Participatory Action Adaptation: Tools for increasing climate change capacity and preparedness at the local government level

Abstract

Climate change is expected to have severe physical, social, environmental and economic impacts on cities worldwide, both directly and indirectly. These impacts are expected to have a disproportionate effect on those living in poverty in developing countries, particularly Africa. In July 2009, ICLEI Africa Secretariat initiated the Five City Adaptation Network project. Already the project is providing some useful and insightful information on the current understanding and experiences of the threats associated with climate change, adaptation, and climatic data resources available in Southern Africa. Due to the variety of respective governance and decision making processes of the cities, the project utilizes a number of entry points (i.e. different sectors or departments) in order to ensure that the project is aligned to areas that are prioritized by the cities and were projects of similar nature are already underway. The use of these tools has assisted and improved the interaction with the various key stakeholders around the topic of climate change and adaptation, whilst moving towards enhancing engagement and holistic decision making processes covering: climatic risks, sectoral linkages and the development of locally appropriate adaptation mechanisms. Through this project, a number of mechanisms and tools have been developed to understand the risks, impacts and vulnerabilities at the local level, and to prioritize the climatic variable/s that is/are currently impacting the city services, infrastructure and reliability as service providers (i.e. infrastructure, day to day service delivery and livelihoods of the local population). This paper describes some of the tools that have been recently developed by the ICLEI Africa team and are being used in Southern Africa to develop and increase capacity around the terms and complexities pertaining to climate change. These tools will also enable the identification of local climatic risks and locally appropriate adaptation options that are likely to increase the resilience of African local governments and communities.