Culture/communities

This paper focuses on the governance challenge of adapting to the impacts of climate change. Adaptation requires a shift in how governments ‘do’ development: they now need to consider the impacts of climate change when making investment, planning and policy decisions. This idea of ‘mainstreaming’ adaptation to climate change within development is well established, but the governance dimension of this mainstreaming process is often side-lined in practice. In contexts where governance is already a challenge, the capacity to effectively adapt to climate change is particularly limited. Governments across the worldare experimenting with different approaches to tackling climate change, supported by technical consultants, donors and civil society, but often with a piecemeal approach to addressing the governance dimensions.

This guide is a mini-suite of resources intended to assist planners implementing the adaptation process to understand approaches for the participatory elements of the undertaking. This guide answers questions about what the planning team and local representative’s options are for facilitating community involvement during decision-making points. It will do this in the following order:

This guide is a product of the Community Resiliency Initiative, a project carried out by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity with funding from NOAA via the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's Florida Coastal Office.