This module demonstrates how to develop climate adaptation actions and implement these in your communities and at the local level. This module will also equip you with relevant skills and tools to evaluate your adaptation actions. It provides guidance on how to scale up your adaptation action, identify adaptation funding opportunities and engage with potential investors.
By the end of the module, you will:
The below infographic provides a summary of the key content in this module:
In the Download Area you can access all modules in pdf, infographics in high resolution and relevant templates and assets. You can always access the Download Area via the menu.
As a young person, you can take the lead on climate adaptation action in your community. As you’ll remember from Module 2, adaptation actions support households, communities, and countries to respond to the effects of climate change.
Adaptation actions can take various forms. Many at the community level involve civil society groups that work to strengthen the ability of vulnerable people to adapt to climate change. As you learned in Module 4, these actions can also be entrepreneurial. Young innovators from around the continent have started businesses that provide adaptation solutions – such as clearing waste from waterways to reduce flooding risks or providing climate-smart irrigation to farmers.
Young people we surveyed when developing this Toolkit, highlighted several ways to engage in climate adaptation action.
This can involve using climate risk and/or vulnerability analysis processes to inform local planning, and implementing community-based adaptation actions that empower young people, women and girls.
This means making use of weather forecasts and climate information to prepare for potential weather or climate events, sharing early warnings, and preparing communities for extreme weather.
To do this, young people can educate others about practices like planting trees, reusing and recycling waste, collecting and storing water for irrigation, and not cutting down trees and forests.
Young people can help with building flood protection walls, drainage systems, shelters, homes and resilient community structures.
This may involve working to unlock government resources for local adaptation actions, or setting up a community savings system as a financial buffer for recovering after a climate shock or stress.
This is technology that supports the efficient use of energy for lighting, irrigation, transportation and other systems.
This involves diversifying crops and promoting stress-tolerant crops and livestock that can withstand stresses, such as droughts.
This involves creating entrepreneurial ventures that address adaptation needs in your community.
First do your homework
To be successful in your mission, it is important to plan your approach, be informed and build relationships for collaboration. Questions to ask yourself at the start include:
Knowing what is already happening and who is involved will prevent you from wasting time trying to reinvent the wheel. It will also open your eyes to partnership opportunities that could help make your action a success.
What is an effective adaptation partnership?
Relationships based on mutual trust, equality and learning, with an agreed vision, and clear accountability for all parties. Such partnerships engage the complementary strengths of those involved. Partners collaborate on specific objectives, challenges and opportunities in ways that achieve greater impact than they could achieve alone.
To develop your climate adaptation actions, you can use the Community Adaptation Action Planning (CAAP) process as a model. It brings local stakeholders together in an empowering learning process. The aim is to create tangible but flexible plans for communities to build their adaptive capacity and reduce their vulnerability to climate change over time. It can be used at the community level or more broadly.
Tip: Communities could already have development or disaster risk reduction plans in place. Adaptation should be integrated into these, instead of developing a separate adaptation plan.
For the purpose of this module, we’ll look at Steps 1-5 in detail.
Tip: For full details of the various stages and tools used during the CAAP, see CARE’s Adaptation Planning with Communities Report.
Firstly, identify the purpose, process and stakeholders you’ll engage to start planning your adaptation actions.
Establish your team and devise a plan for what you need to do. Conduct initial background research, do a stakeholder analysis (as detailed in this guide from CARE), and make sure your team has been trained in necessary skills, such as facilitation (covered in Module 5).
Second, understand the overall context and mobilize people to support and/or participate in the adaptation action planning process.
Here, you might also do background research, institutional mapping (which involves identifying the ways different institutions, and power relations, interact with and affect adaptation), and analysis of existing programs.
You can mobilize key stakeholders through interviews and meetings with communities and institutions that engage in adaptation and related issues.
