The impacts of a capacity-building workshop in a randomized adaptation project
2019
Alpízar, Francisco | Bermedo Carpio, María del | Ferraro, Paul J. | Meiselman, Ben S.
Encouraging adaptation to climate change is fundamentallyabout encouraging changes in human behaviour. To promotethese changes, governments, non-profits and multilateralinstitutions have invested in a range of adaptation projects.Yet there is little empirical evidence about which projectcomponents are effective in changing human behaviour1,2.This lack of evidence is concerning, given that the failure ofadaptation initiatives has been described as the global riskwith the highest likelihood of occurring and with the largestnegative impacts3. Here we report on a scholar–practitionercollaboration in which a simple one-day workshop deliveringtwo ubiquitous components of adaptation projects4—capacitybuilding and the dissemination of climate science—wasrandomly assigned among the management councils of over200 community water systems in an arid region of CentralAmerica. The workshop was based on more than three yearsof scientific research and local collaborations, and it aimed toconvey downscaled climate modelling and locally informed,expert-recommended adaptation practices. Two years later,we detect no differences in pricing and non-pricing managementpractices of participant versus non-participant councils.These results suggest weaknesses in the common practice ofusing simple workshops for delivering capacity building andclimate science.
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