The challenge: Communities across the world who have contributed the least to the climate crisis, particularly in the Global South, are paying the heaviest price. Climate impacts, whether through natural disasters or slow-onset changes, are steadily eroding livelihoods, causing displacement, increasing hunger and poverty, and fueling conflict and humanitarian crises in developing countries. These impacts are not evenly felt. Communities already facing systemic inequalities based on gender, class, race, caste, and colonial histories are hit the hardest. Women, youth, Indigenous peoples, and other marginalized groups experience heightened vulnerability to climate disasters due to long-standing injustices such as colonial exploitation, land dispossession, and extractive economic systems. In addition, many current climate adaptation efforts are already reproducing these dynamics. Resources are often controlled by distant actors, projects are developed without the leadership of affected communities, and local knowledge systems are frequently overlooked or excluded.
Our solution: We support adaptation efforts that respond to climate impacts while tackling the underlying conditions that create vulnerability in the first place. Our just adaptation approach seeks to actively dismantle systemic inequalities while strengthening the ability of local communities to determine their own futures. We believe true resilience is only possible when frontline communities have decision-making power and control over the resources. Adaptation must be grounded in justice, local leadership, and flexible financing that shifts top-down, donor-driven models. That is why we endorse the Eight Principles of Locally Led Adaptation, while promoting a flexible approach that focuses on empowering communities rather than rigid compliance. Locally Led Adaptation is not about rigid frameworks, but about real-world empowerment: trusting local actors to design, lead, and own their adaptation futures.
Like through mangrove planting projects in Pakistan. Due to climate change local communities are confronted by sea level rise and connected salination of the soil. Mangroves combat climate change by acting as powerful carbon sinks, absorbing vast amounts of CO2 and storing it in their biomass and sediments. They also protect coastlines by stabilizing soil, buffering against storm surges, and reducing erosion, which is vital for coastal communities facing rising sea levels.