Community-Based Adaptation

Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) is an important component of the larger picture of management and avoidance of Climate Change impacts and pressures by local people. It provides information and concrete examples on potential impacts of climate change and mitigative measures which are location specific and community managed. CBA also provides information needs which can be shared and replicated in an appropriate format and manner acceptable by communities. The need for information on adaptation by incorporating and building upon existing coping strategies of communities can be articulated and demonstrated through CBA projects.

Community-Based Adaptation Microsite

 

Projects

Strengthening Climate Information and Early Warning Systems to Support Climate-Resilient Development in Cambodia

Cambodia is facing mounting development challenges due to climate change. Longer dry seasons and shorter, more intense rainy seasons are resulting in increased frequency and severity of disasters, including floods and droughts.

Recovery from such events stretches limited public resources and forces shifts in development priorities. At the same time, climate change is also impacting agricultural production, affecting household level income and putting pressure on food security.

Safeguarding rural communities and their physical assets from climate-induced disasters in Timor-Leste

In Timor-Leste, increasing climatic variability and unpredictability – particularly related to rainfall and extreme weather events – present a significant risk to the lives and livelihoods of rural people.

Climate-induced hazards, such as floods, landslides and drought, frequently impact families’ lives and livelihoods while also damaging critical rural infrastructure including water supply and drainage, embankments, roads and bridges. These damages leave rural populations without basic services and often in full isolation. 

Integrating Community-Based Adaptation into Afforestation and Reforestation Programs in Bangladesh

The project is working to transform the way greenbelt afforestation and reforestation programs in Bangladesh are designed and developed.

Community-Based Adaptation: Guatemala

Climate change risks to Guatemala include intensification of many historically familiar climate risks, threating rural livelihoods and ecosystems. Climate change pressures are likely to include:

Community-Based Adaptation: Jamaica

As a small island developing state in the Caribbean, Jamaica faces significant climate change impacts, including:

  • Increasingly intense hurricanes
  • Sea-level rise, coastal erosion
  • Saline intrusion into soils and aquifers
  • Declining average precipitation
  • Increasingly erratic and intense rainfall

These impacts pose serious risks to community livelihoods, key socio-economic sectors, and ecosystems.  

Community-Based Adaptation: Samoa

As a small island developing state, Samoa's vulnerability to climate change is high. Homes, infrastructure and livelihoods in Samoa are overwhelmingly concentrated along an increasingly vulnerable coast. Climate change impacts in Samoa will include:

Community-Based Adaptation: Morocco

Like much of the Maghreb, Morocco faces current water scarcity, which is likely to intensify with climate change.  Climate change projections include:

Community-Based Adaptation: Namibia

Namibia faces significant climate change risks, including increased aridity and heightened climate variability.  Projected impacts include:

  • Increased production risks to smallholder agriculture and pastoralism
  • Increasing erosion risks
  • Increasing risk of flood
  • Risks to climate sensitive biodiversity, with impacts on the ecotourism sector

The CBA Namibia portfolio consists of two (2) projects:

Strengthening the resilience of smallholder agriculture to climate change-induced water insecurity in the Central Highlands and South-Central Coast regions of Vietnam

Viet Nam is particularly vulnerable to climate change and already impacted by more irregular and intense climate variability. Every year the country is affected by a range of hydro-meteorological and climatological hazards, from droughts and forest fires to storms, floods and extreme temperatures.

Small-scale farmers with plots of less than one hectare, who are dependent on one or two rain-fed crops per year, are the most vulnerable to changes in water availability and its effect on agricultural productivity.

Developing climate resilient livelihoods in the vulnerable watershed in Nepal

In Nepal’s mountain regions, climate change is driving more intense monsoon rainfall and increasing snow and glacial melt rates.

These trends are contributing to more frequent and severe floods and landslides, resulting in extensive damage to agriculture, property, and the environment, thereby disrupting lives and livelihoods and threatening food security. At the same time, water scarcity and droughts are also threatening agriculture-reliant livelihoods.  

