GCA Meet the Winners Event

Presentation of the Winners of the 2024 GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards 

In 2024, the LAC Awards recognized the efforts of local adaptation practitioners in four categories: Food Security, Local Entrepreneurship, Urban Adaptation Solutions, and Water Security. 

Event description

In December 2022, GCA inaugurated the Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation, which aims to promote LLA at scale, with speed, to reduce climate risks for populations and sections of society that are most vulnerable to climate change. The activities of the Hub are guided by the eight Principles for Locally Led Adaptation, launched at the 2021 Climate Adaptation Summit.  
The GCA initiated the Local Adaptation Champions Awards in 2022 as part of the activities of the Global Hub on LLA, to reward and spotlight innovative, exemplary, inspiring, and scalable locally led efforts that address the impacts of climate change, and build effective climate resilience among the most vulnerable communities, sections of society, and individuals who are at the frontlines of the greatest existential threat faced by humankind. 

The Awards aim to: 

• Recognize the critical contribution of locally led adaptation and resilience building. 
• Identify best practices and learn from locally led efforts. 
• Nurture and support replication/scaling up of successful and innovative LLA efforts, by creating opportunities for peer-to-peer sharing of knowledge, learning, and experiences across borders; identifying opportunities for scaling up; and brokering partnerships.  
• Contribute to ongoing LLA efforts through cash awards.  

The Awards Ceremony for the GCA’s 2024 Local Adaptation Champions Awards takes place on 13 November 2024 at COP29.  

2024 CATEGORIES 
In 2024, the LAC Awards recognized the efforts of local adaptation practitioners in four categories: Food Security, Local Entrepreneurship, Urban Adaptation Solutions, and Water Security. 

• Food Security: This category recognizes local, community-led initiatives that support the design, mainstreaming, and adoption of climate-smart food production systems that are designed by and for smallholder producers and vulnerable communities along the supply chain. Initiatives in this category should demonstrate how they contribute to ensuring continuous, equitable and sustainable access to diverse, nutritious foods for poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. 
• Local Entrepreneurship:This category recognizes local, community-based businesses that: (1) have developed or adopted adaptation solutions or technologies that address local climate-related vulnerabilities and that are accessible locally to the people or groups most vulnerable to climate change; (2) have supported local communities and governments in adaptation efforts; or (3) helped address structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, disabled, displaced, indigenous peoples and marginalized ethnic groups that make them more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. 
• Urban Adaptation Solutions:This category recognizes locally led initiatives for adaptation to climate change in urban areas. Successful initiatives engage and benefit vulnerable urban neighborhoods, community leaders and city governments through collaborative design, integration into city adaptation plans, and a long-term vision to continuously increase adaptive capacity over time.  
• Water Security: This category recognizes local, community-based initiatives that address water-related challenges and enhance local adaptation capacity through efficient water drainage, channeling, use, or conservation. The solutions must be locally designed, accessible and tailored to the needs of the most vulnerable groups in the community, ensuring equitable management of water resources for all.