Loraini Sivo (Fiji) and Fatema Rajabali (UK) developed a project with a community of people in the village called Yadua. Here’s a description of the problem the community members faced based upon participatory needs assessment:

200 people in the village of Yadua, Fiji are suffering from increase erosion of shoreline caused by increase wave actions due to the reduction of mangrove forest and a reef which acts as buffers – and climate change induced rising sea levels which contributes to loss of houses, arable land and housing sites and sedimentation caused by soil erosion that smothers the fish level. Due to this, a marine ecosystem shift is occurring with corals dying and in turn less fish found by the reef. As the Yadua rely on fishing for their livelihood, this affects livelihoods and leads to a reduction in their ability to lead the productive, meaningful, prosperous lives they need to leave the cycle of poverty and contribute to the development of their community.

Mangrove nursery that community members were starting to establish after our 1st workshop with them
	Loraini presented the project to the GEF Small Grants program and was awarded $40,000 grant for her project. Says Loraini:

“The course OL 341 helped me develop a concept for Yadua on a small scale ecosystem-based adaptation climate change project which was then submitted to GEF Small Grants. The course had also helped me identify the processes to use in terms of assessing the needs of the community and in helping the communities to identify impacts affecting them that was related to climate change. I first conducted a need assessment which I had also incorporated the sharing of some very basic climate change science as part of awareness. The two key needs that communities had identified were coastal erosion around the island but most importantly in front the village location and the availability of food on the island through certain times of the year. After a few consultation meetings with GEF, they informed me that they were willing to fund the project.  

Through this funding Yadua has now set-up a costal restoration project which includes the planting of mangroves and coastal plants in the affected areas and also the development of community garden to act as food source for the community. In the last 10 months, a lot of awareness and training programs have been conducted on Yadua as part of the project activities and community members have been very much engaged into the whole project.

Various experts from the agriculture, forestry and food & nutrition sector have been part of the team providing trainings to communities. A committee made up of 8 ppl has been developed on the island to look after the overall project implementation and they are working very closely with our partner organization, National Trust, to ensure consistent reporting of the project status. The 8ppl in the committee are made up youths, women and men from the community. Through the course of the project, Yadua will be developing its Costal Forest Management Plan and a Code of Conduct for Sustainable Farming Practices. I am using the same site for the OL343 course.”

Project Outline: Problem list & potential interventions/activities/solutions
Problem 1. Increasing erosion of shoreline caused by increase wave actions

Ecosystem based adaptation program [Solution to underlying cause: wave impacts at high tide and rising sea level]
[Activity 1]. Workshop on values of the ecosystem as natural buffers and coastal processes
[Activity 2]. Land use management workshop and follow up
[Activity 3]. Workshop on habitat restoration technique – mangroves and artificial reefs
[Activity 4]. Coastal management planning workshop and follow up

Community members voting during needs assessment.
	A meeting was conducted with  5 men and 5 women from Yadua who were either active outdoor people or have lived most of their live on the island because these are the people that would recognize change around them and take notice of impacts on the local environment more than the others, if there were any.
Follow these links to see: A description of her project in our newsletter. The original participatory needs assessment. Her project Logframe

The FAO recently published: Climate Smart Agriculture: Empirical Evidence of Food Security and Mitigation Benefits from Improved Crop Land Management.

Climate Smart Agriculture: Empirical Evidence
	I’ve been teaching a climate smart agriculture course. Depleted soils, unreliable access to water, outmoded agricultural practices and a lack of coping strategies for adapting to a changing climate are leading to reduced agricultural productivity, income generation, and food security for smallholder farmers worldwide.

Course participants have been researching potential solution oriented techniques that smallholder farmers can use to begin selling these challenges. The solutions range from conservation agriculture, to maintaining crop residues in the field, crop rotations and mixed cropping that incorporate legumes, improved crop varieties such as early maturing and drought resistant crops, building barriers in the fields to retard the movement of water, and agroforestry.

I was delighted to discover this new resource which has investigated each of the techniques that the students have been incorporating into their projects.

This document looks at 171 scientific studies that analyze the impact of utilizing the types of techniques that we’ve been studying in this course. The study looks at production increases at the farm level, profit increase at the farm level, food security potential, and mitigation potential.

The papers which they studied from all over the world show that these techniques that are studying can increase productivity from between 45% to over 200%, and can increase average farm income from 40% to 161%. They also show that some of the techniques are more appropriate for dry regions and other techniques are more appropriate for moist regions. These techniques can also increase food security by between 55% and 164%, and make a significant increase in the amount of carbon sequestered in soil.

Check out this valuable resource.

What’s happening in the region where you live?

Putiajani village, Bangladesh

In July, partners Michael Chew (Australia/Bangladesh), Sabrin Sultana (Bangladesh), and Elijah Mujuri (Kenya) began developing a project that addresses the challenges villagers face from deforestation through Concern Universal Bangladesh.

The Concern’s main project goal was to ‘Effectively integrate community based climate change adaptation and community managed disaster risk reduction in the socio-economic development process of local peoples.

Women mapping out community challenges with a problem tree
	One Village, Putiajani village had not had any DRR/CC assessments or interventions. We therefore choose this as our sample community,. We attended the village on 3 August, and convened at meeting with 14 people – 12 females and 2 males.

There was a collective brainstorm regarding hazards facing the village, and then each person was able to vote on the list with 10 seeds. In analyzing the community’s needs assessment we wrote the following problem statement:

1245 people of the village of Putiajani in the Manikganj district of Bangladesh are frequently affected by flooding and river erosion caused by the cutting of trees, Unsustainable Agricultural Practices, Climate variability and Sea level rise. These challenges have a negative impact on homesteads, livelihoods, crop yields, arable farmland and transportation routes, human and livestock health and an increase in river sedimentation. Flood waters become contaminated with sewer water causing an outbreak of diarrheal diseases, and an influx of mosquitoes—and also interfere with potable water sources and transport within.

Women voting during needs assessment
	After thoroughly researching potential project activities we developed a simple, preliminary draft of a project outline which includes a Participatory Community Afforestation Program:

[Problem 2]. River erosion
Participatory Community Afforestation Program [Solution to underlying causes: cutting of trees and river sedimentation and sea level rise]:
[Activity 1]. Workshop and follow-up in participatory community afforestation and agro-forestry training and support
[Activity 2]. Forming groups for establishment and management of tree nurseries, tree species selection, planting seeds workshop and follow-up
[Activity 3]. Planting trees along the riparian zones, catchment rehabilitation, protection and conservation

Women listening to vote tally
	There is also a sustainable agriculture program that works hand-in-hand witht e afforestation program:

[Problem 1]. Flood
Sustainable Agriculture Program [Solution to underlying cause: unsustainable agricultural practices]:
[Activity 1]. Training on conservation agriculture
[Activity 2]. Soil and water conservation training and follow up – in farms and along river catchment area/river ecosystem
[Activity 3]. Riparian/riverbanks reforestation and soil stabilization, dykes construction and rehabilitation

Download their report and project outline here:
Solution Oriented Project Outline.

Would you like to learn how to develop Community Based Adaptation Projects?