Building community resilience through strengthening agricultural adaptation knowledge systems in Uganda (CRAKS)

 

Top-down climate action can alienate local and marginalized groups, who also face the biggest threat from climate impacts. Currently, systems are not in place to ensure that knowledge is shared sufficiently either across scales or between the producers and users of climate knowledge to support more locally led adaptation actions. The fact that climate finance is not reaching local levels is symptomatic of this situation.

Climate knowledge brokering systems (the process mediating between producers and users of information) are needed to support inclusive generation, dissemination and use of knowledge to improve access to climate finance at the local level and to improve resilience. Knowledge brokers facilitate the integration of knowledge across different systems, including national and local levels, institutions and stakeholders at the interface of climate change, policy and practice processes.

This project seeks to build community resilience through adaptation knowledge brokering in Uganda. It will focus on semi-arid areas of the cattle corridor which experience persistent extreme weather events with poverty rates higher than the national average. Adopting an innovation system approach, the project aims to strengthen inclusive generation, dissemination and use of local and Indigenous knowledge to inform adaptation responses. This will involve gender and intersectional analysis, dialogues, peer learning and document review. The expected outcomes include improved climate risk management, reduced gender and oppressive social norms and inclusion barriers, and reformed policy and practice through locally led adaptation principles.

This project is part of the Step Change initiative, co-funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and IDRC. Step Change is a five-year, CAD28.5-million initiative that aims to accelerate equitable and inclusive locally led adaptation.