The Adaptation Coalition Toolkit was developed to promote the World Bank’s strategic priority to empower people by creating more inclusive, cohesive, and accountable societies in the face of climate change. The framework for this Toolkit was developed from testing its implementation over a two-year period in 24 Latin American case study communities in five countries.
The results from this study are presented in the companion publication Building Community Resilience to Climate Change: Testing the Adaptation Coalition Framework in Latin America produced by the World Bank’s Social Development Unit of the Latin America and Caribbean Region.
The purpose of this toolkit is to guide facilitating groups or teams of development practitioners in pursuing participatory collaboration with communities to research and implement adaptation coalitions. This is done to assist
the locality in adapting to the local manifestations of climate change. Using the Adaptation Coalition Framework (ACF) as an adaptation tool, strategically links the multiple resources of market, state and civil society at various levels to best facilitate the adaptation of vulnerable communities to climate change.
The Adaptation Coalition Toolkit follows four steps:
- It exchanges knowledge between local and non-local actors on climate change.
- It trains local adaptation teams to gather information on vulnerability and external alliances.
- It feeds this information back to the community and helps them begin adaptation planning.
- It builds coalitions between communities, external partners and resources, which can assist the community in responding over the long-term to climate change’s diverse challenges.
The four basic steps of the Adaptation Coalition Framework:
- Knowledge Exchange
- Facilitator group gathers existing data
- Facilitator makes presentation to community counterparts
- Community wide meeting to determine local drivers of vulnerability to climate change
- Training and Information Gathering
- Training of local research team
- Gathering information through interviews and focus groups
- Processing information
- Feedback and Planning
- Feedback meeting led by community research team to share results and gain feedback from community
- Develop a community action plan
- Strengthening Coalitions
- Develop agreements and governing structures
- Monitor and maintain coalitions
What Conditions are Appropriate for Building Adaptation Coalitions?
Since the ACF is a “no regrets” approach to climate change, it is appropriate for most scenarios. With that said, certain community characteristics make coalition success more likely. These include:
- If community leaders, in a general sense, recognize that climatic events or “climate change” is currently, or will soon, affect their community;
- If the community has a community vision or has had a recent success in achieving a collective goal, or at a minimum have no deep schisms among its members.
- If community leaders and organizations are excited to participate in developing collective approaches to adjusting to climate change and willing to host a community-wide meeting.
This Toolkit is meant to be used in a flexible fashion. Organizations with considerable experience in working with marginalized communities may want to substitute certain tools recommended here for others with which they are familiar to move the process forward.
You can download this toolkit for free here.
