From Participation to Power: Why Locally Led Adaptation?

Bangladesh has faced climate-induced vulnerabilities since its birth. In the 1970s and 1980s, responses to floods, cyclones, and other disasters were mostly relief-based, arriving only after the damage had been done. Relief was necessary, but it was never a real solution; it helped people survive immediate crises without reducing their long-term vulnerability. Over time, this realization pushed governments, development actors, and communities to move beyond emergency response and think more seriously about adaptation: how people could prepare for, adjust to, and live with changing climate risks. Yet one question remained central: who gets to decide how people adapt? Over the past two decades, bottom-up approaches like community-based adaptation (CBA) emerged as the accepted answer to this, which further evolved into locally led adaptation (LLA). LLA aimed not only at improving project outcomes but also at redistributing leadership and decision-making power.

CBA came into the limelight in the early 2000s as a necessary response to top-down climate solutions that often failed to understand local realities. Its core idea was simple but important: people facing climate risks every day should have a say in how they adapt. CBA recognized that communities are not helpless victims; they hold practical knowledge about their land, water, livelihoods, and risks. This approach gained global recognition in 2005 at the first international CBA conference in Dhaka, organized by institutions such as the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Around the same time, organizations like UNDP, CARE, and Oxfam began investing in community-level adaptation initiatives. It recognized a simple but powerful idea: adaptation was no longer only about expert-led planning, but also about valuing local experience as a good source of knowledge.

By the late 2000s and 2010s, CBA had become a widely accepted approach. Programs like the UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme funded hundreds of local projects around the world. NGOs developed frameworks to guide implementation, such as CARE’s CBA Framework in 2015. CBA also began influencing national adaptation planning. Governments started including community-level actions in their climate plans. The approach helped bridge scientific knowledge with local practices, making adaptation more practical and grounded.

However, over time, the limitations started surfacing. CBA’s biggest weakness was that participation did not always mean power. A 2025 study by IIED found that even in the best-reported year, less than 0.5% of all reported climate finance could be considered genuinely locally led. And the central issue is not only how much money is allocated, but who controls it. In many CBA projects, donors, NGOs, and national institutions still shaped the design, funding, and decisions. While communities were consulted, they were rarely given authority over resources. Additionally, CBA projects were frequently short-term and small-scale, limiting their sustainability and systemic impact. The concept of “community” was often treated as homogeneous, overlooking internal differences related to gender, power, and access to resources. This raises a vital question: if local people do not control the decisions or the finance, can we really call it community-based adaptation?

LLA has emerged in response to these concerns. In contrast to CBA, it does not only ask whether local people are involved; it asks whether they have real authority over priorities, finance, and implementation. The idea gained momentum after 2018, particularly following the work of the Global Commission on Adaptation. In 2021, organisations including IIED, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the Global Center on Adaptation formalized a set of guiding principles for LLA. At first, the idea felt ambitious, but it turned to be quite simple: local actors, local communities, local governments, and civil society etc. should not only just participate in adaptation but also lead it. This includes deciding priorities, managing funds, and shaping long-term strategies.

Bangladesh’s LoGIC project by PKSF offers a practical step forward towards this shift from participation to local leadership. Instead of treating local people only as participants in adaptation activities, it worked through local government institutions and community financing mechanisms. Through the Community Resilience Fund, USD 9.72 million was disbursed to 35,000 vulnerable beneficiaries for climate-adaptive livelihoods, while another USD 7.91 million was provided to 72 local government institutions to implement 909 community-level climate-resilient schemes. These figures matter because they show adaptation finance moving closer to the people and institutions dealing with climate risks every day. LoGIC did not simply treat communities as recipients of project support; it created space for them and local governments to identify needs, plan responses, and implement solutions. This is where the transition from CBA to LLA becomes meaningful: adaptation cannot be locally led unless local actors have access to resources, authority, and institutional support.

This is why the transition from CBA to LLA should be seen as an evolution, not a rejection. CBA played an important role by bringing communities into adaptation discussions and recognizing the value of local knowledge. But LLA pushes the idea further by asking whether communities and local institutions actually have the authority to decide, manage resources, and shape long-term strategies. A project may take place in a village and still not be locally led if its priorities, budget, and success indicators are decided elsewhere. This distinction is critical. As climate risks become more complex, short-term and externally designed interventions are no longer enough. Adaptation needs to be flexible, locally accountable, and embedded within institutions that remain after a project ends.

Today, LLA is gaining global traction. More than one hundred organizations have endorsed its principles, and funding mechanisms such as the Adaptation Fund are beginning to expand direct access for local actors. The broader lesson is clear: inclusion alone cannot solve the adaptation challenge. Vulnerable communities cannot remain only beneficiaries of climate action while decisions are made elsewhere. LLA corrects this imbalance by placing decision-making power closer to those who live with climate impacts every day. Ultimately, adaptation will only become effective and just when local actors are trusted not merely to participate, but to decide, manage, and lead.

Shahedul Islam is working as a Research Assistant for the COLOCAL Project at ICCCAD-IUB.