“The power to share”: negotiating social equity for locally led climate adaptation

Nevertheless, despite growing interest in locally led climate adaptation, policy and programme frameworks overlook how people within these communities understand and experience social equity and inequity, and how these values shape climate adaptation initiatives and the potential for sustainability.

Using a conceptual model that combines justice theory with relational theory about social and gender norms, we deploy a participatory qualitative methodology that innovates by nurturing participatory parity as essential to successful locally led climate adaptation. We illustrate our approach with data from an agro-pastoral community in Baringo county, Kenya. Study participants expressed regard for their village’s communal norms, agropastoral identities and local governance.