Intra-community politics: winners and losers from the community-based adaptation projects in northern Ethiopia

Abstract Over the last decade, Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) has emerged as a prominent approach for integrating climate adaptation into local development initiatives. However, current CBA practices still oversimplify 'community' as a unified entity with a single voice, overlooking internal diversities, inequalities, and conflicts. Using a case study of the UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) in northern Ethiopia, this paper critically examines how entrenched socio-political structures and power relations shape the implementation and outcomes of area closure activities. The findings demonstrate that, although these interventions aim to produce equitable benefits, they frequently reinforce existing hierarchies by favouring elite interests and marginalising vulnerable groups, notably young adults and women. Women’s participation in decision-making processes, though modestly increasing, remains non-threatening to dominant male actors, while young adults face exclusion driven by concerns over land redistribution. Such dynamics underscore how customary laws and elite strategies perpetuate exclusion, rendering marginalized groups ‘invisible’ to external observers. In response, this study argues for a power-conscious and context-sensitive analytical framework to evaluate CBA interventions, emphasising the need to address structural inequalities within communities in order to achieve genuinely equitable and sustainable adaptation outcomes.