More women, more listening, more cash: Keys to building resilience

In parts of rural Niger, families hit by worsening droughts now have access to seeds of less-thirsty varieties of crops, and better information – via mobile phones and local rain gauges – to know when to plant them.

Communities also have access to solar panels for the first time, and are making money selling the power created, by charging mobile phones – the ones needed to access weather information for planting.

Just as important, local and regional governments have got help to create plans to adapt to worsening climate impacts, and community members, including women, have had a say in those plans.

“People say, ‘Now we look to the horizon’,” said Fiona Percy, regional coordinator of the Adaptation Learning Programme for Africa for development charity CARE. The ability to look further ahead, anticipate problems, plan and take decisions earlier is making people more resilient as drought and other climate change impacts intensify, she said.

That’s not to say it is all working, particularly as conditions grow more unpredictable, with high heat and wind one day followed by cold weather the next, Percy said. But efforts to build communities’ capacity to adapt “have changed confidence in the ability to be innovative, and do what they haven’t before”.

Building genuine resilience to climate change requires work and innovation at a variety of levels, much of it tailored to the local situation, experts told Development and Climate Days, a gathering on the sidelines of the U.N. climate talks in Marrakesh.

But some broader lessons are emerging as efforts around the world – including the UK-funded Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme – begin to take stock of what has worked, and what has not, the experts said.

COMMUNITIES AT THE CENTRE

One lesson is that “communities need to be at the centre of our interventions”, said Patrick Phiri, who works on resilience issues for the Malawi Red Cross Society. Ideas about what needs to be done should be built with local people meaningfully involved and their perspectives “well understood”, he said.

That’s particularly true of women, who have often had less than an equal say in what happens in their communities but who tend to have more daily interaction with climate pressures, be it farming crops that struggle to grow or looking for water that is ever scarcer, participants said.

“Decisions of men tend to overshadow those most impacted by climate change: women,” said Chebet Maikut, a former member of Uganda’s parliament and now head of the country’s climate change department. “This is a challenge we have to overcome.”

Changing that power imbalance isn’t easy, particular in societies long dominated by men. At community meetings in Garissa, in arid northern Kenya, women traditionally face the opposite direction to men at public meetings, limiting their ability to participate, said Emma Bowa, an expert on gender and climate adaptation for CARE.

“It’s taken work to get everybody facing each other and talking,” she said. The good news is “men were actually surprised when they got their first chance to talk to women” and heard their ideas and views, she said.

NO MORE FLY-IN EXPERTS

Another change that’s needed is a deeper ability to identify and solve problems in poor countries themselves, without the need for expensive international experts.

Youba Sokona, a scientist working on renewable energy expansion in Africa and sustainability issues, called for the World Bank to support a class of 15 new African PhD students each year focused on climate change, aimed at stopping the practice of sending in U.N. consultants, for instance, to carry out studies.

“We need a clear perception of what ‘capacity building’ means,” Sokona said, adding it should create enduring strength and skills.

What else might work to make a real difference in building resilience? Percy pointed to how crucial timing can be. Working with government to get adaptation and resilience ideas built into local development planning works much better if you do it when a five-year plan is being created, rather than after it’s already in place, she said.

Maikut, from Uganda, pointed out that his country, as of next July, will require every plan and budget in the country, from local level on up, to integrate climate change issues into planning in order to get a “certificate of compliance” and receive funding.

TALK SOLUTIONS, NOT PROBLEMS

Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, said that when trying to win a politician’s ear, it’s best to start with solutions. “Talking about long-term problems doesn’t catch their attention,” he said.

And he urged researchers to think of at-risk communities as their clients, saying they should consult with them when designing their work rather than simply deciding on their own what to study and then pushing out the results, which are unlikely to be used.

Similarly, when trying to get businesses to help out with adaptation or building resilience, it’s best to speak their language and “put climate change resilience into a business model”, Huq said.

James Close, director of the World Bank climate change group, said big funders also need to ensure that, in the process of trying to bring positive change, they don’t inadvertently “do counter-productive things that destroy resilience”.

Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, coordinator of a women’s group from the Mbororo pastoralist community in Chad, for instance, said she’d seen such problems in the push for more renewable energy in Africa.

 “If there is a big dam (for hydropower) or a big land-grabbing for solar energy, it’s not ‘clean’ energy anymore.... if it’s displacing people,” she said.

TURN ON THE FINANCE TAP

Simply getting anything like the amount of financial support needed for adaptation and resilience is another huge obstacle, said Clare Shakya, director of climate change work at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

There’s growing evidence that putting money into things like social protection systems sensitive to shocks or contingency funds flexible enough to respond to unexpected pressures can work effectively, she said. But so far, very little “climate finance” has been disbursed, she said, and most is “not reaching poor countries or allocated for what reaches poor people”.

“While we know what works and makes a difference in poor people’s lives ... the finance is not flowing in the right ways yet. This credibility gap is huge,” she said.

Mary Robinson, a U.N. envoy on climate and El Nino impacts and head of her own foundation on human rights and climate change, suggested one way to drive sufficient action to counter climate threats may be to create a Commission for Future Generations that could advocate on behalf of those likely to face much worse impacts in coming years.

The recent strong El Nino phenomenon “we see as a window into a really difficult ‘normal’ that’s going to come... and we’re not doing nearly enough in an integrated way to build resilience”, she said.

Hakima El Haite, Morocco’s environment minister, also highlighted the scale of action needed.

“To implement the Paris Agreement, it means we change all our habits,” she said.