Introduction to locally led adaptation

IIED is working with diverse partners, including governments, donors, academia and other NGOs, to promote locally-led approaches that advance justice and resilience for people, climate and nature.

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Mobilising money to where it matters
A programme of work helping to initiate a positive shift in the quantity and quality of climate finance reaching the local level to support locally-led solutions that address climate change, poverty and biodiversity loss
A boy wearing a yellow hat with his back to the camera stands next to trees with a hosepipe spraying water in the air as he waters vegtables.

A boy waters vegetables in Vietnam (Credit: Neil Palmer Photography, CIAT Qiubi, via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

The current flow of financial resources, economic models and power dynamics within the climate finance space – between those who hold the funds and the recipients of those funds – are failing to adequately address the escalating and intersecting crises of climate change, biodiversity degradation and inequalities that impact the lives and livelihoods of people and communities.

Responding to these challenges, the Adapt Now report (PDF) highlighted the importance of locally led adaptation (LLA), which build on a decade of foundational work carried out by IIED with Slum Dwellers International, Huairou Commission, International Center for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and others, which led to the identification of eight principles for LLA. 

More than 130 organisations have now endorsed these principles and are now focusing on how they can be implemented and operationalised.

IIED’s LLA team is engaging across interrelated workstreams to generate global ambition on locally led adaptation, and is supporting efforts towards several of the propositions identified in the institute’s manifesto. Below are our core areas of work:

1. Influencing global climate and development discourses

Influencing change makers at all levels to scale up LLA approaches, utilising evidence and experience to leverage growing interest in doing things differently.

2 Evidence and tools for locally led adaptation

Building the evidence base for LLA by researching the impact of work in communities, identifying knowledge gaps, and tracking changes in financial flows over time.

3. Promoting accountability and transparency

Helping partners (financiers and intermediaries) build their capability to scale LLA approaches, including by developing and utilising indicators and metrics for increased transparency and accountability.

4. Institutionalisation

Supporting partners to implement LLA with communities, via channelling climate finance and maintaining strong relationships with key financiers. 

5. Creating a coherent and participatory learning space

Supporting an integrated LLA learning journey approach that brings these areas of work together within and between three major annual global conferences: the International Conference on Community-based Adaptation, Development & Climate Days at the UNFCCC’s COPs, and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development’s Gobeshona).

6. Walking the talk

Examining our own internal approaches, systems and processes and identifying opportunities for IIED to live the LLA principles more directly.

This combined work will help drive progress towards the three pathways to impact identified in the LLA long-term strategy (PDF), developed in 2022: 

  1. Strengthen and mobilise local and other actors' capability to effectively deliver LLA at all scales
  2. Build trust and redistribute power through radical partnership models, and
  3. Implement upward and downward accountability processes to equitably share risk and responsibility.

Together, these actions will contribute to the achievement of the longer-term impact of ensuring: “Systems at all levels are supporting locally led approaches that advance justice and resilience for people, climate and nature.”

Active projects

Generating ambition for locally led adaptation: this government of the Netherlands-funded project is enabling IIED and its partners to implement a long-term strategy for LLA by building institutional capabilities, fostering partnerships and enhancing accountability to address climate, nature and inequality challenges.

Scoring adaptation finance for locally led adaptation: a way to assess adaptation finance for accountability. this project is developing ‘scorecards’ to help partners, including financers and intermediaries, assess whether their initiatives align with the principles for LLA for increased transparency and accountability.

Associated resources

Conference: CBA18: local solutions inspiring global action (May 2024)

Insight: Getting local adaptation expertise into global spaces: five key messages we’re taking forward from CBA17, Aaron Acuda, Sushila Pandit (2023), 

The good climate finance guide for investing in locally led adaptation (PDF), Dave Steinbach et al (2022), toolkit

2030 Strategy for locally-led action on poverty, climate and nature, LLA Consortium (2022)

Principles for locally led adaptation, Marek Soanes, Aditya V. Bahadur, Clare Shakya, Barry Smith, Sejal Patel, Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, Tamara Coger, Ayesha Dinshaw, Sheela Patel, Saleemul Huq, Muhammad Musa, M Feisal Rahman, Suranjana Gupta, Glenn Dolcemascolo, Tracy Mann (2021), issue paper

Delivering real change: getting international climate finance to the local level, Marek Soanes, Neha Rai, Paul Steele, Clare Shakya, James MacGregor (2017), working paper

Contact

Larissa Setaro ([email protected]), programme manager (locally-led action and climate finance), IIED's Climate Change research group

Locally led adaptation Climate finance Nature finance

Further reading