Photo courtesy of IIED
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a policy research organization founded in 1971, integrates both research and action into their operations. Their work is centralized around their four research groups: climate change, human settlements, natural resources, and sustainable markets. For the past eight years IIED has created and hosted the International Conference on Community Based Adaption.
“Adaptation around the world, including Community-Based Adaptation (CBA), is moving from planning to implementation,” says Dr Saleemul Huq, senior fellow at IIED. “With this shift well under way, we need to find ways to make adaptation more effective as well as more sophisticated ways to measure the impact of adaptation projects.”
Last year’s conference culminated with the release of the Kathmandu Declaration: a document created during the conference outlining goals and guidelines to finance local adaption to climate change. Key objectives of the Kathmandu Declaration include:
- Funding for climate adaption must be centered on the most impoverished and vulnerable populations while taking into account each of their unique situations.
- Priority should be placed on marginalized populations’ primary concerns about adaption.
- Transparency – in all levels of funding streams – must be improved to ensure accountability and to benefit all involved parties
- All interventions must be closely scrutinized to avoid implementing programs that may incur unintended, negative impact.
IIED is now preparing for its 2015 conference, which will focus on “measuring and enhancing the effectiveness of adaption.” The upcoming conference marks IIED’s 9th annual and will take place from April 23 – 30th in Nairobi, Kenya.
Registration information will be available soon on the IIED website.
