Deconstructing institutional roles in climate change adaptation: The case of local public institutions in drought-prone districts of Sidama, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Local institutions play pivotal role in climate change adaptation though less attention has been given to them compared with other components of adaptation. The conventional approach to study local institutional roles focuses on how institutions can support climate change adaptation with little emphasis to other institutional dimensions. Thus, the current study deconstructs the conventional institutional roles in climate change adaptation to reframe them on broader institutional dimensions inspired by Young (2002). Data were collected from households, experts and community leaders on institutional frontiers of local public local institution. The study used mixed methods to analyse the data. The findings indicated that despite the presence of institutional set ups, most of the national policy provisions had not been implemented at local levels due to various reasons. Further, even the implemented policies had limited success because of lack of participation in policy making processes, absence of policy implementation guidelines and limited institutional capacity. The study also revealed very weak coordination among institutions working on climate change adaptation. As the result, climate adaptation policy implementation lack continuity, monitoring and evaluation system, and failed to yield transformative changes to the farmers. Therefore, there is an urgent need to participate, capacitate, and synergize local institutions, and establish policy monitoring and evaluation system so that national policy provisions can yield intended results.