Lindsey Jones Simon Levine Eva Ludi

1. Preparing for the futureCHANGING FOCUS: Can development interventions take adaptive capacity seriously? Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) Lindsey Jones Simon Levine Eva Ludi

2. Why adaptive capacity matters • Change is a constant in the lives of rural people in Africa • shocks (war, displacement, rain failures, food price spikes) • stresses (population pressure, terms of trade, land degradation) • Climate change is another pressure - and interacts/magnifies other shocks and stresses • Climate change is uncertain at local level

3. ACCRA and why adaptive capacity matters • Change is certain – but uncertain! • People need the ability to maintain wellbeing in the face of change – i.e. adaptive capacity • No development is sustainable without adaptive capacity But... • How well can communities adapt to change ? • How much do existing development interventions help (or undermine) adaptive capacity ?

4. ACCRA and why adaptive capacity matters • Assumptions: • development interventions are influencing adaptive capacity (AC), whether we realise it or not • AC cannot be built through ‘adaptive capacity programmes’ – but development interventions can be harnessed to build AC • Problem: • Little consensus about what AC is and what it depends on

5. Thelocal AC framework • Assets • Institutions • Knowledge • Innovation • Decision-making

6. The Asset Base

7. Institutions and Entitlements Institutions and Entitlements

8. Knowledge and Information

9. Innovation Innovation

10. Flexible Forward-looking Decision Making and Governance

11. Insights from the Field • People do adapt and innovation exists, but • Not to climate change directly or in isolation • reactive • short-term, immediate needs • So... high risk of maladaptation

12. Insights from the Field • What’s going on with development interventions? • Technology packages • Direct provision of assets • Increased income and livelihood diversification • Group creation and capacity building • A missing link: assets – AC • Helping people find, adapt and use assets • A strong focus on assets – but much less on what makes assets ‘come alive’

13. Insights from the Field • Institutional dimension sometimes undermining sustainability • Elite capture (e.g. irrigation and women) • New institutions created without being socially grounded (e.g. project committees and savings groups, quotas) • No institutions created to support what was introduced (e.g. communal pasture enclosures) • DIs not informed by analysis of institutions and power • Institutions sometimes undermining innovation and its spread

14. Insights from the Field • A missing link: innovation ! • We’re not identifying the blockages to innovation • confidence, information, finance, risk tolerance, community acceptance, perceptions of ‘failure’, paradigms of ‘authority knows’ • Information treated as a technical package • Assumption: correct and appropriate (e.g. yields/ha) • But if we saw information as part of AC... • Emphasis on range of info • Emphasis on sources of info • Emphasis on use of info – communication and capacity to interpret (e.g. seasonal forecasts & uncertainty)

15. Insights from the Field • Existing planning and programming is short-term – often fed by ‘shopping list’ participation • Longer term climate & economic context not being considered in many progs (e.g. irrigation in arid lands) • But, misinterpretation of information leads to poor planning and maladaptation • How to plan for uncertainty? • Adaptive capacity! • Flexibility • Local agency

16. We’re missing out on the huge potential contribution that development interventions could bring to ACDIs need to refocus on AGENCY – people’s ability to make their own decisions and achieve their own plans(at household, community, local... level) What does this mean for development practice?

17. Better decision-making (‘governance’ ) is not only about Governments – also NGOs, communities, private sector actors, households, etc. • Need to change the skill-set in development planning • institutional (power, culture, sociology, etc.) analysis, • scenario planning, • understanding uncertainty, • how to support agency, not give messages What does this mean for development practice?

18. The Big FiveLonger-term future and uncertainty. Innovation, not introducing specific changes.Institutions – social, cultural, political, economic Power. (There are reasons why status quo exists)Knowledge – not just informationACCRA research showed how these are interlinked, cannot be thought about separately What does this mean for development practice?

19. But the problem is...None of this is new. Climate change re-underlines their importance and urgency.But what has stopped us from taking it on board? What does this mean for development practice?