{"id":783,"date":"2025-04-01T05:19:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T05:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/?p=783"},"modified":"2025-04-01T08:48:55","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T08:48:55","slug":"mapping-resilience-or-mapping-control-how-climate-working-groups-are-redrawing-the-lines-of-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/01\/mapping-resilience-or-mapping-control-how-climate-working-groups-are-redrawing-the-lines-of-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping Resilience or Mapping Control? How Climate Working Groups Are Redrawing the Lines of Survival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

COP 26 Youth Working group – Credits UNDP<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

KAMPALA, Uganda<\/strong> \u2014 In April, temperatures in Uganda\u2019s capital reached record highs, sending vulnerable residents scrambling for shade in informal settlements with no cooling infrastructure. Just weeks later, a rare cyclone swept across Lake Victoria, disrupting fishing communities and capsizing boats. And in the western district of Kasese, flash floods once again uprooted entire villages, leaving behind a trail of mud, grief, and government silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not adapting<\/em>,\u201d says Maria Nyongesa, a community mobilizer in Kasese. \u201cWe\u2019re surviving what we can\u2019t see coming<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet the warning signs were<\/em> there\u2014encoded in maps produced by Uganda\u2019s National Working Groups (NWGs)<\/strong>, which had identified both heat-vulnerable zones and flood-prone corridors. The maps were distributed. Workshops were held. Promises made. But, as Nyongesa puts it, \u201cnothing changed<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uganda is not alone. From hurricane-scarred neighborhoods in New Orleans to wildfire-threatened Indigenous lands in British Columbia, a new architecture of climate governance is taking shape\u2014one that claims to be participatory, data-driven, and just. But an investigation has found that these National Working Groups\u2014tasked with translating climate science into action\u2014are often hollowed out by political fragmentation, donor dependency, and shallow community engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind the Maps: Promises, Politics, and Broken Feedback Loops<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the U.S., advanced geospatial tools like FEMA\u2019s Hazus or NOAA\u2019s Climate Toolkit map risks with laser precision. But ask residents in Louisiana\u2019s Lower Ninth Ward, and you\u2019ll hear a different story. \u201cThey mapped us into danger, then left us there<\/em>,\u201d says Jerome Williams, a climate organizer. Federal NWGs held workshops. Plans were drawn. But budget shortfalls and state-level resistance derailed implementation. \u201cMaps without action are a form of negligence<\/em>,\u201d Williams says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Canada, NWGs are partnering with Indigenous communities in what government officials call a \u201cTwo-Eyed Seeing<\/em>\u201d approach\u2014blending Western science with Indigenous knowledge. But Indigenous Guardian Elena Thomas, who leads workshops in British Columbia, says the language of partnership often masks deeper problems. \u201cThey consult us<\/em>,\u201d she says, \u201cbut they don\u2019t shift power. Our knowledge becomes a checkbox. Not a mandate<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Donor Dilemma: Who Really Owns Climate Policy in Uganda?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uganda\u2019s NWGs are hailed as participatory models. They hold workshops where farmers chart climate futures and map local hazards using mobile GIS tools. But behind the scenes, most funding\u2014and much of the policy language\u2014comes from international donors. The result? Policies that reflect donor logic more than local realities.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we reviewed three years of climate finance records and found that more than 70% of Uganda\u2019s adaptation programs were tied to donor-specific reporting frameworks, not the country\u2019s own National Adaptation Plan. According to Dr. Ronald Kaggwa, a policy researcher in Kampala, \u201cWe\u2019ve outsourced our resilience. The NWGs have become translators of donor priorities, not enforcers of community agency<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate Workshops: Participation or Performance?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all three countries, local adaptation workshops are the face of inclusion. In Miami, NWGs host \u201cresilience design charrettes<\/em>\u201d; in Uganda, they conduct participatory scenario planning; in Yukon, Canada, workshops include Indigenous youth tracking permafrost melt. But without mechanisms to integrate outcomes into binding policy, these gatherings risk becoming symbolic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Miami, we found that recommendations from over 15 workshops since 2019 were not incorporated into the city\u2019s formal Climate Adaptation Plan. One planner, speaking anonymously, described the process as \u201cinclusion theatre\u2014photographs of Black and Brown faces in reports that no one reads<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carbon Markets and Climate Colonialism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The newest frontier for NWGs is climate finance. Uganda is piloting community-based carbon credit schemes tied to agroforestry. But here too, external control looms. Most of the credits are verified through European standards, and proceeds flow through intermediaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one district, local leaders said they had planted thousands of trees as part of a REDD+ initiative\u2014but had received no payment. \u201cWe are greening the planet for someone else\u2019s net-zero<\/em>,\u201d one farmer said. NWGs facilitate, but they do not control the terms. As one policy analyst put it, \u201cCarbon finance is the new frontier of adaptation colonialism<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons from the Margins: Redrawing the Blueprint<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite these challenges, our analysis reveals that NWGs do offer a rare institutional mechanism to reimagine climate governance\u2014if<\/em> they are given the mandate, resources, and autonomy to center justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Uganda\u2019s district-level resilience planning to Indigenous-led fire corridor mapping in British Columbia, the potential is real. But so are the barriers: jurisdictional fragmentation, donor dependency, and tokenistic engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If climate adaptation is the frontier of global survival, NWGs are drawing its first maps. The question is: will those maps liberate\u2014or exclude?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was written as a contributory piece to a scholarly article written for GCRI Canada and has been published and co- authored by the Uganda National Working Group and GCRI Media team. Read the full article here: <\/strong>https:\/\/lnkd.in\/gukQNhwB<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


If you\u2019re working at the intersection of climate adaptation, risk governance, or social equity, I\u2019d love to hear your reflections! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources Cited:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Uganda Ministry of Water and Environment (2022)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Government of Canada (2023). National Adaptation Strategy<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 U.S. GAO Report on BRIC and Justice40 (2022)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Bartlett et al. (2012), Latulippe & Klenk (2020), Whyte (2020)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COP 26 Youth Working group – Credits UNDP KAMPALA, Uganda \u2014 In April, temperatures in Uganda\u2019s capital reached record highs, sending vulnerable residents scrambling for shade in informal settlements with no cooling infrastructure. Just weeks later, a rare cyclone swept across Lake Victoria, disrupting fishing communities and capsizing boats. And in the western district of Kasese, flash […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[25,26,27],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-research","tag-climate","tag-climate-finance","tag-national-working-groups"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutconsult.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}