Community Based Adaptation: Theory and Practice

Abstract

Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) has emerged as a notion in climate change discourse given to its extensive span as ‘practice area’. This is now widely practiced in Bangladesh particularly since 2002. In other parts of the world also, CBA is also an action area particularly after climate change impacts have begun to unfold in terms of increased climate disasters in recent years. Till now CBA has been conceived by the development practitioners as an effective approach to reduce vulnerability of the poor and marginalized people from climate change impacts. This was done under the framing of participatory development that was conceptualized in the 1970s and 1980s. Historical accounts reveal that the seed of thoughts on CBA is rooted in Taoism, which was developed in 600 BC in China. Now because of climate change, it is viewed that CBA as a practice area has come to stay. Therefore, it’s time to synthesize the practice experiences around the world into some form of coherent theories and concepts, so that it can play an effective role in strengthening adaptive capacity of the poor communities around the world. This chapter attempts to lay down a conceptual framework for the CBA, so that it can proceed further into its application with theoretical and methodological rigor. Our discussion on conceptual framing is substantiated by two case studies of CBA in southwest of Bangladesh, which we argue had sound conceptual and methodological rigor in their designing and implementation. Our conclusion is that CBA programme has to be people centered, process oriented, community led, knowledge oriented, empowerment focused and accountability driven. And all these aspects constitute major areas of further academic research and analysis.