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The purpose of this study is to discuss how enhancing the role of local institutions (LI) and incorporating indigenous knowledge (IK) in climate change adaptation planning can improve adoption and scaling success of climate-smart agriculture innovations.

A review of relevant literature from sub-Saharan Africa was used to answer the study research questions.

Embracing IK and LI in climate change adaptation projects can enhance adoption and scaling success of climate-smart agriculture innovations in smallholder farming. Such efforts will improve: information gathering and dissemination, mobilization of resources, establishment of useful networks with relevant stakeholders, capacity building farmers on various fronts and provision of leadership in climate adaptation programs.

Fully embracing IK and LI can improve the scaling of climate-smart innovations only if development partners recognize IK systems that are to be transformed and build on them instead of trying to replace them. Also, participatory approaches in scaling innovations will enhance input from rural people in climate change adaptation programs.

Development interventions aimed at taking proven effective climate-smart innovations to scale must, therefore, engage local communities and their indigenous institutions as active stakeholders in designing, planning and implementation of their climate adaptation programs.

The purpose of this paper is to calculate the local guaranteed fiscal revenue with the local fiscal revenue of 31 provinces, and predict their guaranteed fiscal revenue in 2018 with the artificial neural network (ANN).

The principal components analysis (PCA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and extreme learning machine (ELM) model was designed to produce the inputs of KMV model. Then the KMV model was used for obtaining the default probabilities under different issuance scales. Data were collected from Wind Database. MATLAB 2018b and SPSS 22 were used in the field of modeling and results analysis.

This study’s findings show that PCA–PSO–ELM proposed in this research has the highest accuracy in terms of the prediction compared with ELM, back propagation neural network and auto regression. And PCA–PSO–ELM–KMV model can calculate the secure issuance scale of local government bonds effectively.

The sustainability forecast in this study can help local governments effectively control the scale of debt issuance, strengthen the budget management of local debt and establish the corresponding risk warning mechanism, which could make local governments maintain good credit ratings.

This study sheds new light on helping local governments avoid financial risks effectively, and it is conducive to establish a debt repayment reserve system for local governments and the proper arrangement for stock debt.

Scholarship on alternative organizations and cooperatives has argued that networks and intermediaries foster organizational form stability and protect collectivist-democratic organizations from rationalization as well as decoupling. This study of field-level organizing among food co-ops in the United States shows that rather than buffering collectivist organizations from conventional market and rationalization pressures, meta-organizations can also serve as a conduit for rationalizing pressures, subjecting vulnerable organizations to what I call quasi-coercive isomorphism. Using interviews of field participants, ethnographic observations of conferences, and content analysis of organizational documents, I examine the formation and impact of National Co+op Grocers, a meta-cooperative created to leverage scale and pool resources among food co-ops. I find that this meta-organization enforced grocery industry-oriented norms of operation, management, and presentation among its member organizations in return for providing mutual liability and economies of scale. This focus on select operationally scalable processes and structures for support generated isomorphic pressures that exposed, rather than sheltered, co-ops, especially smaller, resource-poor ones, from industry standards. The meta-organization thus promoted a sectorized model of more marketized practices for the field’s cooperatives that pushed co-ops to adopt conventional grocery store practices and distanced them from the practices of other cooperative form fields. Moreover, the potential of cooperative form-specific elements for scaling was not realized: collective ownership and democratic governance remained local concerns. These findings suggest that whether meso-level cooperation among cooperatives can support alternative form maintenance is contingent on the structure and scope of the meta-organization and on the perceived scalability of operational and governance elements of the cooperative organizational form.

When post-secondary education (PSE) in Africa is viewed in terms of growth rather than total enrolment the region tops the list of impressive trends. Between the years 1985 and 2005 the countries of sub-Saharan Africa experienced the largest growth of PSE involvement of any region with total enrolment increasing fourfold. The insatiable student demand is being met by a proliferation of large-scale and small-scale religious denominations establishing post-secondary education. The current chapter provides a categorical, multi-levelled analysis of the growth of religious providers in sub-Saharan Africa. Particular attention is given to the activities and rationales of stakeholders who play a part in the establishment and continued operations of religious PSE. Using Marginson and Rhoades’s (2002) glonacal agency heuristic, the networks between stakeholders and their varying degrees of influence on regional PSE are described and discussed. The findings suggest that PSE in the region is being widely provided by small-scale denominations establishing religious training institutions. But the influence of this PSE is mainly limited to local communities.

