Locally Led Climate Action for Sustainable Community Resilience ... - ReliefWeb

Locally Led Climate Action for Sustainable Community Resilience - Kenya | ReliefWeb

Giriraj Amarnath, Carol Mweemba, Emilian Manishimwe and Barbara van Koppen

Locally led climate action has emerged as a critical approach to address the challenges posed by climate change at the grassroots level. As the impacts of climate change intensify, communities around the world face a wide range of vulnerabilities such as extreme weather events, water scarcity, rising sea levels, and disruptions to lives and livelihoods. In this context, locally led climate action emphasizes the importance of empowering local communities to take ownership of their adaptation strategies. Research interventions therefore need to focus on transformative measures to ensure the longer-term resilience of local communities to the continued effects of climate change.

The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR) aims to do just this. ClimBeR works with a diverse range of partners to transform the climate adaptation capacity of food and agricultural systems in low- and middle-income countries, reduce vulnerability to climate change at its roots, and support countries to adapt and build equitable and sustainable futures. The Initiative also aims to empower women, youth, and underrepresented groups through multilevel polycentric governance – one of four workstreams which sit under its Governance for Resilience (G4R) research area.

The Governance for Resilience (G4R) work-streams utilize relevant frameworks to improve horizontal and vertical coordination, enable responsiveness to climate shocks, facilitate long-term planning for adaptation, and nurture champions of change across local communities to achieve transformative impact.

Local smallholder communities who are often hit the hardest by climate change, will have greater agency through stronger representation in decision-making on climate adaptation solutions. Local leadership in planning and implementation of climate adaptation interventions builds stronger and more resilient communities with effective, efficient, just, and sustainable solutions to climate-related challenges.