STIMULATING CLIMATE CHANGE ENGAGEMENT IN COMMUNITIES: CASE STUDIES FROM NIGERIA

The imperative of the renewed climate change focus creates an urgency for achieving global climate goals using non-enforcement strategies. Due to limited resources and stretched institutional capacities, countries need to cascade goals to simple actions at community levels that contribute to nationally determined contributions (NDC). A study of two communities in North Central and Southwestern Nigeria evaluated how incentives can increase community engagement participation and change behaviors to achieve long-term climate adaptation and mitigation results. The study also focused on using community engagement to enhance the dissemination and assimilation of urgent climate change campaigns to elicit community actions. The rationale stemmed from the understanding that community engagement can provide a catalytic effect if properly harnessed to compliment institutional capacities. The study combined the diffusion of innovations and stages of change methods with gender, the environment, and agroforestry approaches in conducting advocacy visits, in-depth interviews of leaders and community members, focus group discussions. The study team taught climate science concepts to 200, 20-75 old non-traditional, non-English speaking beneficiaries in the two communities. The dissemination highlighted the consequences of deforestation and the role of agroforestry and community policing in climate mitigation. Therefore, the beneficiaries planted 1700 economic tree seedlings. Follow-up visits and questionnaires provided the evaluation data. The identified actions within the communities provided quantifiable, measurable, verifiable, and repeatable results. The incentive to engage came from the opportunity to improve livelihoods, adopt novel agroforestry practices, and improve the microclimate. In addition, existing community structures were effective in self-regulation, reporting, and local accountability processes. Therefore, simplifying the climate change goals into actionable steps can be beneficial in reporting national progress towards NDC.

Disclaimer: This presentation has not been prepared by and is not associated with the Government of Nigeria (GON) or USAID. It does not represent the opinion, national position or findings of the GON. The content presented is a case study drawn from USAID funded project to illustrate how crucial community engagement is to climate change campaigns only. It is not an opinion that reflects the historic or current trends, operations, human health, or enviro