Building resilience in the face of climate change: a guide for civil society organisations

The impacts of climate change are being felt around the world, but some regions are facing more immediate threats than others. In the Pacific, higher temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, rising sea levels and more frequent and extreme climate events are already affecting many island nations. [1]

For Australian-based civil society organisations (CSOs) operating in region, embedding climate change and disaster resilience into the programs and services they deliver is an ongoing challenge.  

In response, a research partnership between the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) and Australia Pacific Climate Partnership (APCP, funded by the Australian Government) is seeking to identify best practice approaches to climate change resilience that will support CSOs to continue their lifechanging work.

“[CSOs] have a really important role to support communities to adapt to climate change, but some [of these organisations] are a bit overwhelmed [by the scale of the challenge they’re facing],” says Anna Gero, ISF Research Principal and the UTS lead on the project.

“We wanted them to have the confidence to know where to start when it comes to considering climate change in their work.”

Identifying the drivers and challenges of climate change integration

The research was split into two parts. During the first stage, the research team convened a reference group of CSOs, academics, consultants and representatives from APCP. The group worked together to map out the drivers and challenges of CSO-led climate change integration in the Pacific.

Next, they tested their findings through a series of interviews with CSO sector experts, asking participants to describe a best practice example of climate change integration that they’d seen or contributed to and using the responses to develop a series of case studies. This work revealed a series of best practice enablers, including multi-year funding, prioritising local leadership and voices, and integrating traditional knowledge with scientific warning systems.

In the second stage, the team collated a series of high-quality climate change and disaster resilience tools that had been previously developed by various CSOs, creating a digital library for use by project stakeholders. They then asked representatives from five CSOs in Australia and the Pacific to provide feedback on the contents. 

What they found was that even when existing resources were high quality and reflected the best practice enablers identified in stage 1, they generally couldn’t be adapted for use by other CSOs. The unique needs and mission statements of each CSO meant that individual organisations needed to play a hands-on role in developing their own climate change and disaster resilience processes.

“They really reflected that [the work] needs to come from within [their own organisations], because only [they truly] understand [their own] vision and mission [and] the way that [they] partner with [the communities they work with],” Anna says.

“Every organisation does that differently, so it can’t be a generic approach if it’s going to be really taken up by an organisation.”

Leading the way on best practice

The research outcomes have delivered important insights for APCP, equipping the organisation with a robust evidence base that will support the application of climate and disaster considerations within CSO development programs.

“We will use the findings of this research to inform the way we engage with civil society organisations, develop training programs, and support climate resilient development in the Pacific region,” says Katie Frisch, [APCP Support Unit Knowledge Manager].

This project also led to a new collaboration with the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), the peak body for Australian CSOs operating in the international development and humanitarian space. ACFID were looking for example case studies of CSO-led climate change integration — “[and I said], ‘We’ve just done that!’” Anna says.

Drawing on their APCP work, the ISF team summarised the APCP research into two outputs for ACFID members. The first document ‘sets the scene’ for climate change integration, and the other synthesises key ‘enablers of best practice’ and includes five case studies of how other CSOs have integrated climate change into their programming in various ways.  In October 2022, they presented the work at the ACFID National Conference, which attracts both Australian NGOs and international development organisations.

The response has been hugely positive — ACFID’s Development Practice Committee noted that the work had contributed to the visibility of ACFID’s own Climate Action Framework, which was created to support CSO efforts to integrate climate change resilience within their programming. The partnership between ACFID and ISF is set to continue.

We will use the findings of this research to inform the way we engage with civil society organisations, develop training programs, and support climate resilient development in the Pacific region.

– Katie Frisch, APCP Support Unit Knowledge Manager

“[ACFID] can see real value in the fact that it’s evidence-based, quality research working partnership with [CSOs themselves,]” Anna says.

“It’s very much [about] listening and learning from their experiences [and working] in partnership [with] local voices. [That’s] one of the enablers [that emerged from this work, and] we really try and put that into practice.”