Participatory action learning is empowering smallholder agricultural communities in the Philippines to equitably improve their climate adaptation planning.
Smallholder agricultural communities in the Philippines are vulnerable to increasingly severe climate crises. The CGIAR Research Initiative on Climate Resilience developed a locally led learning model that prioritizes gender and social equity as fundamental to strengthening community capacity to effectively adapt to climate change. Integrating the learning model into Climate-Smart Mapping and Adaptation Planning with the Department of Agriculture, municipal authorities and communities will contribute to nationwide community-based adaptation initiatives in 2025 and beyond, tailored to specific agricultural contexts.
Smallholder agricultural communities in rural and hazard-prone areas in the Philippines are grappling with increased climate risks. Such communities are often strongly patriarchal, resistant to change, and marked by persistent vulnerability and poverty. There also remains very limited information available about actions that will strengthen the resilience and adaptation capacity of marginalized groups within these communities, who remain especially vulnerable to climate risk.
To close this gap, the CGIAR Research Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR) developed a participatory learning model that prioritizes gender and social equity as fundamental to strengthening the capacity of climate risk-impacted communities to effectively and sustainably adapt to climate change.
Piloted in Kenya and the Philippines – two communities in Kenya’s Baringo County and four communities (barangays) in Quezon Province and Mindanao in the Philippines among a total of 323 participants that includes women, men, and youth, this learning model is locally led and rooted in community members’ own understandings of and experiences with social equity and climate adaptation. The methodology delves into how norms about gender, generation, and socio-economic status shape peoples’ understandings and experiences of social equity and adaptation.
With evidence gathered from the pilot tests conducted in 2023 and 2024, ClimBeR’s methodology features good practices for community-based action learning as well as for multi-sited comparative research. Learning processes and the relations and insights that they generate provide the foundation for building awareness of and support at multiple scales for pathways of social change and development that enable equitable adaptation.
The Initiative’s methodology design on social equity and climate adaptation is being taken forward in a new locally led R&D partnership to strengthen adaptation planning in Luzon, in the Philippines, with plans to extend into more geographical areas.
Several research and government organizations in the Philippines are using a participatory climate risk mapping tool called Climate-Smart Mapping and Adaptation Planning (CS-MAP). While different climate risks are well identified, the information obtained does not always capture the nature and severity of the risks faced by more marginalized smallholders. Consideration of equity issues in the mapping processes needs strengthening. ClimBeR’s social equity learning model is informing a refinement of the CS-MAP approach, such as measures to ensure that risks and appropriate adaptation pathways are analysed from the perspectives of diverse farmers and account for gender and other social group differences in types of risks and opportunities faced.
The CS-MAP can be readily integrated into local planning, contributing to the adaptation capacity of local agricultural production systems. ClimBeR’s participatory learning model is being implemented by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture and local authorities. The partnership contributes to the Philippine government’s nationwide community-based adaptation initiatives that encourage local communities to develop and implement measures suited to their specific agricultural contexts.
Learning from pilots of both the social equity design initiative and the CS-MAP approach successfully contributed to IRRI receiving funding from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) to work with government stakeholders, municipalities, and barangays in the Philippines on climate adaptation planning.
In the face of social processes that typically fuel inequities, participatory tools and learning tactics such as ClimBeR’s participatory learning model demonstrate how a social equity lens can feed into practical action through an R&D model that invests in ongoing participatory action learning by diverse smallholder communities alongside external partners. Such an approach complements growing interest among researchers and development practitioners in locally led climate adaptation that is equitable, sustainable, and empowers the poorest and most vulnerable.
“The research and development sector is committed to supporting local adaptation to climate impacts on farming communities. The challenge is to make climate resilience efforts more responsive to social differences in marginalized groups. ClimBeR’s participatory learning model engages stakeholders in developing scalable, lasting climate solutions,”
Emilita Monville-Oro, Country Director, International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) – Philippines
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