Community-based adaptation to climate change

24-30 April 2014. Kathmandu, Nepal. Over 400 8th community-based adaptation to climate change conference (CBA8) in Kathmandu, Nepal, in April 2014, with hundreds more following the events and interacting via live web streamed video, comments and social media. The conference shared the latest developments in community-based adaptation financing, planning and best practices.

participants from more than 60 countries attended IIED's

Published on 28 Apr 2014
An interview with Victor Orindi, of the National Drought Management Authority, Kenya, at the 8th annual conference on community-based adaptation to climate change.

Orindi was the facilitator of a session on "Building institutional capacity and improving governance to access and spend adaptation finance", and discusses the issues raised.

Related:
23 April 2014. Centurion, Pretoria. The AfriCAN Climate Consortium, in conjunction with the University of the Witwatersrand and FANRPAN, hosted the Third AfriCAN Climate Award for excellence in research in climate change adaptation and mitigation in an African context on the 

Dr Lindiwe (FANRPAN), Pr Mary (University WITS), 

Dr Aster Afwork, Dr Debra Roberts, 

Dr Nthabiseng Motene (DAFF), Hlami Ngwenya

AfriCAN Climate is a project co-funded by the European Commission within the 7th FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME. The project was set up by a team of 5 African and 5 European organisations, including research institutes and networks, and runs from October 2011 to September 2014.

This year, the AfriCAN Climate editorial committee decided to jointly confer the award on Dr Aster Gebrekirstos Afwork (left) and Dr Debra Cynthia Roberts (right). 

• Gebrekirstos specialises in dendrochronology or the study of tree rings. Her work using tree rings has shown that the periodicity of drought in East Africa has shortened from every two to eight years to every two to three years over the last 70 years. Taking into consideration the poor spatial and temporal record of historical climate data on the African continent, Gebrekirstos' work has immense importance to developing accurate predictions of future climate at a local and regional scale. To this end she raised funding and established a state of the art dendrochronology lab at the World Agroforestry Centre, ICRAF, in Nairobi, Kenya.
• Roberts is Deputy Head of the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department of the eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South. Roberts initiated and leads the departments planning and implementation of its Climate Protection Programme which was recently profiled by InsideClimate News as one of the top six worldwide urban mitigation and adaptation programmes. Roberts also includes developmental and research aspects through partnerships with the local university which has included designing and testing various metrics and tools for evaluating and promoting municipal adaptation planning, implementation and community participation. On the national and international stage, Roberts is a lead negotiator for South Africa at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. She initiated Durban's winning bid for COP 17-CMP7 in 2011; and is one of the authors of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report.

After a presentation by the two winners of their research’s results, participants attended a conference dedicated to Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) in Africa. Speakers included representatives of FAO, WIP Renewable energies, FANRPAN, IDRC (International Development Research Centre), AFriCAN Climate project, EAFFU (Eastern African Farmers Federation)‏, DAFF (Department of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries –South Africa) ‏and EGS Earth System Governance‏.

The objectives of this conference were to:

1. Share outputs from the FANRPAN CSA programme,
2. Identify an interface between CSA regional initiatives and national level CSA efforts,
3. Strengthen the region-wide CSA community of practice for concerted advocacy,
4. Solicit policy recommendations for advocating for CSA policies at regional and national Level, and
5. Celebrate the excellence of two outstanding women of Africa in the field of climate science research and practice.