Locally led adaptation: Promise, pitfalls, and possibilities

Abstract

Locally led adaptation (LLA) has recently gained importance against top-down planning practices that often exclude the lived realities and priorities of local communities and create injustices at the local level. The promise of LLA is that adaptation would be defined, prioritised, designed, monitored, and evaluated by local communities themselves, enabling a shift in power to local stakeholders, resulting in more effective adaptation interventions. Critical reflections on the intersections of power and justice in LLA are, however, lacking. This article offers a nuanced understanding of the power and justice considerations required to make LLA useful for local communities and institutions, and to resolve the tensions between LLA and other development priorities. It also contributes to a further refinement of LLA methodologies and practices to better realise its promises. Ultimately, we argue that the utility of the LLA framing in promoting climate justice and empowering local actors needs to be tested empirically.

Adaptation to water-induced disaster: exploring local knowledge and Indigenous knowledge-led strategies

“…Our work corroborates other recent systematic reviews, which show that most climate change adaptation responses are incremental behavioral adjustments that provide short-term relief when what is actually needed is transformation change (Berrang-Ford et al, 2021;Eriksen et al, 2021). Local knowledge-led and IK-led adaptation will lead to a reduction in climate change impacts because it will be culturally and ecologically justifiable and feasible for a community (Rahman et al, 2023). Integrating these knowledges is fundamental as adapting to increasingly severe impacts due to climate change may require transformative changes, that is, novel, integrative approaches bringing about fundamental changes that are implemented quickly and large scale or across sectors (Berrang-Ford et al, 2021).…”

“…The increasing scholarly and policy focus toward locally led adaptation is grounded in the understanding that adaptation can be more effective if driven by LK and IK (Rahman et al, 2023;Westoby et al, 2021). The aim of this study was to examine existing evidence on LK-and IK-led adaptation in the context of climate-related WIDs, the most prominent and common manifestation of climate change, through a meta-review of scholarly works published between 2014 and 2019.…”

“…There are no universal metrics for success of locally led adaptation because of the context-dependence of effectiveness (Rahman et al, 2023;Singh et al, 2021). Therefore, it remains challenging to decipher from the academic literature if and how an adaptation approach reduces exposure or vulnerability.…”

“…While marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, the poor, women, and children, are often the most affected by WIDs (Savo et al, 2016), they typically have the least say in how climate-change impacts and risks should be tackled (Leonard, 2021). Moreover, there remains a need to better understand if locally led adaption, which can include IK and LK, is a pathway to overcoming the barriers presented by local micropolitics and power imbalances (Rahman et al, 2023).…”

“…Yet, there is a substantial gap in the understanding of how LK and IK are used to design and implement adaptation responses to climate change (Savo et al, 2016). Accordingly, exploring the knowledge drivers of locally led adaptation is fundamental to understand how risk reduction, equitability, and inclusivity can be achieved (Rahman et al, 2023). Therefore, in this article, we aim to better understand how LK and IK are employed to respond to climate-related WIDs.…”