The US and Brazil have announced a new joint climate adaptation initiative. While this is wonderful and welcome news, unfortunately, broad bilateral agreements often end up being little more than nice words.

For climate adaptation to work, communities at the front line of climate change need to be put at the center of the strategy, not the environment. It is a long-running quip amongst environmental and climate economists like Dr. Emily Brearley, whom we are honored to have as part of our team, that the problem with “the environment” is that humans actually live on the land. Communities (usually socioeconomically marginalized communities, such as the women-led rural families and the indigenous) are on the front lines of climate change in two ways:

1. they must log or fish or mine illegally in order to feed their families
2. they suffer the most devastating effects of climate change: homes washed away in floods and landslides or crops destroyed by drought

For climate adaptation to work, you need more than the equipment for solar, wind, and water power. You need those vulnerable communities to be paid to become guardians of the environment they inhabit. They need cash transfers to do something other than illegal fishing, logging, or mining, so they can feed their families honorably. They also need to be retrained to earn a dignified life in a new green and sustainable economy. It can be as simple as beekeeping and fish farming or as advanced as monitoring and maintaining solar panels and power lines. Without communities at the center of the planning and the operations of giving them dignified lives, no environmental protection scheme will work.

This approach empowers the families and communities, taking them from a problem to be resolved to a key component of the solution.

It is this frontline community-centered approach that we specialize in at Asymmetrica: from highlighting the losses and damages suffered and then celebrating the successes through a viralized media package produced by the renowned environmental documentarian Craig Leeson; to designing and implementing a multidimensional security solution by our founder Dr. Vanessa Neumann that includes not just the traditional security services, but also NGOs and CSOs ; to designing and implementing the novel payments programs that flow existing social security network pipelines, giving proof of concept of how these vast multilateral funds can actually reach the frontline communities, courtesy of Dr. Emily Brearley.

We are crafting just such a program for a major Latin American country. If you would like to find out how we might help your country, or how your corporation may participate in our programs, email us: info@asymmetrica.net.