ICCCAD’s Savio Rousseau Rozario explains why donors should put CASH – ‘compassion, accountability, security and honour’ – at the heart of efforts to help local communities build resilience to climate change.
In May, the 18th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA18) in Tanzania focused on approaches for accelerating climate change resilience through locally led adaptation (LLA). Among the 300-plus delegates were representatives from the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), a leading research and capacity-building institution working on climate change and development in Bangladesh and beyond.
Q: What was one highlight from CBA18?
SRR: I was part of a team of five people from ICCCAD who attended CBA18 this year. With IIED’s support, ICCCAD was able to bring to the conference, for the first time, two local community members from Bangladesh’s vulnerable coastal area, who we work with.
It meant they could share their thoughts, lived realities and experiences of climate change with a global audience. This was a significant move, as it is necessary to hear local voices in such international forums.
Q: For communities in Bangladesh, how important is finance to LLA?
SRR: Bangladesh is the seventh most vulnerable nation in terms of climate change and disaster risk. Through my work in the research and development sector, I’ve observed how communities vulnerable to climate impacts here have traditionally been supported with financial assistance. However, the money they receive for climate action hasn’t always adequately supported them, and there has been too little investment in enhancing their knowledge, skills and capacity.
Clearly, finance is an important form of intervention when we’re helping local communities affected by climate impacts: without it, no community will be able to scale up their activities. However, finance alone often has limitations.
In my experience, finance is not the only way to support communities in climate-vulnerable hotspots. As donors and community support services, it’s important to understand what other options exist. For instance, instead of providing a family with microfinance – which can be difficult to repay if they’re hit by two cyclones in one year – the donor could support them with an alternative, long-term livelihood opportunity to help increase their earnings.
Local people and communities are often the most innovative when it comes to creating adaptation solutions. They don’t just need cash: they need resources, technology and opportunities to enhance their capabilities and build their resilience. I’ve seen real examples of where this can work: for instance, in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts region, a climate-vulnerable hotspot home to many Indigenous communities.
ICCCAD evaluated one climate programme that an INGO ran within several Indigenous communities there, which provided not just financial assistance, but also support with technology and network building with local governments, integrating the principles for LLA. We found that this boosted the community’s long-term capacity to address their challenges, even after the project had ended.
Q: Tell us about your CASH model: what does it involve?
SRR: A current aspect of my role at ICCCAD involves supporting a project led by IIED, which looks at accountability and transparency at the local level: the 360-degree accountability scorecards for LLA project. During this work, I came up with the idea of CASH.
Whenever we in the sector talk about ‘cash’, it’s always about money. So I asked myself: why not redefine the concept of cash, and reframe it as CASH? ‘C’ stands for compassion, ‘A’ for accountability, ‘S’ for security and ‘H’ for honour. This is something fundamentally important to me.
Q: Firstly, how does ‘compassion’ work in practice?
SRR: Compassion goes beyond a financial commitment and comes from a mutual relationship between donors, intermediaries and communities. Compassion is key to building trust, and trust is key to a thriving, collaborative relationship.
Local adaptation interventions can at times become maladaptive interventions – ie doing more harm than good, due to complexities that arise when donors don’t understand the local context in which they’re operating. As donors and NGOs, we need to listen to local communities and understand their perspectives, contexts, challenges, strengths, needs and priorities.
Instead of imposing top-down plans, donors and intermediaries should take time to meet with communities, learn from them and co-create plans. All this requires compassion and connectivity.
Q: Next, how does ‘accountability’ come into this?
SRR: Accountability helps all parties boost their relationship by being committed to their respective roles and providing feedback on overall progress. Often, I’ve seen examples where donors or communities lack full accountability – for instance, when the LLA principles are endorsed but funding practices don’t become LLA-aligned.
In an accountable system, a local community would feel comfortable reporting back to donors about the work they did (or didn’t do), their capabilities and limitations, and where they still require support.
At same time donors should also be accountable. For instance, donors often require due diligence processes to be in place for local projects – such as formal bank statements or an NGO registration form. At the very local level, communities often won’t have these systems inbuilt, leaving them unable to access the support they needed.
If donors could invest in their institutionalisation, supporting them to build these systems, this could lead to more progress.
Q: You also say that ‘security’ is important. Why is this?
SRR: The third component of CASH is security. In Bangladesh the climate scenario is uncertain: when disaster comes, it’s hard to project to what extent floodwaters will hit a region, how long they’ll last or what the long-term impacts will be. So, communities need to be innovative when trying new adaptation measures: a ‘learning by doing’ process.
I’d like to see more donors investing in communities’ risk-taking adaptation practices that have the potential to reduce their climate vulnerabilities – no matter how uncertain the outcome. By being flexible in the support they give communities and by taking on the liability for this, donors can create an environment where communities have the confidence, courage and security to take risks in their adaptation plans.
This could be considered a crucial enabler in safeguarding communities’ adaptive capacities. It would also help to implement LLA principles 3 ,4 and 8, including through providing flexible, patient and predictable funding.
Q: Finally, you talk about the importance of ‘honour’. What does this involve?
SRR: Adaptation is context-specific and happens at a local level. This means it’s often complex and challenging to support and invest in LLA measures. So, honouring tradition is crucial to effective outcomes, as is ensuring that local communities are included in the decision-making process (as per LLA principle 1).
We must honour the deep-rooted values, cultures and views of local communities. When a donor honours local communities’ systems, it builds trust, which makes things much easier and more effective. When communities are honoured, they are more likely to own the work, take care of it, nourish it and carry it forward. In other words, it makes it more sustainable.
Q: What difference could these values make in practice?
SRR: Overall, cash is more than just finance: it’s about embracing all these aspects together and making long-term investments that will build a community’s progression and resilience. I’d welcome rigorous comments on my reframing of cash: I’ve seen elements of these values in practice here in Bangladesh and I would love to see donors and philanthropies viewing it as a model they can use.
I believe that if donors invested in all four components of CASH – demonstrating compassion, ensuring accountability, giving communities security and, most importantly, honouring traditions – then local communities would have a much better chance of implementing their climate solutions effectively and sustainably.
This interview was originally published by IIED.
Interviewee : CBA18 delegate Savio Rousseau Rozario is ICCCAD’s LLA programme coordinator, based in Dhaka
