Climate Change Adaptation Tools at the Community Level: An Integrated Literature Review

Abstract

The negative impacts of climate change are experienced at the global, regional and local levels. However, rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa face additional socio-political, cultural and economic challenges in addition to climate change. Decision support tools have been developed and applied to assist rural communities to cope with and adapt to climate change. However, poorly planned participatory processes and the lack of context-specific approaches in these tools are obstacles when aiming at strengthening the resilience of these rural communities. This paper uses an integrated literature review to identify best practices for involving rural communities in climate change adaptation efforts through the application of context-specific and culturally-sensitive climate change adaptation tools. These best practices include the use of a livelihoods approach to engage communities; the explicit acknowledgement of the local cultural do's and don'ts; the recognition of local champions appointed from within the local community; the identification and prioritisation of vulnerable stakeholders; and the implementation of a two-way climate change risk communication instead of a one-sided information sharing approach.

Sharing Multiple Perspectives on Burning: Towards a Participatory and Intercultural Fire Management Policy in Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana

“…Intercultural and participative management also faces the challenge of integrating Indigenous knowledge with scientific-academic knowledge, using the capacities and expertise of institutions to promote sounded and unprejudiced participative research over socio-environmental conditions that revolve around Indigenous fire management and application [24,25,28,29,31,34,35,86,87,95].…”

“…Indigenous people also expressed the importance of the support of firefighters and academics to plan safer burning conditions and the acquisition of training and tools to prevent the spread of uncontrolled fires. All participants agreed on the adaptive value of working and learning together to develop a new fire management paradigm that integrates the efforts, knowledge, and capabilities of Indigenous people with governmental institutions and academics [29,34,96].…”

“…They belong to the Carib linguistic family. Pemón is a self-designated name that stands for "people"; it was used in first instance to distinguish them from neighboring Macuxi and Wapishana ethnic groups, with whom they coexist throughout intermarriages among them in some areas of Brazil [33,34]. The populations range from 30,148 people (2011) in Venezuela, 751 inhabitants (2010) in Roraima, Brazil, and 475 inhabitants (1994) in Guyana [38].…”

Decision support platforms for climate change adaptation: an overview and introduction

“…Platforms and related resources to support climate change adaptation have become widely available in recent years, and examples can be found for most sectors and for different geographical locations, including coasts (Torresan et al 2016;Lane et al 2013) and rural areas (Cao et al 2018;Nkoana et al 2018). Despite the widespread availability of decision support resources, there is little understanding of their effectiveness-the extent to which they are useful to practitioners, and the extent to which they are used.…”

Looking to the future: guidelines for decision support as adaptation practice matures

“…Without these in place, the process might not have succeeded. In considering which resources can and cannot be adapted, it should be recognised that some have suggested that decision-support resources that are context-specific and targeted perform better than those that seek to address more general requirements (Förster et al 2015;Cortekar et al 2016;Nkoana et al 2018) and it is perhaps less likely that the latter would lend themselves well to such adaptation and translation.…”