Integration into development: Translating international frameworks into village-level adaptation

Abstract

International climate change commitments have progressively prioritised addressing adaptation, particularly under the mechanisms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In response, climate change adaptive capacity and resilience enhancing activities have been increasingly directed at local community or village scales. The aim of this chapter is to understand how conceptual underpinnings of adaptation are articulated into the programming of adaptation activities implemented at the local village levels under national adaptation planning in Indonesia. The local-level experiences of adaptation programming in implementation offer several insights to guide adaptation approaches and conceptions in informing national adaptation programming implementation at village levels. This chapter, therefore, situates the national adaptation programmes implemented in two case studies of agricultural areas in the Yogyakarta Region of Java, amidst Indonesia’s country commitments and priorities on adaptation to village activity-level implementation. The chapter presents the local experiences of farmers in two key adaptation projects implemented at the village level as part of broader nation-wide programming. The results of which detail findings captured post-project implementation and provide examples of the implications of adaptation framing on programmatic outcomes over long-range timeframes. This chapter draws conclusions that significant gaps and disjuncture between the top-down nature of national adaptation programming directives exist in the translation of programming into village activities. In particular, in the ways in which local participants are engaged and have the agency to direct the activities of adaptation programming in a manner that is culturally and contextually appropriate, as well as locally specific, and able to be sustained in the uptake of the programme activities. These findings suggest that limited engagement and meaningful inclusion with farmer communities in collaboratively developing programme adaptation activities in early design is still lacking in practice. When coupled with limited incorporation of farmer innovation, local knowledge and agency as part of the social processes key to long-term adaptation, overall, little impact or adaptive capacity is being fostered in the long-term in these cases of national adaptation activities.