Develop a workplan
By the end of step 2, you will be ready to develop a workplan for rolling out your CAAP process. Table 1 is an example of a workplan format for CAAP facilitators. You can adjust it to suit your needs.
This step focuses on understanding the need for your local adaptation action. It allows you to build a common understanding of climate change risks, vulnerability and the adaptive capacity of institutions and groups within the community.
Here, you can do gender and diversity analysis to ensure your action meets the needs of the most vulnerable (covered in Module 3).
Tip: Community participation is key for developing impactful adaptation actions and plans. Step 3 is where you can start using participatory tools to help empower communities and give them ownership of adaptation plans and actions.
In this step, you will need to be familiar with key climate change terms.
The probability of harmful consequences, or expected losses (deaths, injuries, property, livelihoods, economic activity disrupted or environment damaged) resulting from interactions between natural or human-induced hazards and vulnerable or capable conditions.
A potentially damaging physical event, phenomenon and/or human activity, which may cause the loss of life or injury, property damage, social and economic disruption or environmental degradation.
Short-term events or disruptions that have negative effects on people’s well- being, assets, livelihoods, safety, or their ability to withstand future shocks. Examples include sudden extreme weather events or disruptions, such as flash floods, cyclones and heatwaves.
Continuous, long-term trends or pressures that negatively impact people’s lives and the systems they live in. Examples include prolonged droughts, erratic weather patterns, rising sea levels, increased desertification and natural resource degradation
Participatory tools are designed to encourage joint analysis, learning and action. Below, we highlight how CARE’s Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis (CVCA) can be used to analyze community-level vulnerabilities to climate change, and capacities to adapt. (To refresh yourself on the CVCA, refer to Module 3).
The CVCA helps you map climate vulnerabilities and capacities in a community, paying particular attention to gender, ecosystem and governance issues. It allows you to prioritize adaptation actions based on the needs of those most vulnerable to climate change.
To map vulnerabilities, you can:
The analysis allows you to identify specific actions for increasing climate resilience, which can be tailored for different groups. The CVCA combines scientific and indigenous knowledge and ensures that all voices are heard.
As part of the CVCA process, it is important to identify the main climate shocks and stresses that pose a risk to your community and country.
You can start by drawing a simple table (like Table 2) that lists possible shocks and stresses. Place a tick next to all the shocks and stresses your community faces.
Tip: Be sure to research a full range of shocks and stresses so you don’t miss any of the important ones!
A hazard map allows you to become familiar with the community and how it is perceived by different groups. During the exercise, community members identify important livelihood resources along with hazards affecting the community (climate-related and other). (For more information see the Field Guide section of the CVCA 2.0 Handbook).
You can use this tool (shown in Figure 2) to identify direct and indirect impacts of climate- related shocks and stresses on people’s livelihoods. It provides a basis for discussing how people are responding to these shocks and stresses.
After looking at impact chains, you can use the adaptations pathway tool to get community input on what changes they could make to reduce the negative effects of the identified shocks and stresses (Figure 3).
Once you have identified the potential adaptation pathways, you then discuss which are most urgent and which can be done by individuals or require collective action. These can be used to generate solutions, which can feed into your adaptation action plan (Figure 4).
Now that you have mapped and identified key climate change risks and vulnerabilities, it’s time to co-develop a Community Adaptation Action Plan.
The plan will determine your strategy for addressing the climate change risks, vulnerabilities and adaptation pathways you identified in Step 3 and identify actions to take. It can also be used to support requests for funding.
Community visioning for a future with climate change
CARE’s “Community Visioning” approach brings together different people in the community to think about an ideal future in five, 10 or 20 years, in the context of climate change. It reveals how people’s expectations of the future within one community can be different. It helps a group reach a consensus about a common or shared vision.
How it works
Practical information
Tip: In certain instances, young people and women and girls may not feel comfortable voicing their concerns in the same forum as men. To ensure everyone participates, the visioning exercise can first be done in separate groups for men and women. The vision of each can be discussed afterward in plenary to come up with a shared vision that reflects the hopes and dreams of all participants.
