The impacts of a capacity-building workshop in a randomized adaptation project
Abstract
Encouraging adaptation to climate change is fundamentally
about encouraging changes in human behaviour. To promote
these changes, governments, non-profits and multilateral
institutions have invested in a range of adaptation projects.
Yet there is little empirical evidence about which project
components are effective in changing human behaviour1,2.
This lack of evidence is concerning, given that the failure of
adaptation initiatives has been described as the global risk
with the highest likelihood of occurring and with the largest
negative impacts3. Here we report on a scholar–practitioner
collaboration in which a simple one-day workshop delivering
two ubiquitous components of adaptation projects4—capacity
building and the dissemination of climate science—was
randomly assigned among the management councils of over
200 community water systems in an arid region of Central
America. The workshop was based on more than three years
of scientific research and local collaborations, and it aimed to
convey downscaled climate modelling and locally informed,
expert-recommended adaptation practices. Two years later,
we detect no differences in pricing and non-pricing management
practices of participant versus non-participant councils.
These results suggest weaknesses in the common practice of
using simple workshops for delivering capacity building and
climate science.
Publisher
CATIE, Turrialba (Costa Rica)
URI (Permanet link to cite or share this item)
https://repositorio.catie.ac.cr/handle/11554/9272https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2018.12.002