakeholders and that answers the needs of the climate-vulnerable poor.

Another paper is about community-based adaptation which aims to empower local people to cope with and plan for the impacts of climate change. Conventional approaches to planning adaptation rely on ‘expert’ advice and credible ‘science’ from authoritative information providers such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In this opinion, Saleemul Huq,  a
senior fellow in IIED’s Climate Change Group, suggests that to truly support the needs of local communities, this information needs to be more site-specific, more user-friendly and more inclusive of traditional knowledge and existing coping practices.

Opinion Papers to download:

Assessing the effectiveness of climate adaptation

Improving information for community-based adaptation

Source: International Institute for Environment and Development