The adaptation options comparison table helps you and your community finalize adaptation options, compare them using a list of criteria, and prioritize which ones to address (see Table 3 for an example).
How it works
Practical information
Tip: One of the key criteria can be the positive contribution to gender equality. If this is the case, it is important to define what this means and eventually use a specific gender matrix to analyze the differentiated effects of the adaptation options on things like workload, relations, power dynamics, arising gender-based violence, and see who will benefit more as a result of the activity.
Community Adaptation Action Plan (CAAP)
The CAAP merges all results from previous tools into a detailed action plan showing clear community-driven adaptation actions in response to identified climate change impacts and vulnerabilities. The plan provides a way forward, showing who the adaptation action(s) will target, who will implement the actions, when these will be implemented, and what resources are needed (see Table 4 for an example).
How it works
Practical information
This step is about implementing planned adaptation actions to strengthen adaptive capacity and reduce the vulnerability of different groups to climate risks.
Within this step, there are numerous things you will need to do. These are broken down into three main activities.
Let’s look at each in more detail.
Assess your actions with the Adaptation Good Practice Checklist
Whatever actions you plan to undertake, it is important to assess them against the Adaptation Good Practice (AGP) Checklist. This will ensure that adaptation results in quality, impactful and long-term climate resilience for the most vulnerable people.
Assess your implementation plan against the checklist’s nine criteria (Figure 5) and make any necessary changes.
Prioritize which adaptation actions to implement
Once you have assessed your adaptation actions with the AGP checklist, and made any refinements, it’s time to prioritize the actions you will implement.
Consider what is feasible. Ask yourself:
Decide how to monitor and evaluate your adaptation actions
When your adaptation actions are up and running, you will need to keep track of their progress and evaluate whether they are making the intended impact. That’s where Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) comes in.
You should design a MEL framework before implementing your adaptation actions. This means you can learn from and update your actions as you progress. A MEL framework can inspire you as you track your achievements.
Additionally, a MEL framework will help you demonstrate impact when you are communicating about your work to others, which is important when trying to convince donors and partners to support and collaborate.
The three elements of MEL each have distinct purposes and processes.
The MEL system is only effective when these three pieces are aligned.
Sustainable, significant and measurable changes in resilience and adaptive capacity for a particular population. Changes at the impact level are influenced by those factors directly addressed by an action, as well as other factors.
Changes in individual behaviors (e.g., individuals putting into practice new knowledge, attitudes or commitments) and changes that are structural or systemic (e.g., policy changes) that can be seen in different populations. Outcomes are often a result of what participants do on their own, influenced by the adaptation action, or other factors.
The products an adaptation action generates through implementation of its activities. Outputs could include the results of a training, such as the number of farmers trained on climate-smart agricultural techniques.
These are targeted at individuals, families, community organizations, the private sector and public sector, and civil society organizations. Activities are what the organization or individual implementing an action does rather than what the beneficiaries (or participants) will do
The set of resources needed by an adaptation action to deliver its commitments. These include the human and financial resources, physical facilities, equipment, materials, logistics, in-kind contributions and operational policies that enable services to be delivered.
A signal that shows whether or not progress is being made. When designing an indicator, ask: What does the result (change) mean? How do I know that the result (change) has happened?
The conscious and unconscious beliefs we each have about how the world works. When identifying the logic of an adaptation action, you should also identify the assumptions being made about its rationale, the context and people involved, and the conditions needed to implement it.
The logical sequences of interim changes that need to occur to reach the intended impact. These interim changes include changes in the focus population but also other actors who are instrumental in bringing about change.
First, establish a results chain with SMART indicators.
This shows how a particular action will lead to a desired result. Table 5 provides an example results chain for your inspiration.
