The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 typhoons every year, as well as other natural disasters. The government of the Philippines has launched several efforts to increase the country’s resilience to these natural hazards, including the National Resilience Council (NRC) which is driven by the private sector to provide a platform for meaningful engagement and cooperation between local governments, the private sector, and climate-affected communities.

Persons with disabilities are disproportionately affected by climate change and the disasters resulting from it, yet they remain an afterthought in climate policies.

The seaweed industry in Zanzibar, Tanzania, provides social and economic opportunities to women farmers. Nonetheless, climate-induced impacts put the industry (and women farmers) at risk. Aqua-Farms Organization (AFO) aims combat this through its rent-to-own microcredit model that provides financing and technical support to women farmers.

In Pintadas, a municipality in Brazil, water security and social inequality have long been persistent. In recognition of these challenges, Rede Pintadas (Pintadas Network) works to empower women through social and economic activities, water efficiency projects, and engages in women's mobilization for political engagement, and advocates for legal and policy protection for cooperatives and women producers.

Northern Peru is a live repository of Afro-Peruvian cultural heritage, is prone to flooding, drought, and increased temperatures. The Zaña Afro-Peruvian Museum, a museum seeking to preserve Afro-descendants’ community heritage, has initiated diverse activities to improve local people’s understanding of climate change and tap into ancestral knowledge about farming traditions and the memories of older generations.

Vanuatu is highly vulnerable to climate change and disaster risks, such sea level rise, storm surges, landslides, flooding, and drought. The Santo Sunset Environment Network (SSEN) is an Indigenous-led network of community champions working for climate-resilient and socially just development on the island. SSEN has supports and empowers individuals, villages, and communities to implement sustainable development strategies in keeping with traditional livelihoods.

Floods and river erosion are not alien to people in Bangladesh, although the increasing severity and frequency are attributed to climate change. Nonetheless, acknowledging the mental health impacts of constant loss and sustained stress is often a social taboo. Recognizing the severe impacts of mental health on physical health, GCA is working with BRAC, an international development organization based in Bangladesh, and Columbia University’s Billion Minds Institute project, to document the psychological impacts of climate change on poor and vulnerable communities in Bangladesh.

KivuGreen, a youth-led enterprise, is strengthening the climate resilience of small-scale farmers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through a mobile service that provides them with real-time forecasts and climate-smart agricultural advice. CEO Chris Ayale explains how KivuGreen contributes to climate adaptation and food security and describes how winning the 2021 YouthADAPT Challenge boosted KivuGreen’s impact.

Satou Secka, Awa Ndow and their female neighbours in the village of Kataba Omar, are taking the lead in a revolution. Amid the dusty dry lands of their water-starved rural community in The Gambia, the women have transformed the land with a solar irrigation project, producing high-value crops that are boosting nutrition levels for their families, generating a new income for the women and fuelling a new age of budding entrepreneurialism.

In the Rubaga Division of Kampala, where 78% of residents live in slums, climate-related damages fall heavily on women and girls. Originally focused on healthcare support and economic empowerment initiatives, the Lungujja Community Health Caring Organization (LUCOHECO) recognized a need to expand their focus to address sustainable development issues. Today, LUCOHECO engages in livelihood support, care provision to vulnerable families, advocacy and outreach and training of women and Community Health Workers.

Due to recurring floods that have devastated fields and ruined crops, men in Osukuru, Uganda, often leave the community to seek jobs in the cities. Without secure opportunities for income, many women and girls are forced to turn to the sex trade and are subject to violence and illness. The Osukuru United Women's Network (OWN) was founded to empower women economically, socially, and psychologically, and to mitigate flood and drought risks. A force of more than 2,000 women helping each other, OWN has initiated savings and loan associations, and supported women to develop productive, climate-resilient kitchen gardens.

Experience in Guinea demonstrates the huge potential of using the graduation approach in a range of contexts where communities are forced to relocate, whether that’s due to infrastructure projects or the impacts of climate change.

Sylvia Kuria, an organic farmer from Kiambu County in Kenya, is catalyzing a local movement for farmers to embrace agroecological methods, with minimal chemicals and more efficient water management, to tackle erratic rainfall patterns and water scarcity in the region.

