Good practice in community engagement that entices broader participation includes some time tested approaches, such as:

  • Develop relationships with local leaders from the populations you are trying to engage and include them in the planning and leadership of the local climate adaptation process. 
  • Meet people where they are to build awareness and interest in opportunities to engage; social media, direct marketing, and tabling at community events are all good ways to engage people in conversation and encourage participation.

There are good models available for designing community meetings. One example is the Strong, Prosperous, and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC) guide for community engagement, which lays out key principles and provides several case studies for successfully structuring community engagement.

Community engagement can help build the political capital and human resources you need for successful design and implementation of a plan; it also can be very difficult to come by as many people are limited in their willingness and ability to participate, and this can especially be true of overburdened communities. Consider approaches that reduce barriers to participation: this can include providing stipends for community members to participate in meetings or focus groups; offering child care during events; offering events at a variety of times; and creating outreach to public events and locations such as neighborhood association meetings and community centers in order to meet people where they are already at.

The practice of climate change adaptation has an incredible opportunity to learn what is working and to improve over time. An analogy can be drawn to the field of medicine where researchers carefully study the conditions under which certain interventions are successful or not. For adaptation, this requires that communities that are planning and implementing adaptation measures monitor and report on what they have done and the outcomes that were associated with their actions. Over time, the results from this information can be used to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of adaptation, thereby saving scarce resources for communities such as yours.

You are best prepared to judge the effectiveness of adaptation actions if you build in a monitoring and evaluation framework that enables tracking and reporting of key metrics about your adaptation actions, climate variables, and community outcomes such as public health or emergency response efforts. The metrics assembled and tracked will depend on the actions taken. 

Examples include: tracking emergency response costs to flooding before, during, and after implementation of flood mitigation actions and flood events; tracking emergency room visits in parallel with implementation of cooling centers and extreme heat events. 

One potential solution is to find a partner! Possibilities include a university or citizen science (CS) partner. Interest in learning about adaptation outcomes is growing. You may be able to entice a researcher at a local college, university or even high school to assess the outcomes of your actions. In many cases they are well positioned as fellow long-term local residents. These partners may be able to work independently and share results on a regular basis. There are also some national groups interested in these questions.

Another approach is using CS citizen science to build capacity for monitoring adaptation. By involving citizens directly in the research process, CS can help generate information and insights valuable to monitoring and evaluating effectiveness. CS can also have valuable co-benefits of building community, empowerment, and political capital for creating change by raising awareness about local-scale risks while facilitating the development and knowledge of adaptive measures by individuals and communities. CS has the potential to address some of the key challenges that hinder citizen engagement, particularly if such programs are created in ways that minimize barriers to participation and allow for two-way exchange of knowledge so that community members are both learning from and contributing to knowledge goals and outcomes. It should be noted that unless there is a good local partner to lead a CS effort, this can be a significant initial investment of effort to get off the ground, but if it works it can be self sustaining.

There are a number of large federal programs that are often used to fund adaptation implementation, such as FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grants, funding can also be available through state agencies, private foundations, and increasingly through private investment. Municipal bonds are often used, particularly when the resilience project is infrastructure-focused. See also the "financing adaptation" FAQs for more information.

Adaptation actions should be implemented through the same processes other actions are taken in your community. Ideally you should mainstream adaptation into the practices your community has found to be effective in engaging community members, complying with regulatory requirements, securing funding, and ensuring sustainability. 

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