OL 341 Assignment 5 CBA Discussion
Online Learning: OL 341: Climate Change Adaptation: Design, Fund & Manage Projects
Center for Sustainable Development
https://csd-i.org/climate-change-adaptation-online-course/
This week’s resources
Assignment 5 Homework
Magee Example Project Assignment 5
Assignment 5. How will you incorporate CBA techniques into a lesson plan and a take-home, how-to card.
Communities and societies in general have long been adapting to climate changes, but these adaptations have typically been discrete and reactive. The idea that adaptation to climate change should be planned, proactive, and anticipatory is relatively new and is an important element of CBA.
Despite variations of form, all CBA recognizes the need for context-specific adaptation projects that identify local vulnerabilities, draw upon local knowledge and capacity, improve local adaptive capacity, and directly involve local stakeholders.
UNDP Gender, Climate Change and Community-Based Adaptation.
The best CBA projects combine local knowledge with scientific knowledge. CBA responds to pressing local adaptation needs, draws upon local knowledge, fosters community-driven innovation, and supplements community capacity with (scientific) knowledge and material resources.
Community-based adaptation to climate change is a community led process, based on community priorities, needs, knowledge, and capacities, which should empower people to plan for and cope with the impacts of climate change. It must draw on the knowledge and priorities of local people, build on their capacities, and empower them to make changes themselves.
IIED: PLA Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
The goal of community-based adaptation projects is to increase the climate resilience of communities by enhancing their capacity to cope with less predictable rainfall patterns, more frequent droughts, stronger heat waves, different diseases, and weather hazards of unprecedented intensity.
IDS Tearfund: Adapting to Climate Change
Reading through the quotes above it is quickly evident that CBA techniques incorporate these 9 main points in transferring knowledge:
1. Analyze conditions and hazards
CARE: Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis
http://www.careclimatechange.org/files/adaptation/CARE_CVCAHandbook.pdf
2. Importance of local knowledge
IIED: PLA Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf
CARE: Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis
http://www.careclimatechange.org/files/adaptation/CARE_CVCAHandbook.pdf
3. Importance of scientific knowledge
IIED: PLA Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf
CARE: Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis
https://www.care.org/sites/default/files/documents/CC-2009-CARE_CVCAHandbook.pdf
4. Needs to be community led process, based on community’s priorities and needs
IIED: PLA Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf
5. Identification of local vulnerability
CARE: Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis
https://www.care.org/sites/default/files/documents/CC-2009-CARE_CVCAHandbook.pdf
6. Determination of community capacity
CARE: Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis
https://www.care.org/sites/default/files/documents/CC-2009-CARE_CVCAHandbook.pdf
7. Existing coping mechanisms
CARE: Climate Vulnerability and Capacity Analysis
https://www.care.org/sites/default/files/documents/CC-2009-CARE_CVCAHandbook.pdf
8. Increase the climate resilience of communities by improving local adaptive capacity to empower them to make changes themselves
IDS Tearfund: Adapting to Climate Change p. 6
https://www.preventionweb.net/files/567_10352.pdf
IIED: PLA Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/14573IIED.pdf
UNDP Gender, Climate Change and Community-Based Adaptation: A Guidebook for Designing and Implementing Gender-Sensitive Community-Based Adaptation Programmes and Projects
https://www.undp.org/content/dam/aplaws/publication/en/publications/environment-energy/www-ee-library/climate-change/gender-climate-change-and-community-based-adaptation-guidebook-/Gender%20Climate%20Change%20and%20Community%20Based%20Adaptation%20(2).pdf
9. The direct involvement of local stakeholders from the beginning of the process
UNDP Designing Climate Change Adaptation Initiatives – UNDP Toolkit for Practitioners
https://www.adaptation-undp.org/resources/training-tools/designing-climate-change-adaptation-initiatives-toolkit-practitioners
Although the Center has a strong basis in participatory, community centered, sustainable development—CBA holds an even stronger position with two-way communication between NGOs and community, learning by doing, community buy-in and full involvement/partnership between NGOs and the community.
A typical lesson plan designed to transfer knowledge could be a lesson plan on (for example) how to teach community members about the importance of hand washing for improved family hygiene. Traditionally, this is somewhat of a one-way teaching mechanism.
In a CBA lesson plan it needs to be decidedly more two-way. So my recommendation is to go ahead and write up the traditional lesson plan as in the example that I’ve provided to you, but in the first activity ask a question of the community about their knowledge, thoughts and insights into the theme of that activity that might be affected by changes in weather—before carrying on with your presentation.
So for example, here is my first activity from the lesson plan example provided in this assignment with an engaging question inserted in red to give you an example of gathering existing local knowledge, current coping practices, better understanding vulnerabilities and current adaptive capacity.
Activity 1. Garden Bed Introduction
Purpose: Introduce and explain what the value of a properly planned & prepared garden is in relation to family health.
Time: 90 minutes (including a 20 minute ice-breaker)
What to do
1. Introduction to workshop: Tell the participants what they’ll be able to do as a result of the lesson
2. Introductions
3. Ice Breaker: Sing a song or play a game.
4. Ask the workshop participants:
a. have they seen noticable changes in the weather over the past 10 years
b. have they seen any changes in their ability to grow food crops over the past 10 years
c. if so, what techniques have they developed to improve crop production
d. has this affected the amount of food the family has to eat
e. what experience have they had in growing fruits and vegetables for family consumption
f. if they have had experience, has this improved their ability to feed their families
g. what do they need to learn more about in order to have greater success in raising food
5. Use practical examples of the why we need to plan our garden:
We need to plan for sun, exposure to wind or runoff, family size and food production, and crop choice for nutrition.
Use large sheets of paper to design an example garden.
Ask participants to sketch their yard and begin thinking of a good location for their garden.
6. Summarize briefly:
Use practical examples of why we clean and fence the plot:
Residual contamination, weeds, insects, damage from animals.
Use practical examples of why we loosen the soil and mix in organic material:
Root penetration, drainage, aeration, nutrient availability, structure, micro ecosystem.
Use practical examples of seed spacing and planting depth
Crowding of plants, wasted space, seed size and shoot size vs. depth.
Simple explanation of watering
Best times of day, frequency, duration and quantity.
Enjoy this week’s assignment. Click on homework for Assignment Five to get started.
Tim Magee