Multi-national, Sub-Saharan Africa  Show on interactive map

Jan 2008

ACTS Kenya, Zero Zimbabwe, Cure Malawi and community members

IDRC

The CBAA project is carrying out climate change adaptation pilot projects at community level in eight African countries (Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa), the first six of which are Least Developed Countries.

The selection of community-based adaptation as a learning-by-doing research approach originated from discussions amongst the partner institutions. Through collaboration with relevant stakeholders (particularly meteorological services), communities have been selected using the LOCATE methodology, which specifically targets groups most vulnerable to climate change. In project design, special consideration is being given to women, who are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Participatory and consultative approaches are being adopted and a learning-by-doing approach applied to reduce vulnerability to climate change at the community level through the application of adaptation knowledge, experience and technologies generated by this project.

The project is identifying ways of communicating climate information to poor and vulnerable communities, and from communities to other stakeholders. Capacity building and support is being given to NGOs and communities through training to facilitate integration of climate change into their plans and activities. The intermediary NGOs will work with, and support the implementation of community level activities geared towards climate change adaptation. The project will generate information on community-based climate change adaptation; disseminate these to inform other stakeholders including researchers, NGOs, national and international policy and decision makers etc. Through the project, greater awareness on climate change will be created. NGOs, local communities and researchers will be empowered to integrate, carry out, and generate information on climate change adaptation.

As part of the process CBAA decided to use participatory video and monitoring and evaluation (PV M&E) to enable the community to record the impacts of climate change and the local adaptation knowledge using their own words and voices. In addition to amplifying community voices, the PV for M&E activity also aimed to enhance accountability, support action research, strengthen communication between the NGOs and the communities, and help generate and archive local knowledge.

MSC, participatory video, participatory GIS mapping