Southern Voices on Adaptation: 2014-2017
Southern Voices on Adaptation (SVAdapt) was initiated in early 2014 and builds on the achievements of the two previous phases of the Southern Voices programme.
SVAdapt aims to strengthen civil society advocacy on climate change policies – with a thematic focus on adaptation to climate change on policy processes at the national level.
The overall strategy is to link actors engaged in national advocacy on adaptation policies together by producing a common code of practice – The Joint Principles for Adaptation - which has been developed by and for southern civil society organisations to serve as the benchmark for good adaptation policies.
The practical set-up
- Funding of this phase is from DANIDA, but through the Danida funded Climate and Development Fund of CISU
- The consortium comprises of three Danish NGOs: DanChurchAid, IBISOxfam and CARE Danmark.
- The project has supported 12 Southern civil society networks in total – of which 9 participated in the previous phase (2016-2017).
The Joint Principles for Adaptation
The Joint Principles for Adaptation (JPA) were initially developed through a series of national and regional workshops which produced a list of benchmarks for good adaptation planning and policy.
In April 2014, the list was refined at an international workshop held in Kathmandu to produce Version 1.0 of the JPA.
Of importance to SVAdapt partners was the flexibility of the JPA allowed, with partners able to adjust it to their country-specific stage of policy development. To meet this requirement, the JPA is structured so that it can be used in three different ways:
- To set advocacy objectives for civil society, by identifying necessary changes to national and international policy and practice; (advocacy mode)
- To promote civil society dialogue with government by providing a common language for ongoing dialogue between civil society organisations, government and other stakeholders; (dialogue mode)
- To determine capacity building needs of public institutions (capacity-building mode)
To ensure its viability as a tool to assist civil society to assess the status of national adaptation policies and planning in their countries, the JPA is guided by a set of seven principles, each with a subset of qualifying criteria.