Locally led adaptation

Locally led adaptation is an approach that empowers front-line communities to advance their own solutions through equitable climate finance.

The IFRC and the Climate Centre have developed the seven-stage climate action journey (with French, Spanish and Arabic summaries) with locally led adaptation as a central goal, providing an innovative framework for National Societies to create climate solutions through community wisdom, lived experience and climate science.

Locally led adaptation empowers National Societies to drive community-level action while supporting the implementation of programmes and projects at scale. The IFRC has published a short brief on the concept with further guidance due later in 2024.

To foster locally led adaptation at the community level, the climate action journey starts internally by integrating climate risks within a National Society’s existing humanitarian programmes, operations and strategies.

In 2023, a guide to climate smart programmes and humanitarian operations was developed by the IFRC and the Climate Centre to support National Societies in the process to make our work across sectors risk-informed and climate smart – this constituted the journey’s first three stages.

A new brief, including the remaining four, explains how to apply the best available climate and weather information, ensuring humanitarian interventions contribute to national adaptation agendas and do not expose people to additional climate risks.

Community resilience is internationally recognized as a means to achieve local adaptation to changing climate risks. In 2023, the Climate Centre became a part of Pathways2Resilience, which supports 150 regions and communities in Europe to scale up transformative solutions to foster their climate adaptation solutions.

The Climate Centre was a founding member of the Partners for Resilience alliance from 2010 to 2020, promoting an integrated approach combining solutions to rising disaster risk, climate change and environmental degradation.

And in 2014 the Climate Centre was responsible for knowledge management in the BRACED alliance, which aimed to increase community resilience to climate extremes in South and South-East Asia and the Sahel.

Resources developed through these initiatives and are now available to National Societies, and the Climate Centre also offers training resources through our updated Climate Training Kit, which is compiled thematically with topics such as community resilience, early warning early action, and water, sanitation and hygiene.