Remember, the results chain should be accompanied by SMART indicators for your adaptation action(s) so you can measure success. As you learned in Module 7, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
The model should address key questions, including:
Tip: To learn more about the basics of MEL and how to design and implement a MEL system, check out CARE’s Getting started with MEL for Climate Adaptation.
Then, develop a plan for how you will collect and analyze the necessary data and information.
Consider how you will collect and analyze the data and information you need to evaluate your adaptation action(s).
In our example above, you would consider how to collect data on the various indicators.
You would also need to decide on what types of tools (e.g., software) and processes you will use to crunch the numbers.
Tip: To identify the right milestones and indicators for your adaptation action, use CARE’s Framework of Milestones and Indicators for Community-Based Adaptation.
Once you have analyzed your data and drawn conclusions, decide how to communicate your results
Decide who you will share your MEL results with. Your audience will likely be community members who took part in your adaptation action, partners, donors and local government. Here, it is important to know your audience and understand their needs. Make sure you communicate your results in a way your audience can interpret and that makes an impression.
You will also use the results of your MEL analysis to learn as a team. Ask yourself:
After implementing your adaptation action in its initial stage, and evaluating the outcomes, you might be pleased to see that it has been successful and has potential for scaling up. At this stage, it’s important to consider how the intervention supports effective adaptation.
Can the intervention withstand variations in climate? Can it be easily used by your target community without the need for help from specialists?
Is the intervention cost-effective and can it be sustained financially over the short, medium and long term?
Does the intervention disrupt social cohesion or create division among members of a community? If so, how might you build bridges between people and bring people with different opinions together to create a shared understanding of the benefits of the action?
Does the adaptation action support the agency and wellbeing of women and girls?
When thinking about scaling up your adaptation action, you need to have a clear understanding of the value it brings, the costs involved, and how these will be paid for. Here, it pays to think about your adaptation action in business terms.
The Business Model Canvas (BMC) helps you easily define and communicate your adaptation action concept visually. It helps you define a problem and the proposed solutions and implementation processes. It can be used to determine whether an adaptation action should be scaled up or not.
Below is an example from CARE Bangladesh. It shows how the BMC was applied to the problem of low-income communities not having access to safe and reliable water. Source: CARE Bangladesh.
Low Income Communities (LIC) in urban Bangladesh do not have access to safe, reliable and adequate water for domestic consumption.
Municipal authorities do not supply water in the slums as they are out of formal holding tax process. LICs have no choice but to rely on local traders for water at a higher price. To meet domestic needs, women spend 3-4 hours a day in the queue to fetch water and often they face harassment. Limited access to safe water results into various water borne diseases. Lack of water sources in those highly compacted areas, vincreases the risk of fire incidents.
The approximate cost for the establishment of water supply system is USD 5318.75 on an average, if it is solely carried over by CARE project along with community co-financing up to 23-36% (approx. USD 2,133.05) for pipeline networking, electricity connection and others.
But if we go in a private sector partnership approach, then the upfront cost could be minimized in a large scale as there will be installment/ community entrepreneurship. Each system covers 100-150 households.
‘The Water Collective’ is a community managed women friendly solution co-created by CARE in co-financing mechanism to solve out water scarcity of the slums.
The system, where communities have full control, ensured access to safe water 24/7 at a cheater price at their doorsteps.
A group of selective community members voluntarily collects
the fees from households to manage operational costs and maintenance. Remaining balance is being deposited in bank. The water collective has a formal links with the municipal authority for sustainability.
Users:
Scalers:
To reach users:
The Key benefit (low cost & availability) attracts the customers from adjacent communities. Additionally, meeting, social gathering, community marketing, group formation is helping to reach users.
To reach Scalers:
National events, advocacy, meeting with private sector, local elected bodies and City Corporations; social networking, blogs, publicity materials etc.
Users:
Scalers:
As you learned in Module 6, there is funding available for adaptation actions (although this is still not enough to meet the need).
