Principles For Effective Adaptation Programs_notes

MEETING NOTES Principles for Effective Adaptation Programs Climate Change, Food Security and Agriculture, Disaster Risk Reduction Working Groups September 3, 2009 Introduction (Ilana Solomon and Lew Leonard): The purpose of this meeting is to capture practical field experience on climate adaptation programs, to examine what works on the ground, and to distill principles for effective programs. These principles can help us advocate effectively for more resources that support more effective programs. It will also help make adaptation more “real” & comprehensible to policy makers; help them understand similarities and differences between adaptation and development work. This should also be useful to NGO staff whose organizations are now implementing or plan to run adaptation programs in the future. Adaptive Agriculture & Cropping Systems – Food for the Hungry, Andrew Barnes Ethiopia Agricultural productivity depends on a number of key variables, including land, water, political environment. Environmental degradation and climate change are now affecting Ethiopian highland farmers. Soil erosion, increasingly intensive land use, decreased soil fertility, variable and decreasing rainfall negatively affect agriculture. This has resulted in difficulties for farmers in producing both subsistence and commercial crops; e.g., wheat — a staple crop, typically takes 6 months to mature — requires predictable conditions for reliable growth. Result is that this traditional crop has become significantly more challenging with unstable climatic conditions. As the rainfall has become less reliable, more farmers have turned to potatoes (take 4 months to mature). Traditional potato varieties have been problematic because they are low yielding and are susceptible to potato blight. FH talked to government research centers and learned that high-yielding, blight resistant varieties had been developed not yet disseminated to farmers’ fields. Working with FH, 3 new varieties were tested, introduced and widely distributed. Issues: need effective & efficient value chains to bring food to market (including centralized markets), which are often inaccessible for remote farmers growing bulk crops such as potatoes. Principles behind this agriculture climate adaptation program: • Local farmers may be ahead of the curve as far as awareness of the seasonal and long term need to adapt. They will use any asset they have to adapt, so are potentially good partners if offered useful options. • Adaptation is as old as agriculture itself, and is something farmers know how to do and can do if given the right tools. • Using the appropriate local crops with potential will make adaptation “easier.”

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In Ethiopia, the MoA had developed improved varieties of potatoes but they were not getting off the research station and into the countryside. Partnership opportunity allowed their investment to yield positive outcomes for farmers. FH job was to coordinate with the research center and the local MoA to get the new varieties out to the public.

Nepal & the Himalayas – World Wildlife Fund, Judy Oglethorpe WWF works at a landscape scale to address livelihood and environmental issues, including those related to fresh water. Nepal’s glaciers, which feed major rivers in the areas, are melting due to climate change. Phenomenon of glacial lakes (new and unstable geological structures). WWF with partners has been monitoring the creation of these lakes in Nepal and Bhutan to identify potential flash floods. •

WWF has been working “downstream” with at-risk watersheds & communities mapping vulnerability and working with stakeholders on risk mitigation (e.g., land use zoning). o This involves working at the national and regional governmental levels, as well as the local level.

Fiji, sea level • Water quality is an increasing local problem. As the sea level rises and storms surges increase in frequency, people are dealing with increased salinity and contamination of drinking water sources. This has many ‘ripple’ affects, including health problems. • WWF talked with communities and developed a participatory rural appraisal to identify daily challenges. • Communities worked to protect the coral reefs, address detrimental fishing practices (e.g. practice of dynamiting coral reefs) and replanting mangroves to protect shoreline from erosion. • Communities learned how to better protect their water sources and local ecosystems, on which so many quality of life issues depend • Government of Fiji learned about program and has adopted, scaled up. Lessons: 1. Importance of integrating livelihoods and ecosystems services, so people know and understand how they are both socially and ecologically connected. Also that together they make a positive difference in the long-term. 2. Work at different levels (e.g. regional levels to monitor melt, at local level to create early warning systems and do land-use zoning, and at national level to bring lessons to policymakers). 3. Have ‘no regret’s solutions: prioritize interventions that have beneficial developmental (social, ecological, economic) outcomes even if they are less than fully effective against climate change impacts. 4. Access to climate information is critical. We need to know that our interventions address and prioritize emerging problems and do not risk “mal adaptation,” which actually makes climate change worse.