Consumers within the UK have access to a wide variety of international foodstuffs and cuisines but there is also a growing interest in local food. This case study explores what is meant by local food, outlines some of the benefits claimed for, and the problems seen to be associated with, food that is produced and consumed locally and discusses some of the routes to market for local food.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how people practicing natural resource-based livelihoods in arid Kenya perceive that their livelihoods are being affected by floods and droughts and how to integrate these local perceptions of impacts into larger-scale climate change adaptation initiatives and policy.

In Isiolo County, Kenya, 270 households were surveyed in seven communities, six focus group discussions were held and a document review was conducted.

The major livelihood practiced in Isiolo is pastoralism (71 per cent), but agriculture and non-agro-pastoral activities also play an important role, with 53 per cent of the respondents practicing more than one type of livelihood. In Isiolo, floods have a large impact on agriculture (193 respondents out of 270), while droughts impact both agriculture (104 respondents) and livestock (120 respondents), and more specifically, cattle-keeping (70 respondents).

The research may have implications for the importance of using local perceptions of the effects of climate change on livelihoods for larger-scale interventions. It also provides a case study of local perceptions of the effects of floods and droughts on livelihoods in an arid area with natural resource-dependent livelihoods.

To understand local perceptions and use local perceptions for larger-scale adaptation interventions and policy.

This paper provides a specific example of a climate change adaptation initiative integrating local perceptions of the impacts of floods and droughts into livelihood-focused interventions.

It is now established by the global scientific community that climate change is a hard reality but the changes are complex in nature and to a great extent uncertain. Global circulation models (GCMs) have made significant contributions to the theoretical understanding of potential climate impacts, but their shortcomings in terms of assessing climate impacts soon became apparent. GCMs demonstrate significant skill at the continental and hemispheric scales and incorporate a large proportion of the complexity of the global system. However, they are inherently unable to represent local subgrid-scale features and dynamics. The first generation approaches of climate change impact and vulnerability assessments are derived from GCMs downscaled to produce scenarios at regional and local scales, but since the downscaled models inherit the biases of their parent GCM, they produce a simplified version of local climate. Furthermore, their output is limited to changes in mean temperature, rainfall, and sea level. For this reason, hydrological modeling with GCM output is useful for assessing impacts. The hydrological response due to change in climate variables in the Amu Darya River Basin was investigated using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The modeling results show that there is an increase in precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature, potential evapotranspiration, surface runoff, percolation, and water yields. The above methodology can be practiced in this region for conducting adaptation and mitigation assessments. This initial assessment will facilitate future simulation modeling applications using SWAT for the Amu Darya River Basin by including variables of local changes (e.g., population growth, deforestation) that directly affect the hydrology of the region.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the findings from the body of case studies offered in the issue, combined with three external perspectives on local voices and action.

Using as its basis the eight key case studies and three external contributions to the special issue, the paper offers a theoretical framework as a basis for discussion of this material. Through this, it identifies possible modes of action understood through the theoretical framework and elaborated through the specific cases. It concludes with proposals for further work.

The discussion finds that from a local perspective, the ambitions of local populations and local NGOs to achieve emancipatory change depend on the scope for local collaboration and partnerships to exercise influence on underlying risk factors. It resolves the suggested tension between operating within, and outside the system through the concept of “legitimate subversion”.

It is felt that the original recording of case studies of local level action combined with the process of iterative critical reflection on the part of the contributors offers a novel approach to knowledge creation from practice, and offers insights bridging theoretical and practitioner perspectives into means of addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current literature and ideas on how local climate change action (both mitigation and adaptation) could be intensified.

A literature review of Australian and international academic journals and policy documents on the current views of effective local climate action was conducted. Additional data on Australian grassroots community activities was compiled from the internet, participant observation and secondary sources.

The paper argues that local climate action is important and three key aspects could provide effective avenues to step‐up local climate action. These three avenues are: increased attention to local adaptation; the linking of adaptation and mitigation efforts together and with other local ecological concerns; and greater engagement with active community members and grassroots community‐initiated climate change actions. These three key aspects could give climate change a local saliency and tangibility, spur more effective action, build community resilience and reduce vulnerability.

Research is in the explorative stages and, therefore, only tentative conclusions and possible future directions can be suggested.

The avenues identified to scale‐up local action on climate change could be readily utilised by local governments and/or other interested groups.

The paper disseminates three compelling ways that climate action could be intensified at the local scale, and possibly create greater public engagement and avenues to innovative approaches to tackle climate change.