Colourful murals adorn similarly bright-coloured buildings alongside a street, under a blue sky,
The streets of Recife, Brazil, which will host this year's community-based adaptation conference. It's the first time CBA has been staged in Latin America (Photo: Denys, via Unsplash)
The 19th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA19) will take place from 12-16 May 2025 in Recife, Brazil.
The CBA conference series aims to bring together a community of practitioners that are collectively seeking to enable community-driven climate action.
Registration is now open. It will close on 21 April 2025
The CBA conference is a space for the adaptation community to share lessons on community-based and locally led adaptation approaches, and to explore how to put the principles for locally led adaptation (LLA) into practice, recognising the complexities, innovations and challenges that must be overcome.
CBA conferences are a space for learning and sharing experiences. With a focus on acquiring new skills and connecting with peers, the conference offers participants 4.5 days of discussion, debate, peer-to-peer ‘skill-shares’ and knowledge exchange, through an innovative, dynamic and interactive space. This enables participants to make connections and develop strategies to promote climate action in their context.
IIED, in partnership with the state government of Pernambuco and other partners, will host CBA19 in Brazil. This will be the first time the CBA conference has been held in Latin America. The conference will be a key moment for the adaptation community on the road to the 2025 climate change conference (COP30), also in Brazil in November.
The CBA19 agenda
For this year’s CBA conference, we are offering three themes that nest under one overarching question. The themes and questions were selected based on the interests and priorities of the LLA community of practice in the lead up to COP30 in Brazil.
The overarching conference question is: how can we achieve just and equitable adaptation?
To help address this question, conference sessions will be grouped under three themes:
LLA in action (how to move from principles to practice, at scale, highlighting best practice and emerging innovations and challenges)
Urban adaptation (achieving just and equitable adaptation that meets the needs of all urban dwellers, including issues around informality, infrastructure and health), and
Nature/adaptation (highlighting the interconnections between nature and climate and the importance of local and Indigenous knowledge and practices in achieving just and equitable adaptation).
Gender justice, anti-racist and decolonial approaches cut across all conference themes.
Three of the days of the conference will feature parallel sessions under each theme. There will also be a CBA ‘alternativo’ day (including external events and visits to nearby projects and communities). The final half day will take the form of a forum, which will bring key messages from each theme together to identify key actions and messages towards COP30 and beyond.
The conference will run in multiple languages – English, Portuguese and Spanish – with sessions featuring either simultaneous translation or other methods to reduce language barriers and encourage cross-fertilisation. Some sessions may run in a single language.
This conference was uniquely different, because the people on the panel were not... the politically correct people who would like to be very diplomatic with their talks. They were speaking as farmers on the ground as people working around agriculture, people in the mines, who were just saying the truth… even from their clothing, you could tell these were people who were really from the community, who had been brought there to share their experiences, and that to me, was really inspirational
Okoth Opondo, Campde Voices
Thematic workshops – question assumptions
Delving deeper into the conference themes, thematic workshops are designed to encourage dialogue, debate and interaction around an urgent question, and avoid unidirectional presentations and panels (in particular, all-white, all-male panels aka 'manels').
All thematic workshops are co-hosted by at least two organisations. Expect creative and innovative formats and tools that help participants understand the perspectives of others, seek practical solutions and consider different scenarios.
Skill-shares match delegates with specific skills with those seeking to acquire or strengthen their competence and knowledge. These skill-shares take place in an informal setting and we encourage participants to consider and recognise that their on-the-ground experience is valuable and of interest to others – regardless of whether they are ‘trainers’ themselves.
Like the rest of the agenda, skill-shares are crowd-sourced and can cover any topic relating to the conference themes. Past years have included training on topics as varied as ‘how to write better blogs’, accessing climate finance, delivering participatory monitoring, evaluation and learning, and writing funding proposals.
The focus is on sharing: these sessions see practitioners sharing the practical tools and approaches they have been using to generate effective action. Our skill-shares let participants contribute their experiences and discuss what they have learned with their peers – people in similar contexts working on similar issues across the world.
Registration
In order to cover the costs and offer sponsorships to local practitioners from across the world, CBA19 is a ticketed event.
Click on the ticket types below to see which ticket is right for your organisation.
Registration closes on 21 April 2025.
These are institutions that operate at an international or national policy level, influencing policy, funding and global adaptation strategies. These organisations work at international or national level and typically fund tier 2 and tier 3 organisations, research or provide expertise rather than directly implementing local projects.
This includes organisations like:
Multilateral and bilateral funders
International NGOs
Think tanks, universities and policy research institutions
Climate and adaptation consultants
Global North government agencies funding and/or influencing beyond domestic scope, or
Private sector actors.
Contact and updates
If you have any questions about the conference or about registration, please email cbaconference@iied.org.
Sign up to receive updates on CBA and the latest news on CBA19.
About the organisers
CBA19 is co-hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the state government of Pernambuco.
It is funded by IIED, the state government of Pernambuco, Climate Justice Resilience Fund, Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and Quadrature Climate Foundation, with support from Adaptation Research Alliance, Fundación Avina, Habitat para a Humanidade Brasil, Institute for Climate and Society (iCS), Pawanka Fund, Gris Espaço Solidário, Rede Gera, Fase, Centro Sabiá, ABONG, Plataforma Semiáridos, Ibura Mais Cultura, Environmental Commission of Jaboatão dos Guararapes, Somos Todos Muribeca, Caranguejo Uçá, Popular Observatory of Climate Injustices, and more.
If you’d like to become a CBA partner, please get in touch with Katherine Shepherd at IIED via katherine.shepherd@iied.org.
Host partners
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Contributing partners
Gris Espaço Solidário logo.
Gris Espaço Solidário
Rede Gera logo.
Rede Gera logo