3 Disaster Risk Reduction - InterAction, Linda Poteat Central questions or challenges for DRR work: How to educate people about risks; how to prepare communities to address natural hazards? How to encourage governments to respond more proactively? DRR programs work where the risk is highest, thus often at the local level Examples of DRR programs 1. Focused on one community in Indonesia following the tsunami, along the coastline. An IA member worked with the affected community and leaders on how to do preparedness after the event. E.g. early warning systems, such as community drills so people know what to do if a disaster hits. a. This allows quicker return to community ‘normalcy’, also boosts confidence about preparedness 2. Malawi: flooding caused deaths, interruption of schools, etc. Groups of communities and NGOs were brought together to assess root causes of vulnerability. Found much had to do with deforestation. Positive ripple affect: grew from a 5 village project to 11 villages. Community members saw how, by being proactive, they could effectively take action about become more empowered in figuring out ways to preserve their livelihoods. Tangible result: increased school attendance. 3. Namibia: fragile desert area, with increased population growth it had become more difficult to feed everyone. Community tracked what was going on. By creating indicators and tracking activities to figure out what does and doesn’t work, they were able to influence the government to support more sustainable farming techniques. Lessons: 1. Work closely with the communities, which when activated & empowered are often able to identify strategies for positive change. 2. Tap into existing DRR platforms to enhance the efficacy of national gov’t advocacy. 3. Build on existing frameworks (e.g. .Hyogo Framework for Action, HFA) & UNISDR.org. Water Scarcities & Conflict, Church World Service, Rajyashri Waghray Lessons from E Africa, particularly river boundary issues from Kenya/Uganda border. Related lessons learned from post-tsunami SE Asia. Project information: o Vastly different physical terrain and variable, often low, access to data. o Conflict trigger in most of the study areas: availability of resources (often related to economics), and how they are managed (social). One triggering factor is that many pastoralists do not view water as an asset/resource, consistent with ethnic and culture histories. Key caveats to informed program design: scale and trans-continental weather patterns (beyond the control of project design).

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Key points to note in programming for adaptation: 1. Water availability: Variables included a) inflows into the river-affected by dynamic predictability; 2) rainfall (surprisingly, this is not necessarily a bad thing), which has impacted communities 2. Inter-user conflict —- can be very violent and carried over cross generations 3. Access vs. sustainability – greater access can imperil sustainability 4. Tension vs. trust 5. Conflict experience can produce psycho-social vulnerability 6. Community-based participation and integration into government processes is critical because it changes what communities view as assets. Also necessary so communities can be part of a successful negotiation process. 7. Communities sometimes need help in understanding vulnerabilities (e.g, that water is a critical but limited element in all aspects of life). That understanding is essential for building resolve, confidence and initiative to do something about the problem. When this is learned, water becomes something that should be shared, preserved, open to negations….. 8. Importance of gender based approaches in developing a strategy (women having a voice in policy discussions, resources availability, etc.) Key lessons: 1. Vulnerability is a critical term—it can be defined very differently. There is a very big gap between community and institutional perspectives on vulnerability. These are not wrong, but to have sustainability — the other side of vulnerability. 2. Water availability and accessibility varies greatly; must be viewed as an asset and managed appropriately. 3. Integrating gender roles, from the beginning, to effectively implement and scale adaptation programs. 4. Institutions — bias towards “community based”. This is important because all of the levels must be linked; without institutional buy-in for adaptation program, it’s very difficult to be successful. Development tied to public policy; dollars tied to institutional outcomes is key for them to reach communities in the right ways when a disaster hits. Q&A Q: In the case of the potatoes for wheat/teff crop shift in Ethiopia, did the shift affect cultural identities? A: In this case, no, because potatoes were already grown Q: Potatoes have very different nutritional content than wheat and teff; was nutritional status/health considered in decision making for the substitution? A: For this project, it has not yet been looked at. Q: Noting the intense focus on engaging at the community levels, has this required new staff skills (e.g. technical expertise shifting to extension, participatory “engagement intensive work), and have donors been responsive in supporting this more open ended, capacity-building engagement, especially since this community engagement is harder to define as “outcome”?

5 A: For WWF, one of the main technical problems was how to access the climate info to integrate into the community assessments and translating this information into language that communities can understand. They have had funding (e.g. through MacArthur foundation) for vulnerability assessments. Seems that donors are seeing the increasing importance of this, but more funding is needed. For FH, they found the technical aspect is the easiest, and the harder part is translating it into something beneficial to the community, and is something the community actually wants. As far as donors go, FH does see that donors are interested in capacity building, but it is much harder to measure. The DRR group see many challenges as field programs reach larger scales; it’s very hard to keep quality and dynamic interventions. One of the big challenges is finding the right people who can “mediate between scales”; need a unique set of skills to see the big and small pictures — and to links them in ways communities are able to understand. Like a “scaling up and scaling down.” Q: For FH’s case study, when introducing new varieties, were there the typical challenges often seen with GM crops requiring more resources (such as increased water, fertilizer). A: Actually they are not really GMOs, but adapted from very old technology. However, they do better with fertilizer and irrigation. But FH has not changed the system much. Q: With WWF A: Issue was that the reefs were being dynamited, polluted, over fished. WWF provided technical assistance to the communities to identify the solutions themselves. Regarding replanting mangroves, government takes much control, but it’s been a combination of levels. Q: What are the fundamental differences between sound adaptation approaches and good development practice? Should we think of these as alike or not? What would the implications be for programs? Qb: In some respects these are similar, and in some different. There’s a continuum between adaptation and development. And are we communicating this to communities (as they do need to buy-in to change)? Aa: The two are similar in important ways. Difference between the two is that adaptation programs have a risk reduction and mitigation lens, without which conditions will deteriorate rather than develop. Also, we assume the change is linear and climate is linear (often we look at the past 10-12 years). The latest climate info on East Africa shows, back from 60 years, trends of changing patterns of rainfall. Hard to assess, but back 60 years, you also see declining pastoral areas that reached breaking points—need to be able to identify and understand these breaking points for effective programs. Appear to be tipping points or thresholds for cascades of negative processes to occur in rapid sequence. One of the major gaps in development practice is that development and environment have been viewed in ‘trade off’ terms. We may not have had to go to such extreme risk reduction (course correct), if we had better understood and integrated these long ago. That would have enhanced the sustainability aspect, and reduce the vulnerability.

