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Social Return on Investment

for Community-Based

Adaptation Planning

Ariella Helfgott

Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Land Dynamics, University of Wageningen

School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide

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picture of abrar

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In 2010 a single flood in Pakistan ...

COST

$50 billion?

OR

$9.6 billion?

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Current estimates of global cost of adaptation

Most costing methods use top-down

approaches based on econometric models

Range from $4 billion (Stern 2006) to over

$100 billion (UNFCCC 2007)

Latest - $72-98 billion (World Bank 2009)

How can one flood cost $50 billion when the

total cost is only between $4 and $100

billion (at most 2 of those floods)

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Abrar decided...

To develop a methodology for

community-based adaptation costing to

supplement top-down methods and help

provide the information that high level

institutions responsible for top-down

allocation need to ensure the money goes

where it is most needed!

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SROI a form of cost benefit analysis

SROI = NPV benefits/PV costs

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Planning for the future involves knowing...

where you want to go (visions of the

future)

the context you will have to navigate

within (including challenges you must

face)

what you have to work with

(comprehensive asset mapping)

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Adaptation planning involves specifying...

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Interrelatedness

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Systems Thinking

problem of holism: system boundary judgements

are inevitable (Churchman 1968; Ulrich 1983;

Midgley 2000);

system boundary judgments are normative and

not an objective representation of the structure

of reality (ibid).

what belongs to the “whole system” is entirely

dependent on and relative to the inquirers choice

of conceptual boundary (Ulrich 1983).

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Development Theory

Whereas problem based approaches ask

“Why have you failed?” strength-based

approaches ask “What makes success?”

Asset-Based Community Development

Appreciative Inquiry: Define, Discover,

Dream, Design, Do.

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Systemic Adaptation Planning

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Backcasting Kochiel Kenya

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Valuation Approaches

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East and West African Case

Studies

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Kochiel Village – Kenya

Selected Intervention: Agroforestry

Insight - influence of external

stakeholders

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Othidhe Village – Kenya

Intervention selected - Medical Centre

Insight - Linkages between development

and adaptation

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Dodji - Senegal

Intervention selected - water storage and

distribution

Insight - gender based interventions

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Future work

“scaling out” through replication, mixing media

and hand-over of data collection and of approach

appropriate information formats and pathways for

the results to be channelled to higher levels of

governance and decision-making

policy which is flexible enough to be locally

interpreted without being too abstract to be

meaningless

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“I AM A CAR FULL OF PETROL...”

• ...JUST LOOKING FOR THE KEYS”

• MAURICE KWANGA 2011 KENYA

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Thank you. Any questions?