Empowering Communities: Climate Resilience Through Locally Led Adaptation

Climate change disproportionately threatens the lives and livelihoods of people living in vulnerable conditions worldwide. In the face of this crisis, local people and communities emerge as frontline responders, both experiencing and addressing climate impacts. They have valuable knowledge, skills, and lived experience to lead climate adaptation and build resilience in their countries and communities. And yet, they often aren’t able to access the resources they need to effectively implement the adaptations they need. An often-quoted statistic is that less than 10 percent of climate finance reaches local levels.

The Principles for Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) are a set of best practices that seek to help change this dynamic. LLA is an approach that supports local people, institutions, and networks to lead decisions on how, when, and where to adapt to the impacts of climate variability and change. LLA is a powerful set of tools and approaches that enables and strengthens equitable access to power and resources, supplementing local knowledge and expertise. The USAID Climate Adaptation Support Activity (CASA) has developed two new resources to help USAID and its partners further LLA in practice: a primer and guidance note.

Accounting for the Needs of the Most Vulnerable 

Marginalized populations, such as women, children, youth, Indigenous Peoples, and people living with disabilities, are already experiencing acute climate impacts at disproportionate rates. For example, 160 million children were exposed to prolonged or severe drought in 2022 and 370 million Indigenous Peoples grapple with livelihood disruptions driven by extreme weather events. In addition, climate hazards drive insecurity for women and girls, increasing risks of gender-based violence and poor maternal and child health.  

Local people, organizations, governments, and those living in the most vulnerable conditions often lack access to the climate risk information, decision-making power, and finance necessary to lead and scale adaptation action and address risks in their communities. Traditional approaches to adaptation project implementation often sideline local actors, inadvertently reinforcing power imbalances and overlooking critical populations’ needs and priorities. 

Leveraging LLA to Address Gaps in Finance and Implementation

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates the necessary costs to adapt in low- to middle-income countries to be over $300 billion annually by 2030, yet only $28.6 billion was released in 2020. Meanwhile, only 20 percent of verified adaptation finance efforts before 2021 included women in decision-making roles, with significantly lower numbers for disabled populations, youth, and Indigenous Peoples. Accessing adaptation finance is complicated for local entities due to an international system with complex accreditation and lengthy disbursement processes. 

Despite existing challenges, local communities already lead many innovative adaptation efforts, leveraging deep local knowledge of ecosystems and grassroots initiatives. Their actions, such as deploying resilient agricultural practices and using local knowledge to warn communities of incoming threats, demonstrate the importance of supporting locally led approaches, particularly for climate adaptation actions. Centering the LLA Principles—such as simplifying access to and ensuring predictable funding—fosters longer-term, cost-effective solutions. This, in turn, strengthens local governance and capacity and enables independent management of adaptation initiatives. 

Advancing LLA in Practice

USAID and its partners are working to advance an equitable and inclusive approach to LLA in line with the foundational principles of the 2022-2030 USAID Climate Strategy and the Agency’s commitments to localization. In 2021, USAID endorsed the Principles for Locally Led Adaptation, a global set of approaches to practically fund and support local actors in leading adaptation design, processes, and outcomes. Development organizations can bolster resilience and foster inclusive development by embracing and integrating LLA principles into all aspects of programming. 

To support these efforts, CASA has developed the primer and guidance note for USAID, its implementing partners, and stakeholders to better understand and operationalize LLA. These resources and other USAID and industry guidance will support furthering LLA in practice at the Agency and beyond.