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Ab: May not really be the communities that need convincing, rather the governments that see environmental degradation as a set of problems not linked to likely to worsen climate change. Scientists, different levels of policy makers and community members all need to be in the room. Q: Do we need to prioritize the issues we tackle? This difficulty is particularly acute in the policy area, namely given limited resources. A: We need to think about this collectively, as with the issue of scale. Priorities imply a distribution of adaptation resources, especially since these resources come in at a multinational/national level we ensure these get to the right places. Also that community knowledge initially informs and eventually feeds back to policy formation. Principles, distilled from presentations and breakout sessions: DISCUSSION: Group 1: Supplemental Principles: 1. Explicitly incorporate climate change lens to development practices. Identify what has changed and what will change. 2. Emphasize most vulnerable communities and address the needs of the poorest populations. 3. Improve flow and dissemination of information and data. 4. Respect and connect to local knowledge 5. Include a focus on changes and impacts of macro level economic policies. 6. ‘Do no harm’/’no regrets’ -- do a thorough analysis potential negative impact (long and short term) of development interventions. Include a precautionary lens. 7. Approach climate change as a human rights issue: Climate change affects human rights, and there are many components of CC strategies related to human rights. At many levels, adaptation that must be grappled with by governments and institutions (e.g. the disappearance of nation states). • • •

Consolidation and prioritization (*advocacy priority): Importance of scale: adaptation work needs to happen at all scales/levels, and prioritize local knowledge. Importance of gender: integrate gender analysis in adaptation strategies. Link technological approaches with social, economic, institutional adaptation.

Group 2: Supplemental Principles: 1. Multi-stakeholder & multi-level – social, political will. 2. Risk reduction – focus on vulnerable groups. 3. Draw on: new technologies, indigenous knowledge, existing sound development practice, multi-sectoral, holistic, best practices and “no regrets”. 4. Integrate sustainable livelihoods and ecosystem approaches – manage ecosystems as assets.

7 5. Scalability – institutions and knowledge transfer. Consolidation and prioritization (*advocacy priority): *Scalability Group 3: Supplemental Principles: 1. Integrating systems and stakeholders at all levels. 2. Sustainability of adaptive approach. 3. Trade-offs regarding equity and risk reduction. 4. Consider unique complexities of urban settings. Consolidation and prioritization (*advocacy priority): • Prioritized integration • Two-way information (local, national, feedback, etc.) • Operationalizing policy to action. • Coordinated. Integrated approach to adaptation within USG. • Policy-makers vs. administrators. Group 4: Supplemental Principles: 1. Sustainability 2. Do no harm Consolidation and prioritization (*advocacy priority): • Creating linkages – information flows across sectors, geographically, between institutions, across scales, research and project implementation. • Flexible approaches – no one size fits all, not everything is scalable. • Economic impacts/livelihoods – people think short term. Need to ensure adaptations are sustainable over the long-term. Need to balance between immediate response and long-term objectives. Think of alternative livelihoods. • Local context – role of local communities vs. national goals. Think about how local people perceive climate change. Think about institutional roles and buy-in. Think about the role of states and services they provide. Think about capacity building, self-determination, community-driven, participatory training. • Adaptation goals: support local communities in identifying adaptation needs and priorities, encourage national governments to empower local communities, fully understand positive and negative impacts of adaptation. Key Take Away: There are important distinctions, but adaptation is largely about good development. However, these differences (and similarities) still need to be further fleshed out. Next Steps: •

Should we distill this and take it to program people? Should we translate it into advocacy? We could actually do both.

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Creating two separate but related “principles” documents: one more detailed, technical program paper and one more policy relevant. Be clear on the intended audience(s). WWF is working on a principles of adaptation document for the environmental sector; could integrate principles drawn from this group.