Module 0.3. Participatory Methods

Participation and community involvement are fundamental to Locally Led Action on Climate, Peace and Security – as will be discussed in Unit 1. But even before fully launching a participatory process, contributions from others during the initial scoping phase of a project will help inform a more robust contextual awareness.

Module 0.3 considers how facilitators can engage community members and donors early on in the project lifecycle. It also provides a checklist of deliberative questions that can help inform the analytical approaches discussed in Modules 0.1 and 0.2.

This module will help users:

• incorporate participatory approaches, even during the initial stages of a potential intervention
• consider themes for collective deliberation, to be collaboratively addressed throughout a project
• engage donors in meaningful ways to bridge locally led action with global policy frameworks

“You don’t know what you don’t know” is especially relevant early on during project management, when a facilitator might be just beginning to understand a particular context. The purpose of initial scoping is to reduce the number of ‘unknown unknowns’, but it can be difficult to know what all to look for.

Informal discussions with community representatives while completing contextual analyses can help. Individuals who have lived and/or worked in the area for a lengthy period of time can highlight what should be considered in a baseline assessment, and the types of concerns to pay particular attention to. This is especially true for the social and political components of understanding the local context: While geospatial and environmental data may be able to indicate changes to temperature, water supply, forest cover, land use, etc., the ways in which those environmental factors interact with livelihoods and power are not so easily tracked.

Even without full community mobilisation (see Unit 1), some consultation can be very useful for informing the preliminary stage of Locally Led Action on Climate, Peace and Security. A possible downside of scoping interviews, though, is that participants may assume the discussion they’ve held with a project manager means they will hold a particular position in the programme, or that the intervention will look a certain way based on what they shared. In order to manage expectations, avoid unintentional harm or disappointment, and ensure there is space for genuine participation throughout the entire process, these conversations should:

• be fairly informal, clearly agreed by all parties to be exploratory and without guarantee of any particular follow-up or specific initiative;
• focus on asking questions about existing concerns, rather than brainstorming projects or discussing possible solutions; and
• be held with a range of individuals: one-on-one discussions are likely best, but project managers should conduct several interviews rather than relying on one perspective (consider, for instance, how a local government official, a community elder, a youth activist, and a member of a women’s association would likely highlight different but important issues).

Additionally, scoping interviews might include discussions about challenging topics. The toolbox on Institutionalizing Conflict Sensitivity at the Organizational Level, designed by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the Lebanese context, may be useful for facilitators and project teams as they prepare for potentially difficult conversations.

Given the complexities involved in Climate, Peace and Security, no single approach or tool will adequately capture the nuances of a system. Regardless of the core concern or primary method for analysis, considering questions that emerge from a range of conceptual frameworks can be a useful way to guide data collection and analysis.

A checklist of questions can also be helpful for structuring scoping interviews or other conversations with community members, experts and donors. The questions below are organised according to the frameworks presented in Modules 0.1 and 0.2.

Questions to Ask: Climate-related Risks

A few themes for deliberation regarding climate-related risks in a given context are:

• What disasters such as droughts, storms and floods are affecting the population?
• What are the longer-term effects of climate change in the region (e.g. temperature increase or sea-level rise)?
• Are there any hazards that affect access to critical resources (e.g. water, land, grazing areas, forests)?
• Are there any hazards that affect key livelihoods (e.g., farming)?
• Have any of these hazards contributed to migration or displacement in the past? Is that likely to increase in the future?
• Could any of these hazards exacerbate existing tensions over land, water, employment or identity?
• Do women or youth face unique barriers to escaping or recovering from hazard impacts?
• How are indigenous knowledge or customary systems recognised or excluded when preparing for or responding to hazards?
• Are there communities or groups that may be disproportionately affected by certain hazards, leading to perceptions of unfairness or neglect?
• Do political or economic interests affect how public resources to adapt to particular hazards are distributed or withheld?
• Are there shared climate risks (e.g., across communities or borders) that could create incentives for cooperation to some hazards?
• Are there any hazards that could be better addressed via collaboration (e.g., joint early warning systems or water-sharing agreements)?