As a young person with innovative ideas for adaptation actions that need financial support there are various options available:
There are various small grants and competitions available for climate change initiatives led by young people. Some of these are focused on Africa, or the Global South. A few are listed below.
You cannot access these funds directly. You will need to be part of a youth organization that can be part of a Green Climate Fund (GCF) or Adaptation Fund (AF) proposal development process led by “accredited entities.” These can be private or public, non-governmental, sub- national, national, regional or international, as long as they meet the GCF’s standards. If you put forward good ideas and make active contributions, the accredited entity might identify you as a credible implementing partner if the proposal is awarded. This would give you an excellent opportunity to implement your suggested activity as a key implementing partner and be provided with the necessary funds to do so.
Tip: To know where in your country proposals are being developed and which accredited entities to approach, you can contact the national focal points for the GCF or AF.
It is good to build a relationship with them so you know exactly what is going on and when. To find out who your focal point is, ask your Ministry of Environment.
Governments are an important source of climate finance. Many climate-vulnerable countries have started including resources for climate action in their annual development programs. Do some research into what options are available in your country and what processes you need to go through to apply for funding.
As you learned in Module 4, young people are turning their innovative adaptation ideas into businesses. If you have developed an adaptation action with business potential, then you can try to secure investor funding.
If you have developed a trailblazing adaptation action, you may be so excited that all you can focus on is the smart solution that you’re offering to a climate change problem. But investors will need to know more before they’re willing to invest. They will want to know:
READ Adapt for Our Future: A Background Paper on Youth and Climate Change Adaptation to understand more about the main drawbacks for effective youth engagement in climate adaptation globally. The paper shows that most National Adaptation Plans and Disaster Risk strategies only recognize young people as beneficiaries, hence making their engagement
in national efforts passive rather than active. The paper proposes a transformation within current institutional structures so that youth-led actions are supported and included in national climate change adaptation strategies.
READ this case study (page 8 of linked document) about young people taking action in Ghana. Young people have been involved with Ghana’s Community Resilience Early Warning (CREW) project, doing risk assessments and updating of risk maps for effective early warning systems. Young people in hazard-prone communities share weather information from the Ghana Meteorological Organization with the broader community during the rainy season. In situations where floods are inevitable, they organize to establish short- term coping mechanisms, such as building makeshift levees with sandbags and clearing drainage systems.
WATCH this video to learn more about CARE’s Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis (CVCA) tool and how you can use it to map vulnerabilities in your community.
READ CARE’s CVCA Handbook for the full details on how to conduct participatory activities when designing your Community Adaptation Action Plan.
LEARN how to use the CVCA with these short online courses: CVCA #1 – The Basics of Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis and CVCA #2: The CVCA Step-by-Step.
LEARN how to identify the right milestones and design appropriate indicators for your adaptation actions with this guide, Framework of Milestones and Indicators for Community- Based Adaptation, from CARE.
LEARN how to design a full participatory MEL system for your adaptation action with CARE’s Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection and Learning Manual.
READ the CARE Planning for Resilience manual for step-by-step guidance on how to do participatory, gender responsive local adaptation planning. It has tools and resources that will help when doing the planning process.
READ CARE’s Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) Framework to understand a range of strategies that need to be in place for effective Community-Based Adaptation to occur.
EXPLORE Ashoka’s 4 Levels of Impact model, designed for social entrepreneurs to help define the intended impact of an initiative. Changemaking can occur at multiple “levels” that require different tactics and strategies. For example, if you are focusing on plastic pollution, specifically bottles from drinks, you have many options for where to focus your efforts. The Ashoka model provides structure when planning for what ‘level’ your intended initiative will operate. This helps you identify your change making level and identify the stakeholders you need to collaborate with to achieve your intended impact.
LEARN how to design a full participatory MEL system for your adaptation action with CARE’s Participatory Monitoring, Evaluation, Reflection and Learning Manual.
