CLIMATE

CIVICS
INSTITUTE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND MODEL

Adaptation
Yale: Faculty
Collaboration, New
Grassroots vulnerability of Research, Curriculum
global communities: water,
food, livelihood, risk
Field Research: India,
Australia
On-Ground Research:
Coping, Resilience, Shared
CLIMATE Future, Community Government
benefits Outreach: US, India,
CIVICS Australia

Policy Mechanism: Local,

Between Countries, Global Policy Dialog: Delhi,
Canberra, Washington
DC

New Multi-stakeholder
Paradigm Impacting Presence,
Cutting edge
outcomes, solutions
for the majority
International Dialog

Climate Civics Institute (CCI) is an adaptation research-policy initiative of

2009 Yale World Fellows (YWF) Unmesh Brahme (India) and Tim Jarvis
(Australia/UK).

Climate Civics is a thought innovation, developed in response to crucial ground

realities.
 Communities will increasingly suffer climate change consequences but
adequate practical or policy guidance does not exist to assist them.
 Much of the academic work and practical/policy delivery mechanisms relevant
to improving climate change resilience are silo-based with institutional/policy
inconsistencies and disconnects that further compromise outcomes.
 Focus on mitigation creates lesser concentration on adaptation; international
dialog centers on aid, not shared problems and shared opportunities.

Climate Civics is a policy research institute geared to achieving institutional reforms

and partnerships to efficiently and equitably deliver “coping mechanisms” and
adaptation outcomes for climate-affected communities. Although mitigation and
sequestration opportunities will also be explored, CCI will focus on adaptation as it
represents the more urgent need. Those most vulnerable reside in some of the most
risk prone regions with their voice rarely if ever heard. Failure to assist will in turn
have huge sociopolitical implications. Hence the need to define a global civics of
engagement and action. CCI approach forces problem identification via practical
application rather than top-down policy that attempts to second-guess problems, or
via institutional constraints, fails to deliver outcomes.

CCI. 1 of 2 . March 2010

 CLIMATE
CIVICS
INSTITUTE

Based on this, CCI proposes the following:

 Develop and apply approaches to climate adaptation in a number of locations, in

India initially. A multidisciplinary team of experts including Yale faculty, external
researchers, a number of Yale World Fellows, expertise from India and Australia
via Unmesh and Tim’s extensive federal and state networks.
 Deliver sustainable on-ground adaptive solutions via collaboration of multiple
sectors: science, technology, government, policy; and involving stakeholders:
NGOs, business, government, academia and affected communities.
 To fund this in the short/medium term via a range of public-private partnerships,
and grant funding from Australia/India governments. Longer term via sustainable
business models.
 Track and distil learnings from the approaches taken (utilizing a suite of
appropriate indicators and tools) to understand strengths and weaknesses of the
approaches across disciplines.
 To use all combined learnings to inform more robust outcome-focused holistic
policy, and models for adaptation that can be re-applied (initially in Australia and
India) with significant outreach within Yale and its stakeholders and relevant
forums in New York and Washington DC.

Methodology – Initial Pilot Projects

Initially, CCI has identified 2 drought prone, semi-arid regions in India where climate
change is a major issue, but where communities are receptive to adaptation, and
good public-private opportunities exist. These are:

1. Maharashtra
o Goal: to build a water resilience model to drought proof against extreme
temperatures via water science, community organizing, agricultural
sciences, community economics, local government.
o Policy outcome: Multi-disciplinary water resilience model for climate
vulnerable communities.

2. Gujarat
o Goal: Afforestation-based agro-forestry livelihoods and REDD mechanism
for vulnerable communities via forestry science, community organizing,
water management, community economics, local government, carbon
sequestration.
o Policy Outcome: Climate adaptive agro-forestry livelihood model for
climate vulnerable communities.

ends

CCI. 2 of 2 . March 2010