Tanzania is scheduled to host climate change experts from around the world later this month to share the latest knowledge about how communities can reduce their vulnerability, and how government policies can help make it happen.

The 4th International Conference on Community-based Adaptation to Climate Change to be held in Dar es Salaam from Feb. 24 to 26 is to be attended by representatives of governmental and inter- governmental agencies, research institutions and non-governmental organizations, the local newspaper Daily News reported on Monday.

Delegates are expected to share information about ways communities can adapt to impacts of climate change using approaches such as water harvesting, alternative farming practices, and strategies to reduce the risk from disasters.

Organized by the International Institute for Environment and Development, Environmental Protection Management Services (EPMS, Tanzania), the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, and the Ring Alliance, the meeting includes special sessions to focus on how communities in urban areas or rural drylands can adapt to climate change impacts such as heat-waves, floods and droughts.

Hannah Reid, Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, noted that climate change is a global problem but its impacts are always local and that means the solutions need to be found, calling for sound policies to analyze, share success stories on climate change.

The conference aims to identify good strategies for sharing information within and between vulnerable communities, and will promote the integration of community-based adaptation into national policies and international development programs.

Reid noted that communities are well-placed to drive adaptation projects as they know best what the local challenges are and stand the most to gain from addressing them, stressing that adaptation to climate change can and must happen at the community level but for this to work it is essential that policymakers and funding agencies understand the benefits of bottom-up approaches and act to support them.

The sharing of knowledge and adaptation practices from other parts of the world will create awareness in Tanzania and other vulnerable countries to improve adaptation strategies in communities that are at greatest risk from climate change, according to Euster Kibona of EPMS, who added that the conference will also open up funding opportunities for adaptation projects at the grass roots level.

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