United Nations Development Programme Community-Based Adaptation Project

The Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) project, an initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and funded by the
Global Environment Facility (GEF), is a global partnership among 178 countries, non-governmental organizations (NGO's), and the private sector to enhance the resilience of communities to climate change and other environmental issues.  The CBA project was setup to be consistent with the global UN initiative to achieve a new climate change agreement in December, 2009, at the 15th Conference of Parties in Copenhagen.  This agreement would succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted on December 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and came into force on February 2005. 

The CBA project started as a ten-country pilot to help local communities boost their resistance to coastal erosion, sea-level rise, increasingly erratic rainfall, and other effects of global warming. The CBA project describes its approach as engaging and empowering "all communities at every level who are least equipped to cope with climate change impacts. Thru technical support, training on sustainable land management practices, and other alternative livelihood practices, local communities are able to adapt to climate changes that threaten their livelihoods."¹