Supporting Climate Resilience and Transformational Change in the Agriculture Sector in Bhutan

Given its geographic location and mountainous terrain, Bhutan is particularly vulnerable to changes in climate.
 
With the goal enhancing the resilience of smallholder farms, in particular to shifting rainfall patterns and frequent extreme weather events, this project, led by Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Commission, focuses on three complementary outcomes:
 
• Promoting resilient agricultural practices in the face of changing climate patterns

Support for Integrated Water Resources Management to Ensure Water Access and Disaster Reduction for Somalia's Pastoralists

Roughly 75% of Somalia’s 14.7 million people live in rural areas, with approximately 60% practicing pastoralism and 15% practicing agriculture. Less than one third of the population has access to clean water.

Climate change is now bringing more frequent, higher intensity droughts and floods, reducing already scare water supplies. Lack of water poses a serious threat to the health, wellbeing and livelihoods of farming and pastoral communities and limits Somalia’s overall economic and social development. Women in rural areas are particularly vulnerable.

Addressing Climate Change Risks on Water Resources and Food Security in the Dry Zone of Myanmar

This project seeks to reduce the vulnerability of farmers in Myanmar’s Dry Zone to increasing drought and rainfall variability, as well as enhance their capacity to plan for and respond to future climate change impacts on food security.

Focused on five of the most vulnerable townships of Myanmar’s Dry Zone, the four-year project (2015-2019) will reduce the risks and effects from recurring droughts, floods and erosion through an integrated water management, crop and livestock adaptation programme.

Enhancing Adaptive Capacities of Coastal Communities, especially Women, to Cope with Climate Change-Induced Salinity in Bangladesh

Upscaling Community-Based Adaptation in Ethiopia

The "Upscaling Community-Based Adaptation in Ethiopia" project will work to empower communities to plan and implement adaptation interventions in a deliberate and proactive manner, reducing reliance on the Government of Ethiopia to provide already scarce resources for climate change adaptation. The five-year project will benefit from a US$8.8 million grant from the Global Environment Facility Least Developed Country Fund.

Community-Based Adaptation: Niger

Niger is a semi-arid to arid country, and faces significant land degradation stemming from baseline pressures. Climate change threatens to exacerbate these issues, in the process worsening food insecurity and making poverty reduction increasingly challenging. Impacts of climate change are expected to include:

Community-Based Adaptation: Viet Nam

Viet Nam, with an extensive coastline and high baseline vulnerability to cyclones, is highly threatened by climate change.  Threats include:

Community-Based Adaptation: Bangladesh

Densely populated, coastal, and low-lying, Bangladesh faces serious climate change risks, including:

• Sea-level rise
• Intensification of cyclones
• Increased river flooding
• Salinization of agricultural land
• Changing rainfall patterns, with increasingly intense rainfall during the monsoon season

Community-Based Adaptation Project

It is increasingly recognized that small communities are likely to be the most severely affected by climate change impacts and yet are least equipped to cope and adapt. This pilot project is designed to implement community-based projects that seek to enhance the resiliency of communities, and/or the ecosystems on which they rely, to climate change impacts.

Community-Based Adaptation: Bolivia

Climate change impacts in Bolivia will vary with the country's diverse topography and ecology, but will include the following:

Supporting Climate Resilient Livelihoods in Agricultural Communities in Drought-Prone Areas of Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a water stressed country with one of the harshest climates in the Central Asian region. Climate change modeling indicates significant increases in temperature and reduction in rainfall. This will lead to a decrease in total volume of water availability that is likely to have a profound impact on agricultural production systems and local farmers. The long-term solution envisaged by the Government of Turkmenistan is to mainstream climate change adaptation in order to secure climate resilient livelihoods in agricultural communities.

Community-Based Adaptation: Kazakhstan

While Kazakhstan has a rapidly growing economy, farmers and pastoralists outside of the main urban centers face significant climate change risks to their livelihoods stemming from increased aridity. A combination of rising temperatures, declining average rainfall, and regional deglaciation threaten to cause: