The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

The ultimate aim of the Handbook is to strengthen understanding of, support to, and accountability for adaptation processes that generate equity in smallholder communities. Toward this end, the Handbook’s locally led approach seeks to nurture an enabling environment for broad-based individual and collective action on climate adaptation. Deep local knowledge and effective agency—of diverse women and men—are vital for forging more equitable community norms and institutional arrangements. The Handbook also emphasizes the importance of greater capacities among external partners to support these localized processes by prioritizing social equity within their own institutions and programs.

While each strategy touches on the political, as well as technical, aspects of managing this action learning journey, it is the final strategy that engages most directly with upward and downward accountability for equitable outcomes. In particular, it addresses the pattern of community-based programs—regardless of their champions, aims or designs—persistently sidestepping accountability measures. Although the Handbook’s methodology can support accountability initiatives, continuous monitoring and renegotiation of “enabling” conditions are also needed. Generally speaking, a small group of elite powerholders can more easily adapt to climate change, including in ways that maintain their status and privileges. By contrast, the effective democracy-building needed to nurture equitable adaptation typically involves slower, more complex processes of building alliances and advancing shared goals.5 The fifth strategy explores the ever-changing risks and opportunities implied by this, stressing the importance of time and space for subordinate groups to negotiate and advance their interests and needs effectively.