Garama - Adaptation Services

Garama’s approach to adaptation is based on the following principles:

1. The purpose of adaptation is to secure development in the face of climate change.
2. Adaptation is highly context-specific, and adaptation interventions need to be grounded in local development contexts.
3. Good development may deliver adaptation benefits, but will need to be accompanied by additional measures to address specific climate change threats in some contexts.
4. Adaptation is  process, not an ‘event’, and adaptation needs will change over time, meaning that adaptation strategies will need to be dynamic and flexible.
5. Near-term adaptation measures need to consider potential longer-term adaptation needs, in order to avoid ‘maladaptation’.
6. ‘Climate proofing’ of existing or ‘business-as-usual’ development may have its limits, as climate change may make existing patterns of development unviable in some areas.
7. Adaptation needs to address uncertainty, and should be based on measures that are robust under a range of plausible future conditions.

A key focus of Garama’s work is on integrating adaptation into development activities through a better understanding of the relationship between adaptation and development (point 3 above), based on the ‘development-adaptation continuum’, illustrated below.