READ this checklist on gender-inclusive actionable agro-advisories to learn about integration of gender in Climate-Information Services work. The checklist aims to assist producers and translators in developing agro-advisories (forecast and forecast based advice) that are gender- inclusive and useful for both men and women farmers.
READ about Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP). This approach uses seasonal climate forecasts to inform decisions for more resilient livelihoods and risk management, thereby strengthening adaptive capacity. PSP workshops create a multi-stakeholder platform for collective interpretation of meteorological and local forecasts and their probability and uncertainty.
EXPLORE the full Adaptation Good Practice Checklist to make sure your adaptation actions meet the criteria for actions that result in quality, impactful and long-term climate resilience for the most vulnerable people.
LEARN about what an Adaptation Fund proposal looks like with this funding proposal template.
LEARN how to prepare proposals that are aligned with the GCF’s requirements with a short
online course: Developing and Implementing GCF Funding Proposals.
WATCH this video featuring Mariama Mamane, UN Environment Young Champion of the Earth for Africa (2:53). Learn how her initiative offered a three-in-one solution to some of Africa’s biggest environmental problems. Her project uses the water hyacinth, which chokes waterways across the continent, to create sustainable energy and environmentally friendly fertilizers. Mariama, 27, who lives in Burkina Faso, is one of six winners – each representing a region of the world – awarded the new prize by UN Environment and polymer-producing giant Covestro.
WATCH the short film Adaptation Voices (4:00) by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). This film describes how young people are working with local communities in Kenya to scale up local ecological farming techniques to support adaptation. (To hear more from African adaptation experts on the possibilities for accelerating action, including inspiring case studies, visit CDKN).
WATCH Changing Africa’s Narrative (14:00) by TEDx Lusaka. Kelvin Doe talks about the importance of Africans changing their own narrative about the continent. Kelvin Doe is a self-taught Sierra Leonean engineer. A true inventor by age fifteen, Kelvin built his own radio station using discarded scrap metal and electrical items that he found in his hometown. Kelvin finds solutions to problems in his community, for example, making batteries to light homes in Sierra Leone where electricity supply is inconsistent, or building a generator.
WATCH Youth for Climate Action: Breaking Barriers (2:30) by UN Climate Change Learn to get inspired to do more to address climate change. Reuben and Yande, from Zambia, are tired
of inaction. They don’t want to sit idly while the world is facing the climate crisis. Hear their message and take a stand.
You have learnt a lot and have many red hot ideas. Test your knowledge with a quiz and give yourself space to cool down and reflect on what you have learnt. Use this section to take stock of how you will put your skills into action.
EXPLANATION: Community participation is key for developing impactful adaptation actions and plans. Participatory tools help empower communities and give them ownership of adaptation plans and actions. CARE’s Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis Handbook provides tools such as the Hazard Map and Impact Chains Tool. You can also interview key community members and host workshops and dialogues.
EXPLANATION: Whatever adaptation actions you plan to undertake as part of your Community Adaptation Action Plan, it is important to assess them against the Adaptation Good Practice (AGP) checklist. The checklist’s nine criteria help ensure that adaptation results in quality, impactful and long-term climate resilience for the most vulnerable people.
EXPLANATION: Your first step when developing a MEL framework is to develop a results chain. This shows how a particular action will lead to a desired result. The results chain should be accompanied by SMART indicators for your adaptation action(s).
EXPLANATION: After implementing your adaptation action in its initial stage, and evaluating the outcomes, you might be pleased to see that it has been successful and has potential for scaling up. At this stage, it’s important to consider how the intervention supports effective adaptation. Check to see that your action supports effective climate change adaptation. Consider:
EXPLANATION: When engaging with investors, you will need to show them that you can guarantee a return on investment, have traction in the market, have good governance structures in place for your business, have a sound financial model and a competitive advantage, among other things.
Consider the following questions to get you started with developing your own adaptation action plan.
Adaptation needs in your community:
Partners and participants:
Possible funding:
