Vulnerable Communities and Climate Change Communication and Education

Together, both communities in the case study consist of just over 1,000 people. The first community is semi-urban, and most inhabitants rely on subsistence farming. The community is near a large river, which floods during the wet season. In contrast, the second community is located within rural grasslands and experiences arid, drought-like conditions during the dry season.

The communities invited the Research and Conservation Foundation of Papua New Guinea to help improve understandings and responses to the climate challenges facing their respective regions. The researchers used the opportunity to ask community leaders, farmers, women, and youth about ways to improve the Foundation’s previous climate communication strategies to better inform policy and practice.

This case study shows that sometimes, local adaptation needs to be hyper-local, and that in some cases, traditional knowledge is having to adapt to new climate realities.