OL 343 Assignment One Homework
Online Learning: OL 343 Community Based Adaptation to Climate Change: The Community Focus.
Center for Sustainable Development
https://csd-i.org/ol-343-the-community-focus/
This week’s resources:
Class Home Page 343
OL 343 Assignment One Discussion
Magee Example Project 343 Assignment 1
101 Hands-On Field Activities for Community Based Adaptation Projects:
https://ngo.csd-i.org/101-hands-on-cba-field-activities/
Specialized Links to Adaptation Documents and Sites
https://ngo.csd-i.org/links-to-cba-specific-sites-and-docs/
Downloadable Documents from CBA Specific Links.
Climate Change and Adaptation:
These are four of the best documents that I have found for the purposes of this course. The first one by GTZ is the one that we will use for the first two assignments – it is simple, clear and has excellent resource links.
GTZ: Climate Change Information for Effective Adaptation – A Practitioners Manual
https://gc21.giz.de/ibt/var/app/wp342deP/1443/wp-content/uploads/filebase/climateinformation/ci-guides-manuals-reports/Climate_Change_Information_for_Effective_Adaptation.pdf
Some students have trouble with this GTZ link. If that is the case, just type the name of the document into Google: it works.
IIED Glossary of Adaptation Terms
http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/G02609.pdf
These next two documents are also excellent – but are more complex. They contain some of the clearest background information that I have found on adaptation – but they are densely written.
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
This IDS/Tearfund document analyzes CC impacts across different development sectors (health, watsan, agriculture, food security disaster risk reduction, organizational learning, advocacy), provides simple case studies, ideas for activities and resources. This document could provide you with ideas for your project activities.
IDS Tearfund: Adapting to Climate Change
https://www.preventionweb.net/files/567_10352.pdf
Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
These are the best CBA documents that I have found:
UNDP Gender, Climate Change and Community-Based Adaptation: A Guidebook for Designing and Implementing Gender-Sensitive Community-Based Adaptation Programmes and Projects
http://www.gender-climate.org/Content/Docs/Publications/A35_undp_Gender_Climate_Change_and_Community_Based_Adaptation.pdf
IIED: PLA Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change
https://pubs.iied.org/14573IIED/
CARE: Community-Based Adaptation Toolkit
http://www.careclimatechange.org/files/toolkit/CARE_CBA_Toolkit.pdf
Assignment 1.
Review of climate change science and adaptation.
These documents in this week’s resources provide the most comprehensive information that I have found on both climate change science and adaptation. I would consider printing out the GTZ manual and simply looking through Part One to refresh your memory about climate change concepts; this is a self conducted review and there will not be an assignment associated with it. This manual also presents a very clear step-by-step approach to researching climate change data for your region.
The UNDP toolkit and the IDS document also present very clear information about the interrelationships between adaptation, development, and disaster risk reduction. The UNDP gender and the IIED PLA documents are excellent.
Getting started.
Part 1: Defining the Climate Change Problem: Assessing local climate change information online
Download the GTZ manual and turn to section 2. On page 33 is a good list of climate change impacts – these are typical of the underlying causes that you all have presented it in your project outlines. I would be tempted to add to this list a health component such as an increase in certain types of disease, and also an increase or a change in insect pests and crop diseases.
Beginning on page 34 they suggest carefully defining our location and the development sector that we will be concentrating on (such as health or agriculture). Next they suggest that we do an online literature review for information.
We are looking here (as examples) for changes in temperature and precipitation and to determine what those changes are, whether they have already begun to occur or whether they are anticipated in the future, and what their negative impacts will be.
GTZ provides us with several online database sources where we can interactively look for information about our location and sector.
There are also several good case studies in the CBA specific links page in the menu column on your left.
There is also good information on this on pages 13 – 17 of the UNDP toolkit.
Part one of your homework assignment will be to:
1. Context: Clearly define your location and your sectoral areas of interest.
2. Using a university search engine, Google, or Google Scholar try and find peer-reviewed papers that address your context. If peer-reviewed papers are not available gray literature will be acceptable. Please provide the titles and links to the papers and write a short paragraph summarizing their content.
3. Explore one of the databases included in pages 36 through 39 to find additional information about your locale. Please write a short summary paragraph summarizing what you learned.
4. Develop a chart like on table 3 of page 35 detailing stimuli observations and impacts that relate to your climate change element in your project.
Part 2:
Meet with a local expert.
Try and find someone in your location who has had experience in climate change or in adaptation with whom you could meet, speak on the telephone with, or correspond by e-mail. Your goal in doing this is twofold. First we want to see if they have information that would corroborate what you learned in your literature search — or add to it. Secondly, several times over the next eight weeks it could be very useful for you to be able to communicate with an expert as you more fully develop your project.
Add their information to the chart that you developed in part one, and write a short summary of what you learned from this person.
Follow the Magee Project Example exactly – it is what we are looking for. Pull it up on your screen and type right over it.
The complete Assignment One homework to turn in will be:
1. Context: Clearly define your location and your sectoral areas of interest (key words for your search).
2. Using a, university search engine, Google, or Google scholar try and find peer-reviewed papers that address your context. If peer-reviewed papers are not available gray literature will be acceptable. Please provide the titles and links to the papers a short paragraph summarizing their content.
3. Explore one of the databases included in pages 36 through 39 to find additional information about your locale. Please write a short summary paragraph summarizing what you learned.
4. Develop a chart like on table 3 of page 35 detailing stimuli observations and impacts that relate to your climate change element in your project.
5. The name of the person that you contacted.
6. Add their information to the chart that you developed in part one, and a short summary of what you learned from this person.
Go to Magee’s Example Project Assignment 1 to see what this could look like.
See you next week.