Southern Madagascar faces severe climate vulnerability, with recurrent droughts, low rainfall, and chronic food insecurity deepening poverty. The World Bank’s MIONJO Project (launched 2020) aims to strengthen basic services, local governance, and climate resilience. GCA, with the Government of Madagascar, the World Bank and CRS, is embedding Locally Led Adaptation by developing a People’s Adaptation Planning process in three communes. The approach enables communities to identify climate risks and shape resilience investments. The People's Adaptation Planning process is being integrated into national planning systems (including the PDLII), building institutional capacity and supporting replication across the country.

The Miombo woodlands of Zambia—vital for livelihoods, biodiversity, and climate regulation—are under severe threat from deforestation and climate change. The Global Center on Adaptation, in partnership with People's Process on Housing and Poverty in Zambia and WeForest Zambia, is supporting communities in the Copperbelt and Muchinga Provinces to develop People's Adaptation Plans that inform investments under the World Bank’s TRALARD II project. The pilot will also inform the national review of Zambia’s Integrated Development Plan guidelines, offering a transformative chance to achieve nation-wide climate resilience by strengthening adaptation components and building the necessary government and project staff capacity.

Extreme heat is reshaping daily life for India’s poorest workers, who have few options but to endure dangerous conditions that threaten their health and livelihoods. Experts say the country must urgently adapt its cities, workplaces and social protections to withstand a hotter future.

Direct health sector adaptation interventions will require over US$ 22 billion per year by 2035. The Belém Health Action Plan calls for national strategies that address the root causes of health inequity, and are based on a common taxonomy, shared standards for assessing effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, a focus on local context and scalability, and sustained investment.

Only a tiny fraction of global climate finance actually reaches or is led by the communities who are on the frontlines of climate change. Despite growing international support for locally led adaptation, current reporting systems are so limited that less than half a percent of funding can be confidently identified as truly locally driven.

How can we redefine “success” in climate adaptation beyond easily countable project outputs? What mechanisms are most effective in bridging the gap between local knowledge and national policy? Why is funding still missing the local actors who deliver the most impact?

Find out in the 2025 Stories of Resilience!

As global leaders grapple with how to fund and scale climate adaptation, this edition of Stories for Resilience calls for a fundamental reset—from short-term projects to long-term power shifts. Offering real-world lessons and tested solutions, it challenges funders and policymakers to rethink what climate leadership looks like in practice.

At COP30 in Belém, Brazil, four community-led initiatives from Kenya, India, Peru, and a global heritage network received the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Awards for pioneering responses to climate change. Organized by the Global Center on Adaptation with support from the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the awards spotlight how locally led climate action is driving resilience, from transforming informal settlements through climate-responsive health care to empowering women farmers.

The four winners of the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Awards show how communities are turning heritage, healing, and local ingenuity into powerful tools for survival and renewal. Their stories reveal that climate resilience is strongest when it grows from the lived experience, leadership, and resolve of those on the frontlines.

Women in Narayanganj’s informal settlements are using newly launched Women’s Adaptation Labs to map climate risks, gather community-level data, and bring their lived experiences to city officials. Their insights will directly inform People's Adaptation Plans and investment decisions under the Asian Development Bank’s Narayanganj Green and Resilient Urban Development Project, positioning women at the center of the city's climate adaptation efforts.

The Green Climate Fund’s Locally Led Climate Action framework provides guidance on developing projects that devolve decision-making and finance, support local ownership and implementation, and build sustainable local capacity. It also provides a menu of options for structuring proposals in line with these parameters.

Join the Global Center on Adaptation at COP30 for the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Award Ceremony, celebrating leaders advancing local climate resilience worldwide. The event will feature distinguished guests, the presentation of awards across four key resilience categories, and the launch of GCA’s flagship report, Stories of Resilience: Lessons from Local Adaptation Practice.

Residents of Homa Bay handed over a community-driven, climate-resilient people's adaptation plan to county leaders as a blueprint for managing rapid growth and rising climate risks. Officials and partners hailed the plan’s fast and highly participatory creation, while urging swift approval and resources to turn it into action.

A bold new People’s Adaptation Planning pilot that puts communities at the center of climate decision-making, has been launched in Madagascar under the World Bank–funded MIONJO Project. The initiative aims to carry local voices from village meetings all the way to national policy, laying the groundwork for stronger, people-driven resilience across the country.

A co-creation workshop on embedding Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) in Community Driven Development (CDD) was launched today in Tamale, Ghana, to strengthen the integration of LLA methodologies into the community-driven planning and investment processes under the World Bank’s Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion (SOCO) Project. 

This report amplifies the voices of displaced communities in Bangladesh, exploring how climate-driven loss and damage intersect with protracted displacement and highlighting civil society efforts toward durable solutions. It features a case study on the work GCA and its partners did with the communities in Mongla Municipality.

Extreme heat in Delhi worsens the health, livelihoods, and mental well-being of more than 300,000 homeless individuals, revealing how lack of adequate housing magnifies climate and psychological stress. Addressing these impacts requires meeting basic needs, building community support systems, expanding access to mental health care, and implementing housing-centered, climate-resilient policies across all levels of government.

Women in rural Bangladesh are stepping into key planning roles to design climate-resilient roads, working alongside engineers to ensure infrastructure strengthens water management and protects local livelihoods. Through surveys, training, and Women's Adaptation Labs, they've engaged over 1,100 households and they’re shaping road–water solutions that will guide future development across 15 villages.

Bangladesh’s coastal towns face rising seas, cyclones, and floods that threaten homes and livelihoods, forcing many to migrate to already overburdened Dhaka. Strengthening smaller “secondary towns” offers a safer, more resilient alternative. Through People’s Adaptation Planning, communities—supported by the the Global Center on Adaptation and BRAC—are turning local knowledge into actionable plans for an inclusive and climate-resilient future.

Social protection investments can be a powerful driver of rural climate adaptation and just transitions for the most vulnerable. A review of 23 Green Climate Fund (GCF) projects shows strong potential to scale up these investments while enhancing coordination, inclusion, and long-term support. Strengthening national social protection systems alongside these efforts could make GCF investments even more inclusive, sustainable, and just.

In Bangladesh, rural roads are vital for connecting communities but often worsen flooding and erosion when poorly designed. The Global Center on Adaptation, through the World Bank’s Climate Smart Rural Transport Project, is piloting “Green Roads for Water” to make roads climate-resilient while improving local water management. Central to the effort are Women's Adaptation Labs, where women's leadership is at its core and women collaborate with engineers and hydrologists to shape road designs that boost water security and reduce climate risks.

A national workshop in Dhaka showcased how climate-vulnerable, low-income communities in three towns created People’s Adaptation Plans by mapping risks and identifying their own priority solutions. These community-driven plans will now guide climate-smart investments under the upcoming Bangladesh Smart Cities Development Project financed by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

A five-day co-creation workshop was held in Sylhet, Bangladesh, to jointly develop training content for the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre to embed locally led adaptation into Bangladesh’s civil service training. Participants first engaged with residents of Laksam Municipality to understand how they are benefitting from locally led planning and then went on to develop 12 draft modules for the new training course.

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) announced the 20 nominees for the 2025 Local Adaptation Champions Awards today. These prestigious awards, which spotlight groundbreaking and scalable locally led efforts, celebrate innovation in addressing the growing impacts of climate change while fostering resilience at the community level. The nominees have been selected in four categories: Nature-Based Solutions, Women's Livelihoods, Citizen Science, and Health.