The Climate Adapted Villages model aims to make farmers and local communities capable of organizing themselves, identifying climate threats and practicing climate smart agriculture, enabling them to adapt to the current consequences of a changing climate. The model focuses on building capacity and expertise in local communities, so that they can manage their own recourses and implement measures for climate change adaptation, in a systematic and effective way. Communities gain a strong ownership to the activities, and the method can be transferred of other areas. Many countries want to do something on climate adaptation, but hesitate to allocate money directly to poor people in rural areas. However, more climate adaptation measures should take place where people are the most vulnerable, i.e among poor people in rural areas.
The main focus of the CAV model is promoting a collective management of community resources such as forests, water, energy, soils, plants and animal diversity. A key element in CAV is to ensure that communities themselves participate, and take center stage throughout the processes, from the climate vulnerability assessment to the planning and further implementation of the adaptation plan.
The CAV model contains three main stages. The first stage, to know, means to gather knowledge and to analyze the problems (climate vulnerability assessment). A second stage, to do, addresses the planning and design of adaptation measures and their implementation. The third stage, to sustain, addresses sustainability issues, which go beyond the project period. It is about maintaining and securing the projects’ achievements in the long-run.