A Community Perspective: Building Resilience to the Impacts of Climate Change

“It is not necessary to consult global climate models and scientific predictions to know how to adapt to climate change. Rural people are the experts. . . .”

-- ActionAid Bangladesh’s report on community-based climate adaptation.

In December 2010, ActionAid Bangladesh published, Understanding Climate Change from Below, Addressing Barriers from Above: Practical Experience and Learning from a community-based Adaptation Project in Bangladesh. The report describes experiences and learning from a community-based climate change adaptation program piloted by ActionAid Bangladesh and funded by the Embassy of Denmark. The program described in this report exemplifies a truly bottom-up approach to climate adaptation.

In December 2010, shortly after the launch of this report, Ilana Solomon, ActionAid USA Policy Analyst, had the opportunity to travel to Bangladesh to visit communities involved in this project. She was able to speak with community members who came together to understand their vulnerability to climate change and to find and implement solutions to reduce their vulnerability. Ilana’s visit underscored that ActionAid’s job should be to learn from communities experiencing climate change, to support them in claiming their rights, and to encourage their advocacy at the local, national, and international level.

The depth of the communities’ analysis of climate change was inspiring. Some of the participatory tools that ActionAid Bangladesh used to engage communities included:

  • A social map created by the community to analyze the poverty and vulnerability of community households;
  • A “river of life” created by the community to recall the hazard history of the last 25 years;
  • The creation of various calendars, including a livelihood calendar, a hazard calendar, and a seasonal calendar to understand how the climate is changing and to identify and how these changes are having an effect on the lives of community members;
  • A community process to list and prioritize (with open voting) the greatest needs of the community with respect to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (see picture below);
  • A problem tree to analyze the problems identified by the community and to understand the root causes of and solutions for problems; and
  • The creation of a Community Adaptation and Implementation Plan.

From ActionAid Bangladesh’s report, “climate adaptation should empower poor people to become responsible citizens claiming their rights from government and taking responsibility for their lives collectively. A combination of local knowledge, scientific knowledge and knowledge about rights can enable people to move from individual experience to collective action.”

Please take a moment to read the report and learn from communities directly impacted by climate change.

An example of a Community Action Teams list of problems (later to be prioritized and solved):

Click here for a large view