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Empowering citizen-led adaptation to systemic climate change risks

Nature Climate Change volume 13, pages 671–678 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The increasing impacts of climate change instigate the need for adaptation. However, most adaptation initiatives focus on actions by government or businesses, despite growing calls for communities on the frontline of climate risks to be involved in planning and selecting strategies. Here we appraise a pilot process using participatory systems mapping with citizens to identify (1) diverse threat vectors for local climate impacts and (2) context-relevant interventions to protect households and communities while (3) considering synergies and trade-offs with other socially desirable outcomes. We tested the pilot process in communities in the Lower Volta Basin in Ghana, the Assam region in India and Southern England. From participants’ perspectives, the process increased awareness of and preparedness for climate change impacts and raised essential learning points for upscaling citizen-led adaptation approaches. These include understanding multiple outcomes of interventions, barriers and enablers to implementation, and sensitivity of co-design to regional geography and socio-cultural context.

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Fig. 1: Summary of the standardized elements of the EMPOWER project22 process.
Fig. 2: Locations and characteristics of the three case study villages in the Assam region of North East India.
Fig. 3: UK participant intentions to pursue climate adaptation interventions.
Fig. 4
Fig. 5: Responses from before-and-after-project surveys for three case studies.

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Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its Supplementary Information files).

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the dedicated participants involved in the workshops across the three countries. The project was funded by a UKRI UK–India partnership (Ref.: 2021COPA&R13Oliver).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Tom H. Oliver, Jeff Da Costa, Andre Z. Dornelles & Matthew P. Greenwell

  2. CSIR-Water Research Institute, Accra, Ghana

    Prosper Bazaanah, Emmanuel Obuobie & Marian A. Osei

  3. Department of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Jeff Da Costa

  4. Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, New Delhi, India

    Nabajyoti Deka

  5. Indian Institute of Management Nagpur, Nagpur, India

    Nabajyoti Deka & Magesh Nagarajan

  6. Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

    Kavin Narasimhan & Nigel Gilbert

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  1. Tom H. Oliver
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Contributions

T.H.O., N.G., M.N. and E.O. led the study design and planning with inputs from P.B., J.D.C., N.D., A.Z.D., M.P.G., K.N. and M.A.O. All co-authors participated in the workshops using participatory systems mapping and subsequently contributed to the article writing and review.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tom H. Oliver.

Ethics declarations

Ethics declarations

This study has been approved by the School of Biological Sciences Ethics Committee at the University of Reading (reference SBS21-21 03).

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Climate Change thanks Jeff Birchall, Eranga Galappaththi and Edmond Totin for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Individual country reports.

Detailed Background to the country case studies can be found in the reports shown below, available for download at https://www.empower-project.org/resources/.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Responses to evaluation survey of UK participants after the EMPOWER workshops.

These responses assess the degree to which they felt the project helped them make plans for climate change adaptation and improved their understanding of potential climate change impacts.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–5, Box 1 and Discussion.

Reporting Summary

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Oliver, T.H., Bazaanah, P., Da Costa, J. et al. Empowering citizen-led adaptation to systemic climate change risks. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 671–678 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01712-6

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