Community-Based Adaptation Workshop

12th July 2010, The Resource Centre, Holloway Road, London, N7 6PA

As part of the Global Initiative for Community Based Adaptation, Practical Action organised this event to draw together mainly UK based practitioners in an ongoing narrative amongst the international CBA community.

The workshop arose out of the fourth International CBA conference, held in Dar Es Salam in February this year; participants were invited to host a national workshop for people working on adaptation, to discuss current issues relevant to their work. The London event was attended by over 45 people, representing 35 organisations, and took stock of where CBA currently is, where it is going, and how to best influence the paths of future.

Presentations were held on the following themes:

Introduction to CBA

Catherine Pettengell, Oxfam, outlined the threat of climate change to development and the role of and need for adaptation.

• Climate Change Adaptation: Oxfam's Approach (Powerpoint, 3.7Mb)

Adaptive Programmes: Towards mainstreaming CBA

Jonathon Ensor, Policy Researcher at Practical Action, outlined the organisation's latest thinking on how to mainstream adaptation throughout all of its programme work.

• Adaptive Programmes: Towards mainstreaming community-based adaptation (Powerpoint, 155k)

Ten Commandments for CBA

Terry Cannon, IIED, provided a list of ten principles as challenges to future adaptation thinking

• Ten Commandments for Community Based Adaptation (PDF, 22k)

Exploring Social Barriers to Community Level Adaptation

Lindsey Jones, from Overseas Development Institute, presented the findings of an 8 month research project into the barriers of adaptation in 2 areas of Nepal.

•  Exploring Social Barriers to Community Level Adaptation (Powerpoint, 2.1Mb)

Early Warning, Early Action

Maarten Van Aalst, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Change Centre, gave a presentation on the disaster organisation's work in coming to terms with climate change when the 'usual won't work'.

• Early Warning, Early Action (Powerpoint, 20.1Mb)

International Climate Policy

Rachel Berger of Practical Action outlined the current position of community based adaptation in the UNFCCC. Saleemul Huq, IIED, then spoke about the current and future finance options for adaptation.

• Details are covered in the Workshop Report (PDF, 105k)

Urban and Rural differences for CBA

Mansoor Ali, Practical Action, made the case that building adaptive capacity may require different approaches in urban and rural areas and urged participants to think about what this means.

• Details are covered in the Workshop Report (PDF, 105k)

Ecosystems in the context of CBA

Helen Jeans (WWF) and Jo Phillips (RSPB/Birdlife) started a discussion on how ecosystem approaches can be integrated with community based adaptation.

• Ecosystems and adaptation (Powerpoint, 1.8Mb)

In the afternoon, breakout groups discussed five themes:

• Climate Resilient Agriculture
• Risk and Resilience
• Championing CBA in the UK and CBA
• Communication and Knowledge Sharing - webtools for CBA
• CBA in Urban areas

For greater detail of the day, and the brief of the breakout discussions, see the Workshop report.

The workshop was organised as an activity under the IIED-led initiative, the Global Initiative on Community Based Adaptation (GICBA).

Lively discussion on adaptation
Rachel Berger reviews the workshop and highlights some of the key themes emerging from the day in our CBA blog. Comments and contributions welcome.