Although adaptation to climate change lacks a strict community-wide definition, it is commonly understood to be action taken to prevent climate change from undermining or offsetting both progress made and efforts actively underway in international development. 

Earlier this fall, InterAction hosted a “Principles for Effective Adaptation Programs” workshop, at which member organizations came together to collectively identify principles that field experience suggests are important in effective adaptation programs. Participants heard a set of NGO presentations on programs that address an array of climate response and adaptation needs. These included Food for the Hungry’s “Adaptive Agriculture and Cropping Systems” program in Ethiopia, World Wildlife Fund’s pilot projects in Nepal and Fiji targeting efforts to mitigate and adapt to glacier melting, and Church World Service’s “Water Scarcities and Conflict” project in East Africa.

The presentations and Q&A were very rich and yielded a wide range of insights as well as lessons learned. InterAction plans to use the workshop notes  to help formulate a technical summary and policy paper on effective adaptation and areas of convergence between adaptation and development. As we take the ideas and experiences from the workshop to the next level, we look forward to and encourage further engagement and feedback.

For more information about the workshop or InterAction’s adaptation work, please contact Jon Hackett.