Scaling locally led adaptation: closing the rhetoric-reality gap

This paper examines why locally led adaptation (LLA) – which places decision-making power directly in communities’ hands – has gained widespread policy support but minimal implementation at scale. It explores three potential scenarios for LLA by 2030 and charts pathways from principles to scaled-up practice based on extensive stakeholder consultations.

Locally led adaptation (LLA) represents a fundamental shift in approaches to building climate resilience. Unlike traditional community-based approaches that involve local participation within predetermined frameworks, LLA requires structural changes that ensure communities have real decision-making power over adaptation priorities, resource allocation and implementation. Over 130 governments and organisations have endorsed the eight principles for LLA since their launch at the Global Adaptation Summit in 2021, yet less than 1% of climate finance incorporates locally led approaches. This gap between rhetoric and reality is costly: with adaptation needs estimated at US$215–387 billion annually against available finance of just $65 billion, ineffective resource allocation has profound consequences for the world’s most climate-vulnerable communities.