Project GoAL (Gender-orientated Adaptive Transformation cross-Learning) created a shared space for co-designing, co-researching and cross-learning among researchers, practitioners and communities in four APN member countries – India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Japan – on gender-oriented adaptive transformation in climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). It started from a simple observation: women, particularly in tribal, rural and marginalised communities, experience climate and disaster risks differently from men, yet their knowledge rarely reaches planning and policy. GoAL set out to change that by placing community members, and especially women, at the centre of research and communication.

At the heart of the project was the Training of Community Trainers (ToCT). Over three years, 39 community knowledge partners – mostly young women and men from Indigenous and disadvantaged communities – were trained across five case study sites: Udham Singh Nagar (Uttarakhand), Dumka (Jharkhand) and Bishnupur (Manipur) in India, Chitwan in Nepal and Gampaha in Sri Lanka. Working in their own languages, they used focus group discussions, transect walks, participatory mapping, folk songs, handicrafts and flashcards to co-produce case studies on six themes. Japan’s experience of community-based DRR was brought in through a literature- and expert-based case study, and the work was extended to Bangladesh through bridge funding from the Himalayan University Consortium (HUC), ICIMOD.

The project held 20 in-person workshops, eight online and hybrid workshops and a seven-day International Policy Round Table (7 to 13 January 2025; 45 participants, 34 sessions). Codesign moved up through every level of governance: in Uttarakhand, from Nagautaggu village to Khatima block and the state; in Jharkhand, from two Chigal Pahari community workshops to two Dumka district workshops and a state-level co-review with JSLPS; and in Manipur, from community focus group discussions to district stakeholder dialogues at the DC Office, Bishnupur. In Chitwan and Gampaha, field visits and co-designing workshops brought local stakeholders and communities together, and Sri Lanka hosted the first ToCT workshop. Forty Master’s students at IIT Roorkee and MANIT Bhopal, seven interns and six early-career professionals learnt alongside communities.

The results are visible across sites. Findings on women’s multi-sectoral climate burdens in Uttarakhand are published as a Springer chapter; the Bishnupur study documented Indigenous strategies for living with floods; a comparative study of adaptation practices in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka was presented in Brazil; and the University of Colombo developed a training module on gender-wise determination of disaster risk. In Chigal Pahari (Dumka), residents painted a participatory risk map on a village wall in traditional Santhali style, and district leadership recommended regular women-only village meetings. Community knowledge partners in Dumka also produced 32 podcast videos in Santhali – a “memory-environment dialogue” on topics like seeds, water, soil, birds and sacred groves – creating a community-owned archive of Indigenous ecological knowledge.

With a journal article in Environmental Research: Climate comparing Indigenous knowledge across India, Nepal and Sri Lanka – now translated into Santhali, Kurukh and Hindi so that the findings return to the communities they came from – six conference presentations and the project website (https://www.iitr-apn-goal.com), GoAL leaves behind trained local researchers, tested tools and an evidence base for gender-oriented climate and disaster resilience in South Asia and beyond.