Accelerating community-based climate change adaptation in developing countries (2014-2016)
Principal Investigators:
The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly severe around the world, and are likely to be most damaging in vulnerable developing countries. Of particular importance is the effect that climate change has on water quality and quantity, as this is a fundamental building block of development. Projects have been funded to tackle the intersection of climate change adaptation and water, at a variety of temporal and geographic scales. This has produced an abundance of cases, each providing crucial insights into the ingredients of successful adaptation and the characteristics of maladaptation, but few mechanisms to effectively and efficiently share the lessons learned in these cases. Furthermore, simply collecting and sharing these cases is not enough: deeper analysis is required. In response to this challenge, this project seeks to accomplish four complementary goals:
- to develop a set of criteria by which to judge a successful adaptation option;
- to draw together and categorize adaptation options designed and implemented under the auspices of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Climate Change and Water program;
- to make these cases widely available through a flexible, web-based interface; and
- to convene a wider conversation with scholarly and practitioner communities about strategies for assessing and accelerating adaptation.
The climate change imperative: Changing current development paths (2014-2017)
Principal Investigator: Ann Dale (Royal Roads University)
Co-investigators:
- Sarah Burch
- John Robinson (University of Toronto)
- Meg Holden (Simon Fraser University)
- Leslie King (Royal Roads University)
- Stephen Sheppard (University of British Columbia)
This project explores the question: Are climate innovations at the local scale resulting in transformative shifts in underlying development pathways in BC that are transferable to other communities? Research will contribute to understanding transformative change dynamics by investigating what policy, technology, and network innovations are occurring in BC municipalities, what the common drivers and barriers to action are, and what role knowledge mobilization and social learning play in summoning action.