Interventions into climate change adaptation have been on the rise over the past decade. The recent and emerging scholarship on ‘locally-led adaptation’ argues that adaptation needs to be “locally led”, not just limited to ‘communities’ in order to be effective and sustainable. Locally led adaptation occurs when “local communities, community-based organisations, citizen groups, local government, and local private sector entities at the lowest administrative structure are included as decision-makers in the interventions that affect them”. The underpinning assumption of this argument is that when local actors (e.g. the lowest administrative structure and communities) have agency over adaptation and development paths, these types of action can deliver democratic, equitable, and context-specific solutions. So, if locally-led adaptation is the next frontier: what are the barriers and challenges that it will face and what are the opportunities it will bring in the river deltas’ context as well as in the context of the SDGs’ commitment to ‘leave no one behind’.
Participants will then be invited to contribute questions for our panel members.
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Our Speakers
Anju Shrama
Anju Sharma is the Global Lead on Locally Led Adaptation at the Global Center on Adaptation.
She has been Deputy Director of Oxford Climate Policy and Head of the Policy and Publications Unit of the European Capacity Building Initiative. She is an Associate with the Stockholm Environment Institute and has been a Consultant with the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development. Anju has previously worked with the UN Environment Programme in Kenya, Oxfam GB in the UK, and the Centre for Science and Environment in India. She has also worked as a Consultant for a number of international organisations, including the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UN Development Program.
Professor Jonathan Rigg
Professor Jonathan Rigg is Chair of Human Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.
His research focuses on agrarian change in Southeast and South Asia and he has undertaken fieldwork in Thailand, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy last year and was awarded the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 2020 for his “long-term research in development geography on Southeast Asia”. Jonathan is the author of Rural development in Southeast Asia: dispossession, accumulation and persistence (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and More than rural: textures of Thailand’s agrarian transformation (Hawaii University Press, 2019).
Professor Lyla Mehta is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies. She trained as a sociologist (University of Vienna) and has a PhD in Development Studies (University of Sussex).
Professor Lyla Mehta
Her work focuses on water and sanitation, forced displacement and resistance, climate change, scarcity, rights and access, resource grabbing and the politics of environment/ development and sustainability. Her recent project focus on climate change, uncertainty and transformation in marginal environments and off grid sanitation in urban areas. She has extensive field research in India studying the politics of water scarcity, the linkages between gender, displacement and resistance, access to water and sanitation in peri urban areas and climate change. Additionally, she has worked on the politics of water management in southern Africa and community-led total sanitation. Lyla has engaged in advisory work with various UN agencies and has also been active in advocacy and activist work on gender, environment and development issues with NGOs and social movements in Europe and India. She was the water and sanitation convenor of the STEPS Centre and is currently editor of the journal Environment and Planning E, Nature and Space.
Dr Anh Vu
Dr Anh Vu is a Research Director at NatCen International at the National Centre for Social Research in London. Her research centres on the connections between environmental change, risks, vulnerabilities and human wellbeing. Alongside her academic track record, Dr Anh Vu has a wide-ranging practitioner background in policy relevant research and community building, with nearly 20 years of experience working with multilateral/bilateral donors, multi-level governments, and inter/national NGOs. Dr Anh Vu has published, advised, taught, and led extensive consultancies and commissioned research on environmental governance, climate change policy, urban sustainability, SDGs, civil society, and social movements in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
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About the Delta Dialogue Series
The series, organised by Living Deltas Research hub, aims to build knowledge and networks by bringing together speakers from different sectors and contexts to share their expertise, and reflect upon the complex socio-ecological challenges facing deltas today.
We aim to strengthen partnerships in delta research, governance, and policy at a regional and global scale.