Locally-led adaptation is a key strategy in dealing with the climate crisis

This world is home to some 7.6 billion people, and not every person lives as well as the next. Some live in concrete homes, some in thatched huts. Some in the urban jungle, some in towns and villages, and others, literally in jungles. Some live on flat land, some on plateaus, and some on plain land. Those who live in climate vulnerable areas are often posed a common question: Why not move?

This article will not answer the above question. There are a number of reasons as to why a group of people choose a particular area and make it their home. It is as much of a geological decision, as it is a cultural, social or emotional one. However, it is important that we highlight the plight of people who choose a particular spot as their home and demand localised attention for them, while or without waiting for solutions to big-picture, global problems. We need to make leaders understand that while global environmental debates remain ever fluid, people who live in deteriorating local conditions require customised and personalised solutions, and they require them fast.

Take deforestation, for instance. The people in these vulnerable areas are largely dependent on the forests for their livelihood, but deforestation has now become a problem for the entire world. Similarly, if the world is to curb the global rise in temperature and keep it below 1.5 degrees Centigrade, countries will have to cut their emissions for decades. It is a given that the bigger the issue, the more time it will take. While conventions are held every year regarding burning environmental issues such as deforestation and global warming as a consequence of deforestation, vulnerable people are grappling with seemingly smaller but more urgent and life-threatening consequences, such as hunger, displaced animals entering villages, and floods and cyclones—none of which can be put on hold because conventions with important world leaders are looking for solutions. Granted, global warming is a much bigger issue in the grander scheme of things, but it definitely is not as easily solved as some localised problems may be, if given proper and timely attention.

Therefore, it is only fitting that these local problems be provided with unique solutions—whether nature-based and local, or a mix of global and local—but definitely keeping in mind the local surroundings. They demand customisation in the way they are solved, and deserve acute attention and swift intervention from their national governments, international agencies and other decision-making bodies. Take, for instance, floods. The drone view of why floods occur frequently is a lack of green cover provided by trees. However, it would be impractical to wait for reforestation in a particular area for the floods to stop while people lose livelihoods, homes get displaced and children fall sick. Research has shown us all the reasons why floods in one area would occur again and again. Even if evacuation seems an obvious solution, oftentimes, it does not work due to a combination of economic forces, lack of education, human rights issues, etc. An integrated problem like this would never have a one-size-fits-all solution. Therefore, simply calling for evacuation in that area does not serve any purpose. It is like yanking at the string of a botched necklace while the whole piece disintegrates in your hand.

Then what do you do? The answer is two-pronged. It lies at the very roots of where the problem is occurring—in locally led adaptation (LLA), and ironically, in the experienced hands of top decision-makers, researchers, government and private institutions, civil society torchbearers and international agencies. Let us explore both in detail.

Locally led adaptation action involves empowering local stakeholders to lead or meaningfully contribute to adaptation actions. Each place has its own unique history, its dilemmas, and its tried and tested localised methods of putting things right. Indigenous people know their land better than anyone and know how to respect nature and the environment in which they live, often striking the right balance between sustaining resources and protecting themselves, even if it is just to survive and delay the issues at hand, and not mitigate them. Right now, almost everywhere in the world, people are going by the top-down approach. The top officials of government ministries, who have next to no hands-on knowledge of problems faced by the people who are in the thick of the problem, are trying to find solutions to these problems. Their expertise is simply not enough to generate the sort of results that would sustainably work for these people.

It is the people living in the affected areas who will be able to assist themselves better, as they have been dealing and adapting with issues like these all their lives and through generations. The experience they pass down, the improvised techniques of adaptation, blended with the modern knowledge of local and regional experts, can be crucial to their survival and to planning out localised solutions for them, even, and especially, in the face of global negotiation delays. In short, even when a failure of global leadership delays things, local intervention can and should be faster than global delay. This can be made possible through LLA where all authoritative bodies working at the local level—supported by their governments and private institutions, including civil society leaders—and foreign agencies work and learn from each other and about adaptive actions by involving local-level entities.

Kazi Amdadul Hoque is the senior director of strategic planning and head of Climate Action at Friendship, a Bangladeshi social purpose organisation.

Email: hoqueka@gmail.com