‘Everyone everywhere will have to adapt to climate change’
By the Climate Centre
Arguing that only through locally led adaptation to climate change (LLA) will vulnerable people feel the benefits soon enough, the IFRC today publishes a brief on lessons learned from at least 20 countries where its network is integrating climate risks and investing at the most local level to increase community resilience.
The brief, jointly authored with the Climate Centre, says: “Everyone everywhere will have to adapt to climate change – some will be able to, many will not. Vulnerability – often driven by poverty, exclusion and humanitarian impacts – will continue to be the dominant factor that prevents people from adapting.”
By promoting local adaptation everywhere, the IFRC “seeks to make finance go further and to act faster with greater reach, dignity and choice for those who suffer the most,” according to Scaling up locally led adaptation: A humanitarian perspective and lessons learned.
The brief – which was launched at side-event at COP 30 moderated by the Climate Centre – says LLA breaks down development and humanitarian silos; its necessary partnership approach and two-way information flow enhances the understanding of risk, but how it’s done matters if trust is to be maintained and maladaptation avoided.
‘Seamless programming’
Finance for local adaptation needs to be “accessible, flexible, diverse and sustainable,” the brief adds in a summary of its key findings, “in line with community priorities and informed by community decision-making.”
Resources should be moved away from “rigid humanitarian, climate and development funding silos to diversify funding and ensure seamless programming”, while local-to-national planning should integrate community perceptions, information, coping strategies and priorities.
“One of the key aspects is to allow communities to manage things on their own, including funds and other resources, making the process truly locally led,” the Malawi Red Cross says in the brief.
As of 2023, only 17 per cent of global climate finance was directly getting to communities, a UNEP report said, but the eight principles of locally led adaptation, adopted in 2021, have now been endorsed by at least 130 entities, including the IFRC, aiming to give local actors leadership of decision-making and the management of resources.
The IFRC says it approaches LLA through a humanitarian lens, “integrating climate risks in humanitarian programmes and operations and facilitating LLA in communities”.
Simplified tools
Operationalized through its 2023 Climate Action Journey developed with and for National Societies, the IFRC network – among various measures in a total of 45 countries – has now facilitated new humanitarian partnerships with 30 governments, helped with 25 plans for local strategies and assessments through an LLA lens, and reached some 25,000 people.
The brief quotes the Serbian Red Cross as saying of its experience of the Climate Action Journey that “it gives the holistic approach that is needed – across implementation, modalities and awareness-raising. It is not the responsibility or ownership of one person or department, but of everyone, including community members.”
A new version of the IFRC network’s LLA and Climate Action Journey combined approach is under development that will simplify tools and language, strengthen community agency, streamline national processes, and support local leadership skills, including in financial management.
“The IFRC network is seeking to apply locally led approaches as a default,” the new brief concludes. “This includes investing more at local level with a 75 per cent target, shifting more decision-making to local level, and supporting community priorities across timespans to account for both current and future risks.”
The June 2023 floods in Serbia – one of the extreme-weather events featured in a new brief on locally led adaptation published today at COP 30 and jointly authored with the Climate Centre. (File picture: Serbian Red Cross via IFRC)