Questions to Ask: Natural Resources

A few themes for deliberation regarding the availability and quality of natural resources in a given context are:

• How do women and men use resources and for what purpose?
• How has climate change affected access to, availability and quality of resources?
• How has conflict affected access to, availability and quality of natural resources?
• How are natural resources managed or controlled? Who is excluded from management processes?
• Have disputes over natural resource access, use or control contributed to triggering or perpetuating the conflict? If so, in what ways?
• When disputes arise, who is responsible for resolving them? Who is excluded from conflict resolution?

Questions to Ask: Livelihoods

A few themes for deliberation regarding livelihood resilience in a given context are:

• What kind of livelihoods are different groups (e.g., women and men, various ethnic groups, etc.) relying on?
• How has climate change and environmental degradation affected the livelihoods of different groups?
• How has conflict affected the livelihoods of different groups?
• How are the impacts of climate change affecting the movement of people (this includes movements such as displacement, seasonal migration and long-term migration)?
• How are different livelihood practices (e.g., mining or woodcutting) contributing to environmental degradation?
• How is the government responding to the situation? What has been the impact of their response?

Questions to Ask: Conflict dynamics

A few themes for deliberation regarding conflict dynamics in a given context are:

• What role does natural resource degradation play in existing conflict dynamics?
• What role does livelihood insecurity play in the existing conflict dynamics?
• How does climate change challenge the ability of the government to fulfil its role?
• How are the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation exacerbating marginalisation or exclusion of certain groups?
• What attempts, if any, have been made to prevent or resolve conflicts? What mechanisms have been used and who has been involved? Who has been excluded?

Questions to Ask: political economy

A few themes for deliberation regarding political economy in a given context are:

• What factors contribute directly or indirectly to climate, peace and security challenges in the context?
• What climate policies (global, regional, national, or local) could affect climate, peace and security in the area, and how?
• Are there any policies that a locally led project could take advantage of (e.g., funding resources, political support, scaling, publicity, etc.)?
• Are there windows of opportunities, such as upcoming political events or new policy changes, that could be used to bolster action on climate, peace and security?
• Which actors could be affected by new developments in addressing climate, peace and security in the context? How much power and influence do they have, and what reasons would motivate them to support or oppose climate action and peacebuilding efforts?
• What incentives exist for major actors to put public interests over their private interests?
• What forms of resistance or discord could emerge if entrenched interests feel threatened?

Questions to Ask: vertical Integration

A few themes for deliberation regarding vertical integration between locally led initiatives and global policy frameworks for climate adaptation in a given context are:

• What awareness is there, at the local level (in both governance and civil society circles) about global policy frameworks like the Paris Agreement?
• Do the country’s processes for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the National Adaptation Plan (NAPs) explicitly include local efforts? Has the local area been involved previously?
• How are the environmental, social, economic, and political factors identified as challenges or opportunities during the baseline assessment (or other initial scoping exercises) related to the Sustainable Development Goals?

Relationships are the key to success in community engagement and participatory approaches, and the relationship with project funders is no different. For locally led projects, alignment with donor expectations and frameworks is not only critical to funding, but also can support vertical integration with ongoing policies and processes at bigger scales.

As highlighted in the next unit, participatory methods should be engaged as extensively as possible in Locally Led Action on Climate, Peace and Security. This ethos also applies to donors, who should be engaged early and often – especially if they require particular forms of reporting and/or have specified pre-determined objectives that must be met. Effective and genuine community engagement will require flexibility from both project managers and donors: in responding to the results of participatory analysis, in extending a deadline, in adapting the project’s goals when the community’s context changes. Alterations to the programme structure, timeline, resource use and goals are not often viewed favourably by donors, and thus, carefully cultivated donor relations will be crucial to a successful locally led action process.

Every donor will be different in their expectations and engagement level: some funders have very specific accountability mechanisms but are very hands-off; others may be fully involved in the programme but require relatively few formal reports.

Whoever the donor is, maintaining a healthy and open relationship with them is critical to project success, and a good programme design will incorporate donor relations as part of the project structure and activities. This might include elements such as donor acknowledgement (bilaterally and/or publicly), responsible use and reporting of resources, and opportunities for involvement (e.g., attendance at planning meetings and/or project activities).

Specific to Locally Led Action on Climate, Peace and Security, engaging diverse community members in donor relations can develop local capacity and help donors to understand the value of their adaptability and flexibility, but it’s important to ensure that this engagement is collaborative and co-led, rather than performatively co-optive. More about meaningfully mobilising a diversity of participants is discussed in Unit 1.