GOBESHONA GLOBAL CONFERENCE 3

Bridging the Data Gap for Locally Led Adaptation: A Roundtable for Practitioners

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and Mathematica convened a roundtable discussion at the 2023 Gobeshona Conference on data and information needs for Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), and its related challenges and opportunities.

Event description:

Communities and local governments need data and information, at the right scale, to inform locally led adaptation planning and implementation processes. This includes data and information about: climate forecasts; risks and vulnerabilities potentially exacerbated by climate change; and climate finance. How can this data and information be delivered in ways that target local needs and are accessible and usable by community members?  
 
At the same time, communities, organizations, and local governments produce data and information on climate resilience through mechanisms like climate vulnerability risk assessments and development-related efforts to map community needs and vulnerabilities. This is important information to track progress on building climate resilience, ground-truthing top-down data collection efforts, and informing similar exercises elsewhere. Can and should this data be recorded on a common data platform?

The Global Center on Adaptation’s Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation was launched on 11 December 2022 by H.E. Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, to inform, connect, and inspire local communities and LLA practitioners with knowledge and solutions for locally led adaptation.  
 
The activities of the Hub aim to put people at the center of adaptation action, to transform how the world adapts to the climate emergency, including through the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP), which is mobilizing US$25 billion for adaptation action in Africa. The Hub will support communities to develop People’s Climate Resilience Plans to inform investments by international financial institutions and governments. 
 
GCA recognizes the challenges faced by communities and local governments in accessing up-to-date downscaled data on weather and climate and information on the funding available for adaptation to inform their planning efforts. To better understand these challenges and identify potential solutions, a data and information needs’ assessment and scoping review with end users is underway in partnership with Mathematica. This activity will assess potential opportunities and challenges related to hosting a data platform aimed at community needs on the Global Hub.

Bridging the Data Gap on LLA

GCA and Mathematica convened a roundtable discussion at Gobeshona 2023 on data and information needs for LLA, and its related challenges and opportunities. The discussion, which will contribute to a scoping review by Mathematica, focused on four areas: 

• Understanding local data and information needs to design and implement effective adaptation efforts. 
• Understanding key challenges to targeting local data and information needs, and making the data and information available, accessible to, and useable by, local actors. 
• Recognizing and supporting data collection efforts by communities. 
• Exploring ways to provide information on climate finance flows to inform local adaptation planning efforts. 

PROGRAM
This session began with an overview of the four areas outlined above, followed by a moderated roundtable discussion. In addition to the speakers below, representatives of local communities, grassroot organizations and LLA advocates were invited to join the audience, and to contribute to the discussion.

Moderator

• Dr. Tulika Narayan, Vice President, Climate Change, Mathematica

Opening Remarks 

• Anju Sharma, Global Lead, Locally Led Adaptation, GCA

Presentations and Roundtable Discussion

• Sabrina Parvin, President​, Community Development Forum 
• Shuchi Vora, Resilience Knowledge Coalition Lead, Global Resilience Partnership  
• Dr. Anthony Louis D’Agostino, Climate Economist, Mathematica  
• Dr. Anand Patwardhan, Professor, University of Maryland; Co-Chair, Adaptation Research Alliance 

Closing Remarks 

• Prof. Saleemul Huq, Director, International Centre for Climate Change and Development and Senior Advisor, Locally Led Adaptation, GCA