We support adaptation policy at the national and global leve through partnerships with governments, international organisations, research bodies and other entities, and through influential publications. Current work includes partnerships with the OECD and the NAP Global Network on adaptation governance and support for National Adaptation Plans. Previous policy-focused work includes advisory papers on climate-security narratives, and adaptation monitoring, evaluation and learning.
Garama supports adaptation policy development at the national and international level through commissioned studies, the publication of working papers and academic articles, and partnerships with government agencies and other organisations. Currently, we are working with the NAP Global Network to provide technical support for the development of countries’ National Adaptaton Plans.
Recently, we completed a review of Official Development Assistance (ODA) support to local adaptation governance, as part of a wider examination of adaptation governance by the OECD, intended to inform the adaptation policies of the OECD and its member states. We are currently working with the OECD Climate Change Adaptation Governance team to synthesise the learning from multiple studies of adaptation governance (including the above).
In 2022, we published an Advisory Report on Rethinking Climate-Security Narratives with ODI, on behalf of GIZ. This report critically examined dominant narratives around climate change and conflict, presenting alternative framings of climate-security linkages. For example, where dominant narratives frame climate as a ‘magnifier’ of conflict risk, the paper emphases causal links in the other direction, with conflict driving climate risk and vulnerability.
Working with colleagues at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) and others, we contributed to an influential paper examining the factors that determine whether adaptation interventions succeed or fail, as part of work commissioned by the NORAD, the Norwegian agency for development cooperation (Eriksen et al. 2001).
Earlier work included a number of assignments to inform UK government policy and practice on adaptation and resilience, including commissioned studies on resilience measurement, early scoping for the CLARE programme, assessments of the StARCK+ programme in Kenya (with DAI) and the CRIDF programme for East and Southern Africa, and a conference and paper on transformational adaptation for the VUNA programme.
Our work on monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL), undertaken with IIED and other partners, is intended to inform global practice in the MEL of adaptation and sustainable development. For more information on this work, see our MEL page.
We regularly participate in conferences and other forums that address policy related to adaptation and resilience. In 2023, we participated in two conferences at the University of East Anglia, on the future of the IPCC and Measuring Heritage Loss and Damage from Climate Change for Effective Policy Reporting. In 2020, we participated in a Transformational Change Learning Partnership webinar organised by the Climate Investment Funds with the title Facing the climate crisis: Making the bold and ambitious choices needed for transformational change, and a Climate-KIC webinar on Transformative Action and COP26, based on Climate Innovation Insights Series 5: Thinking about Transformation and drawing on the Garama-authored working paper on Resilient Solutions in Oxford, where our Director, Nick Brooks, took part in a panel discussion on ‘transformation’. See our Oxfam blog post for this event here.
Another means by which our work influences policy is through our training courses, which have been delivered to representatives of national governments responsible for adaptation and resilience planning, and international organisations responsible for global and regional climate change policy and finance. For more details, see our training pages.