ICLEI Oceania Develops Climate Change Adaptation Program

ICLEI Oceania has developed the Adaptive and Resilient Communities (ARC). which is a structured capacity building program on climate change adaptation. ARC focuses on achieving tangible increases in community resilience and improvements to councils’ adaptive capacity and is modeled on the adaptive management framework used in the ICLEI Adaptation Toolkit.

ARC is still in its development phase and ICLEI Oceania staff are working hard to complete program development for implementing a one-year ARC Program Establishment Phase in 2009/10.

The specific objectives of the ARC Program are to:

• increase the ability of local governments to assess their vulnerability to climate change
• facilitate informed local government decision making on climate change impacts, based on climate change science
• apply adaptive management tools to assist councils in prioritising and implementing adaptation actions
• build the capacity of local government staff and leaders on effective implementation of adaptation strategies
• facilitate the integration of climate change adaptation planning with other key processes at council, including climate change mitigation
• enable peer-to-peer learning and advancement in a national and international network of councils working on climate change response