Building Resilience from the Ground Up

At first glance the field looks like many other solar energy facilities, with photovoltaic panels stretching in neat rows across bare winter ground. But this site in Lower Austria is teasing multiple climate-friendly uses out of a single patch of land.

The experimental Sonnenfeld facility combines renewable energy with agriculture and local waste-to-energy systems, generating enough electricity for more than 1,100 homes, while shade from its panels provides good growing conditions for crops such as wheat, grapes and berries. At the same time, it powers a biogas plant, which creates fuel for local use from dairy and restaurant waste.

As the impacts of more intense storms and landslides, severe heat waves, droughts, and wildfires intensify across Europe and Central Asia, this kind of locally driven climate action is central in mitigating the extent of the change and increasing resilience against the risks.

State-level processes such as National Adaptation Plans are crucial, but they do not always connect effectively with real needs of households and people on the ground. It is local communities who know best what is happening in their area, what is most needed, and who are most vulnerable.

The challenge is to ensure that bottom-up ideas and initiatives are married effectively with national strategies and supported by accurate scientific knowledge.

“Community-driven development projects are placing decision-making in the hands of local communities,” said World Bank Practice Manager for Social Sustainability and Inclusion Helene Carlsson Rex. “They ensure that adaptation measures respond to local knowledge, priorities, and capacities. At the same time, they create economic opportunities, generate rural jobs, and strengthen livelihoods, especially for women, youth, and other vulnerable groups.”

To exchange concrete experience on strengthening local leadership and grassroots action, practitioners and experts from across Europe and Central Asia met in Vienna on November 12-13, 2025, for “From the Ground Up: Locally Led Responses Bridging Climate, Livelihoods and Resilience”, hosted by the Vienna Development Knowledge Center.

Building local resilience to rising climate risks

Across Europe and Central Asia, more than one in three people live in areas prone to natural hazards. Countries face infrastructure-related losses amounting to 2.4% of regional GDP – triple that of other regions around the world. 

In Moldova, for example, a single drought can push up rural poverty by eight percentage points, while in Central Asia, agricultural productivity could drop by 30 percent by 2050 if no precautionary measures are taken.

Poorer communities—those least equipped to adapt—are at the highest risk. Therefore, they must be central to identifying and implementing climate-smart solutions that reflect their priorities, as participants of the event agreed. Communities can shape and implement climate-smart solutions when supported with the right tools, information, and decision-making power.

For example, a project in Uzbekistan to improve basic infrastructure and strengthen participation in local governance addressed specific community demand for all-weather roads and warm, energy efficient schools.

In the Kyrgyz Republic, 2,000 volunteer Climate Ambassadors have been trained to spread the word at the community level. In Tajikistan, community participation in 515 villages has involved more than 74,000 people, enhancing the quality and sustainability of local decisions.

In Kosovo, a project to raise climate awareness and facilitate dialog has created an online one-stop-shop platform that provides citizens with local data and a channel to press for government responses.

“This turns information into action,” said Dardan Sejdiu of Kosovo Green Action.

Investing in adaptation to climate risk brings a triple dividend: protecting life and livelihoods, stimulating the economy, and providing infrastructure that improves quality of life.

“The local response in our countries informs how we can mitigate risks, but also seize opportunities for livelihoods,” said Christian Kdolsky of Austria’s Zukunftsallianz, which fosters public dialog for climate solutions.

Fresh perspectives, new answers

Austria too provides examples of bottom-up climate consultation and planning.

The municipality of Baden, just south of Vienna, organized a four-day Climate Council of local citizens to generate new ideas, resulting in 53 recommendations and a municipal resolution targeting climate neutrality by 2040.

One challenge was how to reconcile the historic town’s initiative to fit solar panels on every rooftop with restrictions from its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The solution, born out of the Climate Council, was a town-wide energy community where electricity can flow to protected buildings from roof panels in unrestricted areas.

On a wider scale, the country’s meteorological service, GeoSphere Austria, organizes an annual Natural Hazards Conference in different regions to focus on local climate-related risks. The event, with the motto “municipalities learn from municipalities”, brings together decision makers, climate adaptation experts, emergency managers, engineers and representatives of vulnerable groups.

“We need locally led responses on climate adaptation, to address the actual risks communities are facing, and bring together those who have to tackle the challenges on the ground,” said GeoSphere’s Laura Mainetti. “Each community brings together a variety of unique stakeholders that together can develop solutions that fit their exact situation and needs, and at the same time inspire others to do the same.”