Responding to the local in United Nations programme development: Framing climate change adaptation in the Pacific

Abstract

The anticipated impacts of accelerating global temperatures and sea level rises pose a series of direct and pressing threats for the future of people living in the Pacific Islands. Building adaptive capacity to climate change at the community level is increasingly understood as the most important response to reduce the vulnerability of island peoples. Building capacity is in turn argued to depend on widespread local participation and effective project management. The United Nations is one of many organizations working on climate change adaptation in the Pacific Islands. Like others it is guided by ideas of good governance that have spread through development organisations and have come to dominate their thinking. Good governance approaches emphasise community based adaptation projects, programmatic approaches to management, on-going evaluation, and transparency. This thesis explores the way in which the UN deploys good governance ideas to conceptualise and organise its climate change adaptation work in the Pacific islands. Particular attention is given to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and its Global Environment Facility (GEF)-Small Grants Programme (SGP). I draw on interviews with UNDP and GEF SGP employees at the United Nations headquarters in New York and analysis of the UNDP Adaptation Policy Framework (APF) to argue that the UN deploys good governance ideas programmatically. This work is complemented by a review of current adaptation programmes in the Pacific Islands, which demonstrates the dominance of good governance ideas more broadly. I argue that good governance substitutes for policy in UNDP climate change adaptation projects, and that whilst this involves far more predetermination than it suggests and diverts resources to an architecture of foreign expertise, its determination is to emphasise building adaptive capacity from the bottom up. This is particularly valuable in reducing vulnerabilities to climate change.