Key Issues

Africa is one of the most exposed continents where the impacts of climate change will be most visible and have widespread consequences for the livelihoods of rural communities. To minimise the vulnerability of communities in east and southern Africa and to ensure sustainable and successful action examining and engaging with the following issues is crucial:

• Tenure rights and conflicts – Contested rights to land and resources are underlying the majority of today’s ongoing violent conflicts. They also constitute the primary cause of widespread poverty and human rights abuse. Climate change will add a further pressure to the already fragile situation of unrecognised collective rights in rural areas in Africa.
• Information flow - One of the key constraints facing efforts to address the impacts of climate change and promote required adaptation measures is the lack of information available and in suitable mediums for the communities in east and southern Africa who will be affected by such change. In particular information disseminating perspectives and needs of communities is lacking.
• Network support – Knowledge and information processes are currently top-down driven and often confined to a limited number of specialist institutions. There is a need for sustained bottom-up driven information that can be shared across sectors to foster an overarching and inclusive understanding of the needs and perspectives at the most local levels.

Addressing the issues

The gap between the realities at the community level in Africa and the international decision-making on climate change policies is growing. There is an evident lack of African community representation at the international level and there is a national and international need to realise the existing community knolwedge and practices relating to climate change adaptation.

Building adaptive capacity:

The ability of communities to adapt to the impacts of climate change and thus minimise their vulnerability depends on their level of adaptive capacity. This can be enhanced through community based approaches to adaptation by which the communities themselves are made aware of the issues, engage in scenario planning, debate adaptation measures and activities and are part of the solution. In short, the communities have ownership of information and of resources.

Our objectives

The general objectives of the programme are to support the perspectives, opinions and needs of communities in east and southern Africa on adaptation to climate change, to promote awareness of existing issues and future planning for successful adaptation, to facilitate information sharing of lessons learnt across the region, and to develop appropriate mechanisms to channel this information upwards to governments, NGOs, research institutes and the international level.

The specific objectives are to communicate local climate change adaptation through the use of community based theatre, photstory techniques, a cross-media website, case-study video documentaries and technical training delivered through a "toolbox" of infromation and methodologies.

Visit the ClimateConscious Programme website

Our Approach

This programme aims to pilot initiatives in east and southern Africa that focus on innovative methods to build capacity, promote awareness and support knowledge exchange on community adaptation to climate change.

ResourceAfrica UK’s particular aim is to visualize the experiences, to get the message across in the most effective way and to build capacity where academic reports will not reach and not be understood. 

By using community theatre, village photo stories and short video documentaries, communities will have ownership of information since these activities will be both facilitated in cooperation with and carried out by the communities themselves. Local messages on climate change impacts and coping strategies will be captured through interviews at the local level, documented with village photo stories, and presented through theatre performances. The theatre productions will be refined through feedback and facilitated discussions with local audiences. These performances will in turn communicate emerging issues from local perspectives to policy and decision makers involved at provincial and national levels, to research institutes and NGOs at the medium level, and eventually also to the international level.

Main Activities

We are working with partner organisations to develop and support community based communication strategies around climate change adaptation. We  use tools such as photo stories, participatory videos and theatre performances to raise awareness and express local experiences, needs and strategies. 

Inspired by the experiences from our project in 2009 in Bennde Mutale, north-eastern South Africa, we have now set up three more projects in northern Namibia, northern Tanzania and Kenya, see the map above. Follow our activities through our blog, view our films, and download our publications.