Place-based climate adaptation: How Atlantic Canadian communities translate local knowledge into action
- 1School of Science and Environment, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Campus, Newfoundland, Canada
Abstract
This study examines how communities in Atlantic Canada recognize, value, and integrate local knowledge into climate change adaptation, focusing on the enabling and constraining roles of funding, governance, and institutional structures. Guided by the Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) framework, the research forms part of a larger transdisciplinary project on collaborative governance in financing climate adaptation and mitigation. Using qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with municipal representatives, NGOs, funders, and community leaders, and participant observation, the study identifies both barriers and opportunities for embedding local knowledge in adaptation planning. Findings reveal that local knowledge is central to building climate resilience, not peripheral. Communities achieve the strongest climate action outcomes when flexible, multi-year funding is paired with supportive local policies, collaborative governance, and mechanisms for co-producing knowledge with technical experts. Successful examples emphasize grassroots project design, participatory governance, and place-based approaches tailored to community priorities. However, systemic barriers, including rigid, short-term funding programs, top-down policy frameworks, and bureaucratic institutional requirements, continue to limit the consistent and equitable use of local knowledge. From an SES perspective, the most effective adaptation strategies emerge from feedback loops between community experience, institutional support, and environmental change. The study concludes that policy shifts are needed to institutionalize long-term, locally controlled funding, formalize community participation in decision-making, and embed equity-centered, co-productive approaches into adaptation frameworks. Such measures would move beyond symbolic acknowledgment of local knowledge toward its substantive integration, ensuring climate action that is adaptive, context-specific, and grounded in the lived realities of Atlantic Canadian communities. Author summary: Climate change is already reshaping life in Atlantic Canada, and the people best placed to guide the region's response are often the residents who see these changes first-hand: fishers noticing shifting fish stocks, elders recalling past storms, and Indigenous communities holding generations of knowledge about the land and water. This study looks at how that local and Indigenous knowledge actually gets used in climate change planning, based on interviews with 22 municipal officials, funders, non-profit staff, and community organizers across Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The study found that local knowledge is not simply a nice addition to expert planning; it is often central to it. But whether that knowledge is used effectively depends heavily on funding and governance: flexible, multi-year funding and genuine partnerships allow communities to act on what they know, while rigid, short-term grants and one-off consultations often leave local expertise on the sidelines. Smaller, rural communities face particular disadvantages in accessing the funding needed to act on their own knowledge; hence, governments and funders could commit to longer-term, locally controlled funding and give communities real decision-making power, not just a seat at the table, in planning for climate change.
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BibTeX
@article{yirenkyi2026placebased,
title = {{Place-based climate adaptation: How Atlantic Canadian communities translate local knowledge into action}},
author = {Edmund Yirenkyi},
journal = {PLOS Sustainability and Transformation},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pstr.0000291},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/sustainabilitytransformation/article?id=10.1371/journal.pstr.0000291},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Place-based climate adaptation: How Atlantic Canadian communities translate local knowledge into action
AU - Edmund Yirenkyi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - PLOS Sustainability and Transformation
DO - 10.1371/journal.pstr.0000291
UR - https://journals.plos.org/sustainabilitytransformation/article?id=10.1371/journal.pstr.0000291
AB - This study examines how communities in Atlantic Canada recognize, value, and integrate local knowledge into climate change adaptation, focusing on the enabling and constraining roles of funding, governance, and institutional structures. Guided by the Socio-Ecological Systems (SES) framework, the research forms part of a larger transdisciplinary project on collaborative governance in financing climate adaptation and mitigation. Using qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with municipal representatives, NGOs, funders, and community leaders, and participant observation, the study identifies both barriers and opportunities for embedding local knowledge in adaptation planning. Findings reveal that local knowledge is central to building climate resilience, not peripheral. Communities achieve the strongest climate action outcomes when flexible, multi-year funding is paired with supportive local policies, collaborative governance, and mechanisms for co-producing knowledge with technical experts. Successful examples emphasize grassroots project design, participatory governance, and place-based approaches tailored to community priorities. However, systemic barriers, including rigid, short-term funding programs, top-down policy frameworks, and bureaucratic institutional requirements, continue to limit the consistent and equitable use of local knowledge. From an SES perspective, the most effective adaptation strategies emerge from feedback loops between community experience, institutional support, and environmental change. The study concludes that policy shifts are needed to institutionalize long-term, locally controlled funding, formalize community participation in decision-making, and embed equity-centered, co-productive approaches into adaptation frameworks. Such measures would move beyond symbolic acknowledgment of local knowledge toward its substantive integration, ensuring climate action that is adaptive, context-specific, and grounded in the lived realities of Atlantic Canadian communities. Author summary: Climate change is already reshaping life in Atlantic Canada, and the people best placed to guide the region's response are often the residents who see these changes first-hand: fishers noticing shifting fish stocks, elders recalling past storms, and Indigenous communities holding generations of knowledge about the land and water. This study looks at how that local and Indigenous knowledge actually gets used in climate change planning, based on interviews with 22 municipal officials, funders, non-profit staff, and community organizers across Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. The study found that local knowledge is not simply a nice addition to expert planning; it is often central to it. But whether that knowledge is used effectively depends heavily on funding and governance: flexible, multi-year funding and genuine partnerships allow communities to act on what they know, while rigid, short-term grants and one-off consultations often leave local expertise on the sidelines. Smaller, rural communities face particular disadvantages in accessing the funding needed to act on their own knowledge; hence, governments and funders could commit to longer-term, locally controlled funding and give communities real decision-making power, not just a seat at the table, in planning for climate change.
SN - 2767-3197
ER -