PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

CHANGING FOCUS: CAN DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTIONS TAKE

ADAPTIVE CAPACITY SERIOUSLY?

Lindsey Jones Simon Levine Eva Ludi

Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA)

o Change is a constant in the lives of rural people in Africao shocks (war, displacement, rain failures, food price

spikes)o stresses (population pressure, terms of trade, land

degradation)

o Climate change is another pressure - and interacts/magnifies other shocks and stresses

o Climate change is uncertain at local level

Why adaptive capacity matters

ACCRA and why adaptive capacity matters

o Change is certain – but uncertain!o People need the ability to maintain wellbeing in

the face of change – i.e. adaptive capacity o No development is sustainable without adaptive

capacityBut...o How well can communities adapt to change ? o How much do existing development interventions

help (or undermine) adaptive capacity ?

ACCRA and why adaptive capacity matters

Assumptions: o development interventions are influencing adaptive

capacity (AC), whether we realise it or noto AC cannot be built through ‘adaptive capacity

programmes’ – but development interventions can be harnessed to build AC

Problem:o Little consensus about what AC is and what it

depends on

The local AC framework

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•Assets•Institutions•Knowledge•Innovation•Decision-making

Availability and interplay of appropriate key assets that allow the system to respond to evolving circumstances in a changing environment

The Asset Base

Institutions and EntitlementsAn appropriate and evolving institutional environment ensuring access to key assets

Institutions and Entitlements

Knowledge and InformationCollecting, analysing and disseminating information so it can be used in support of sustainability

InnovationAn enabling environment to foster and make use of innovation

Innovation

Flexible Forward-looking Decision Making and Governance

governance structures which can anticipate and respond to a changing environment

Insights from the Field

• People do adapt and innovation exists, but• Not to climate change directly or in

isolation• reactive • short-term, immediate needs

• So... high risk of maladaptation

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• What’s going on with development interventions?o Technology packageso Direct provision of assetso Increased income and livelihood

diversification o Group creation and capacity building

• A missing link: assets – AC o Helping people find, adapt and use assets

• A strong focus on assets – but much less on what makes assets ‘come alive’ 12

Insights from the Field

o Institutional dimension sometimes undermining sustainabilityo Elite capture (e.g. irrigation and women)o New institutions created without being socially

grounded (e.g. project committees and savings groups, quotas)

o No institutions created to support what was introduced (e.g. communal pasture enclosures)

o DIs not informed by analysis of institutions and power

o Institutions sometimes undermining innovation and its spread

Insights from the Field

Insights from the Field

o A missing link: innovation !o We’re not identifying the blockages to

innovationo confidence, information, finance, risk tolerance,

community acceptance, perceptions of ‘failure’, paradigms of ‘authority knows’

o Information treated as a technical packageo Assumption: correct and appropriate (e.g.

yields/ha)o But if we saw information as part of AC...

o Emphasis on range of info o Emphasis on sources of info o Emphasis on use of info – communication and

capacity to interpret (e.g. seasonal forecasts & uncertainty)

Insights from the Field

o Existing planning and programming is short-term – often fed by ‘shopping list’ participation

o Longer term climate & economic context not being considered in many progs (e.g. irrigation in arid lands)

o But, misinterpretation of information leads to poor planning and maladaptation

o How to plan for uncertainty?o Adaptive capacity!o Flexibilityo Local agency

We’re missing out on the huge potential contribution that development interventions

could bring to AC

DIs need to refocus on AGENCY – people’s ability to make their own decisions and achieve their

own plans(at household, community, local... level)

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE?

Better decision-making (‘governance’ ) is not only about Governments – also NGOs, communities, private sector actors, households, etc.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE?

Need to change the skill-set in development planning

•institutional (power, culture, sociology, etc.) analysis,

•scenario planning, •understanding uncertainty, •how to support agency, not give

messages

The Big FiveLonger-term future and uncertainty.

Innovation, not introducing specific changes.

Institutions – social, cultural, political, economic Power. (There are reasons why status quo exists)

Knowledge – not just information

ACCRA research showed how these are interlinked, cannot be thought about separately

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE?

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE?

But the problem is...None of this is new.

Climate change re-underlines their importance and urgency.

But what has stopped us from taking it

on board?