Kevan Christensen’s scientific contributions

Community-based adaptation (CBA) has a growing group of interested supporters, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, donors and indeed local communities themselves who see it as a way to tackle some of the many challenges of a world altered by climate change. The sixth international CBA conference in 2012 was held in Hanoi, Vietnam from 16-22 April 2012 and reflects this growing interest in CBA with over 320 people registered to attend from 61 different countries, and many more attending the opening and closing sessions. Over 30 co-sponsors and other contributing organisations provided support. CBA6 follows previous CBA conferences held in vulnerable countries such as Bangladesh and Tanzania, each of which has experienced year-on-year increases in attendance. The theme of CBA6 - communicating CBA - was addressed in dedicated communication-related sessions on blogging, working with the media, digital photo storytelling, using games to communicate risk, and methods and tools for working with children. Conference outreach was also dramatically improved compared to previous years. Live interviews were broadcast online each day and more than 50 interviews uploaded to YouTube. Delegates wrote nearly 30 blog posts and produced nearly 2000 tweets, using the Twitter hash tag #CBA6. The conference was also able to support several developing country journalists, which resulted in a number of published media articles throughout the world. The conference poster competition received over 30 submissions, and discussion groups were set up and led by conference participants with a particular interest in certain issues, such as activities in Latin America and risk insurance. An evening film session showed a number of short films on CBA submitted by conference participants. The conference was organised by the International Institute for Environment and Development in the UK, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Vietnam, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) of Vietnam and the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies. It included three days of visits to eight communities across Vietnam that are already adapting to climatic changes. Conference delegates evaluated the different adaptation projects they visited and awarded a special “Solidarity Prize” of US$5000 to the best one. This was a Save the Children project in the North of Vietnam in which children play a key role in disaster preparedness. These field visits were followed by three and a half days of interactive discussions on different thematic areas in the Melia Hotel in Hanoi. These formal plenary and parallel sessions addressed the following themes: communicating climate change; children as drivers of change; inland water management and coastal areas; increasing community resilience; mainstreaming CBA into government policies and planning; gender; ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation; vulnerable and indigenous communities; economics of CBA; agriculture; disaster risk reduction; monitoring and evaluation; food security and nutrition; CBA in urban areas; health; participatory communication approaches for CBA; and, emerging challenges for CBA.