Disclaimer:
Please be aware that the content herein has not been peer reviewed. It consists of personal reflections, insights, and learnings of the contributor(s). It may not be exhaustive, nor does it aim to be authoritative knowledge.
Title
Please provide a name for your action learning plan.
Leveraging Collective Intelligence for CCA and DRR in Maldives
Challenge statement
Challenge type: If you are working on multiple challenges, please indicate if this is your "big bet" or "exploratory" challenge.
Please note: we ask you to only submit a maximum of 3 challenges - 1x Big Bet, 2x Exploratory. Each challenge must be submitted individually.
BIG BET
Challenge statement: What is your challenge? (Please answer in specific terms: "Our challenge is that...”.)
Our challenge is that the Maldives is among the most vulnerable countries in the world with respect to the impacts of climate change but the island communities feel unmotivated or disempowered to act
Background: What is the history of your challenge? What is causing or driving it? Who is involved? How does the current situation look like? What undesired effects does it produce?
With a population of 533,900 dispersed across over 200 small islands, and with over 80% of total land area is less than 1 meter above mean sea level, the Maldives, is among the most vulnerable countries in the world with respect to the impacts of climate change.
The entire nation is facing the effects related to sea level rising causing coastal erosion and shrinking the shorelines gradually. Natural disasters such as flooding, tidal waves and sea swells have become more frequent, consequently, they contaminate the freshwater lens, and harm crop yields, homes and infrastructure. The communities and critical infrastructure located within proximity to the shore are especially vulnerable.
From our discovery phase research, the main learning was that, island communities feels unprepared and helpless to act in the event of a disaster. In case of the slow onset effects of sea level rise such as sea level rise, communities do not feel empowered to take action on risk reduction and adaptation.
Researching on the influencing stakeholders revealed that most island councils do not yet have a climate change adaptation plan or a localized disaster risk reduction & disaster management plan. The plans developed at the national level do not involve much community input and is not a one size fits all solution. Due to limited capacity, national Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is only able support the IDMP development of only a handful of islands. Some island councils had developed community-based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) plans years ago with assistance from UNDP and government, but these have not been updated.
Quantitative evidence: What (official) data sources do you have on this challenge that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge? You can add text, a link, or a picture.
climate-risk-country-profile-maldives.pdf (adb.org)
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/SNC%20PDF_Resubmission.pdf
https://ndmc.gov.mv/
Qualitative evidence: What weak signals have you recently spotted that characterizes its urgency? Please provide qualitative information that better exemplifies the importance and urgency of this frontier challenge. You can add text, a link, or a picture.
Stockholm 50+ consultations by UNDP in Laamu atoll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqHWI6TlsNA&t=5s
Photos of Mangrove dying in Nolhivaram. Kandoo, caused by the intrusion of excessive saltwater into kandoo swamps due to global sea-level rise. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=594547504882666
Swells in Kurendhoo island Udha araa Kurendhoo ah bodu gehlumeh (avas.mv)
https://www.cen.uni-hamburg.de/en/about-cen/news/10-news-2021/2021-10-07-pm-malediven.html
https://mfr.mv/climate-change-and-environment/coastal-erosion-and-government-ignorance
Value proposition: What added value or unique value proposition is your Accelerator Lab bringing to solving this challenge? Why is it your Lab that needs to work on this challenge and not other actors within UNDP, other stakeholders in the country respectively? Why is it worth investing resources to this challenge?
Through participatory we will motivate and empower the vulnerable island communities o develop the island to act on Climate Change adaptation and Disaster Risk Management.
Participatory mapping is a new methodology that has not been used at the island level to generate data for local planning, nor national. Therefore Accelerator Lab is well placed to test this approach incrementally first in one island and then in an atoll.
Additionally, AccLab Maldives is able to to link this experiment with a UN Maldives joint program on Strengthening DRR & CCA which is lead by UNDP and implemented in partnership with NDMA and Local Government Authority. This means we are able to link the data & learnings from this experiment with the national data systems being developed. this also creates an early lead to grow.
Short “tweet” summary: We would like to tweet what you are working on, can you summarize your challenge in a maximum of 280 characters?
We want to test if participatory mapping can motivate and empower island communities to take action on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
Partners
Who are your top 5 partners for this challenge? Please submit from MOST to LEAST important and state Name, Sector and a brief description of the (intended) collaboration.
Please state the name of the Parter:
selected Island Council and Atoll council
What sector does our partner belong to?
Government (&related)
Please provide a brief description of the collaboration.
Work with one local island/atoll council to test participatory mapping and develop island's Hazard, vulnerability & Capacity Map (HVCA) and develop island level adaptation plans and/or disaster risk reduction plans. Working with the government is not new or unusual to undo, however oftentimes they work together with national level partners and engagement with local government happens through these initiatives. We will work directly with local council and the local community
Is this a new and unusual partner for UNDP?
No
Learning questions
Learning question: What is your learning question for this challenge? What do you need to know or understand to work on your challenge statement?
1. We want to understand if combining citizen generated gis data with other data such as satellite data is of value to the NDMA, local councils and the community in formulating CCA and DRM plans. If yes
2. How might we test this approach end to end together with the community, in a manner that can be scaled across all islands ?
We need existing data from the council and other institutions in the island, and we need community support to engage them in citizen generated data collection.
To what stage(s) in the learning cycle does your learning question relate?
Test, Grow
Usage of methods: Relating to your choice above, how will you use your methods & tools for this learning question? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Collective intelligence: Blending national level official data (satellite data and drone mapping) with citizen generated data (crowdmapping, crowdsourcing) to develop the island's Hazard Vulnerabilities and capacities map of the island that can help develop localized drr & ccca plans. Councils often rely on traditional townhall meeting which has limited participation from the wider community. Additionally official data from different institutions (health, utilities etc) are rarely exchanged or used in local planning.
Prototyping: develop an end to end prototype for the process with low cost technological tools, and pilot test the whole process (including data collection and the local planning processes) together with the community and council. The island pilot will help in gaining feedback to iterate to meet the needs of the community and council, while traditionally the councils receive feedback once fully fledge pans and policies are rolled out.
Existing data gaps: Relating to your choice above, what existing gaps in data or information do these new sources of data addressing? What value do these add in answering your learning question?
Citizen generated data: We will generate granular data through crowdsourcing and crowd mapping to create the island's basemap and situation map.
Geospatial data: We will combine our data with satellite generated land cover, land use maps in the Resilient islands portal which is a regional data portal, currently being downscaled tonational level by NDMA with UNESCAP.
Closing
Early leads to grow: Think about the possible grow phase for this challenge - who might benefit from your work on this challenge or who might be the champions in your country that you should inform or collaborate with early on to help you grow this challenge?
Under the SIDS Joint Program, UNDP is implementing a project with National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and Local Government Authority (LGA) to develop subnational capacities in CCA and DRR. From our pilot if we demonstrate the value of our CI method in one island+atoll where participatory mapping empowers community to be involved and contributing to developing drr & cc, then there is potential to scale this in the rest of the 200 inhabited islands of Maldives through the LGA's online learning portals. additionally as our pilot is using the Land cover maps generated from the above project, if we can validate and complement national level data with more granular data through our CI method, we build a strong case for NDMA to adopt a similar approach to collect this data nationwide.
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11Sustainable cities and communities
13Climate action
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