Community-based adaptation (CBA): adding conceptual clarity to the approach, and establishing its principles and challenges

Community-based adaptation (CBA) is an approach to strengthening the adaptive capacity of local communities vulnerable to climate change. The CBA approach increasingly features in discussions among policy makers, planners, advocates, and researchers, and has been endorsed and adopted by numerous governmental and non-governmental organizations. However, to date the CBA approach has lacked conceptual clarity, and the term is interpreted and deployed in various and often contradictory ways. This paper seeks to address this deficit by explaining the rationale put forth for CBA by its proponents, outlining its guiding principles, and theorizing some of its key challenges, which often point to opportunities for the approach to evolve.