2023 Local Adaptation Champions Award Winner

In Oaxaca, Mexico, Espacio de Encuentro de las Culturas Originarias, A.C. focuses on adaptation to climate change at the local level in highly vulnerable communities. Communities are benefiting from affordable, relevant, and innovative ecotechnologies that make them better able to adapt to extreme weather events.

2023 Local Adaptation Champions Award Winner

In northern Tanzania, the Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC) enhances indigenous pastoralist women’s leadership capabilities to build women’s capacity to achieve equality as decision-makers in pastoralist societies.

The Songtaaba Association from Ouagadogou, Burkina Faso, is a local collective comprised mainly of women. Fed up with the fast-growing piles of garbage where they live, members of the association decided to take matters into their own hands and started an initiative to reclaim garbage from the streets and convert it into sustainable products for local markets. By doing so, they have also created stable jobs for those most in need.

In 2002, Irene Walimbwa, a local advocate and champion of women and youth empowerment from the Mount Elgon Community in Uganda, mobilized a group of vulnerable women and young farmers to start a savings association for small business support. Early successes focused on livestock husbandry, but this work soon led to the idea of starting a company to process bamboo products to ease these local tensions and advance sustainable development in the Mount Elgon region

The Drip Pool Irrigation Program initiated by the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme – India (AKRSP-I), is a locally led initiative developed by and for farmers, to help them mitigate climate risks and enhance agricultural productivity. By combining technology, finance, and community collaboration, the program has enabled small and marginal cotton farmers in the Surendranagar, Rajkot, and Morbi districts to adopt drip irrigation and build resilient farmer institutions.

The Inga Foundation supports communities living in the Cuero and the Cangrejal River Valleys of Honduras with application and expanded use of the Inga Alley Cropping method. The method has emerged as an effective alternative to slash-and-burn agriculture; and as a way of addressing rural poverty and creating rural wealth through a rejuvenated, agroforestry-based ecosystem.

Majority of the people living along the banks of Teesta and Brahmaputra River in the northern areas of Bangladesh are engaged in fishing for their livelihoods. Howeever, irregular rainfall and untimely floods due to climate change are hampering the regular breeding and production of local species of fish. Faced with huge losses, many fishermen had to sell off their own boats, and forced to join bigger fishing groups for only half as much income as before. Left with no choice, several of them had to migrate to other places.

In Kainmari upazila of Bagerhat district, traditional methods of shrimp farming have become unsustainable in recent years, owing to erratic rainfall patterns, frequent flooding and salinity intrusion induced by climate change. In response, a collective of 20 women and 5 men have joined forces to cultivate shrimp using the 'cluster method, which offers an innovative and effective solution to the issue. Local shrimp farmers are already realizing substantial profits using this approach.

People living in the bank of Teesta-Jamuna-Brahmaputra river are losing their lands and belongings to riverbank erosion caused by more intense and frequent floods. Number of climate migrants are also increasing as a result. Consequentially, women in the Batikamari Char of Gaibandha are experiencing a range of socio-economic challenges and health hazards. But against all odds, these women, determined to turn their luck around, have adopted different climate resilient farming methods such as growing vegetables on raised beds and taking up alternative livelihood options such as sheep rearing.

In Char Gobindapur of Gaibandha, a group of women had come together and collaboratively set up a Community Food Bank, with support from local NGOs, to ensure access to food during periods of crisis. On a monthly basis, these women contribute up to one kilogram of rice grains each, which fellow villagers can borrow as required. Over the years, the local community has greatly profited from this endeavor, accessing sustenance in the aftermath of various natural calamities that plague the area.

Community-led efforts in Darewadi have transformed barren terrains into verdant landscapes where wells have sprung to life, and fields provide abundant harvests. The economy of the village has been transformed, inspiring similar efforts by countless others across India.

Margaret Arnold, World Bank’s former Global Lead on the Social Dimensions of Climate Change, describes Kenya’s Financing Locally Led Climate Action Program (FLLoCA), which is the first, national scale model of devolved climate finance.