For the Pacific Islands, community-based adaptation activities are crucial, and yet it remains uncertain whether they are effectively promoting long-term adaptive capacity. Here we evaluate the performance of 32 community-based adaptation initiatives across 20 rural communities in the Pacific. We find that initiative appropriateness was a strength while sustainability was a consistent issue, locally funded initiatives and those implemented by non-governmental organizations were more likely to perform better, and climate awareness-raising initiatives and those integrated with ecosystem-based adaptation performed best. We also identify four multidimensional and interdependent optimization points for future community-based adaptation initiatives: local approval and ownership, shared access to and benefit from initiatives, integration of local realities, and systems-thinking and forward planning. Our analysis suggests the need for a praxis shift whereby adaptation is locally led, communities drive their own agendas, and donors and implementers become facilitators that resource the diverse capacities of communities and help achieve local objectives equitably.

对于太平洋岛屿而言，基于社区的适应活动至关重要，但仍不确定它们是否有效地促进了长期适应能力。在这里，我们评估了太平洋20个农村社区的32个基于社区的适应计划的效果。我们发现，适当性是一种优势，而可持续性是一个始终存在的问题，地方资助的倡议和由非政府组织实施的倡议更有可能表现更好，而提高气候意识的倡议以及与基于生态系统的适应相结合的倡议则表现最佳。我们还为未来的基于社区的适应计划确定了四个多维且相互依赖的优化点：本地批准和所有权，对计划的共享访问权和从中受益，结合当地实际情况，以及系统思考和前瞻性计划。我们的分析表明，有必要进行实践转变，以适应方式由当地主导，社区推动自己的议程，捐助者和实施者成为促进者，为社区的各种能力提供资源并公平地实现当地目标。