Beyond the principles: evidence of whether locally led adaptation works in practice

Locally led adaptation (LLA) is now widely endorsed in principle, yet the evidence base to show whether it works in practice has not been mapped systematically. 

This report presents the LLA Evidence and Impact Framework – a structured analytical lens organised around eight LLA principles, two dimensions and six evidence categories – applied, following extensive validation against independent human review, to a verified corpus of 106 academic and grey literature documents published between 2005 and 2026. 

Using a mixed manual and AI-assisted method, the study identifies where robust LLA evidence concentrates in the literature, where it is absent, and how the framework itself performs. 

This matters because endorsement of the eight LLA principles is not the same as evidence that they are being followed: without a shared, structured way to weigh the evidence, it is difficult to tell an intervention that is genuinely shaped and governed by local actors from one that merely consults them, or to distinguish a strong claim of success from a well-documented one.