Scaling up best practices during CBA9

By Milcah Rajula and Bob Aston
As the final day of the 9th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA9) is happening at the Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, many participants’ core business and sessions of the day is focusing on measuring effectiveness of CBA.

Mr. Adrian Fitzgerald, Irish Aid and Atiq Rahman, Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) will argue their case on why we need to measure effectiveness and who monitoring and evaluation activities should ultimately serve.

CBA9 participants at the IIED exhibition stand

The more than 400 participants from 90 countries will then discuss emerging issues during CBA9 and plans for CBA10 in 2016. The results of the ‘pervasive’ game played throughout CBA9, addressing drinking water for communities and demonstrating self-organized Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) will then be explained.

The Government of Kenya is collaborating with International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS) and African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) to ensure that this conference attains maximum and measurable solutions. This is in retrospect to policy makers demonstrating the effectiveness of EBA in improving the capacity of communities to adapt to the impact of climate change.

Some of today’s key note speakers include: William Samoei arap Ruto, Deputy President of KenyaProf. Judy Wakhungu, Cabinet Secretary for Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, Pa Ousman Jarju, Environment Minister and Climate Envoy of the Gambia,Fatuma Mohamed Hussein, National Climate Change Secretariat, Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural Resources Kenya, Youssef Nassef, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Adaptation Programme Coordinator among others.

Participants are reporting on the latest research and their project work from across different sectors and countries, highlighting the fact that there are different ways of measuring the success of community-based adaptation.

Consequently, they are able to choose from two sessions which include: debate and next steps; conference closing.

Participants will later on in the afternoon be hosted by the United Nation Environment Programme (UNEP) at the UN complex in Gigiri. The visit will include a tour of the complex and an opportunity to learn more about UNEP projects.

IIED and partners: BCAS, created the CBA conferences to highlight that effective adaptation to climate change takes place at community level. Past CBA conferences have focused on scaling up best practices, ensuring a scientific basis to action, communicating and mainstreaming CBA and ensuring adaptation funding reaches community level.

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