Community Digital Storytelling for Locally Led Adaptation: Practice, opportunities and challenges

This article examines Community Digital Storytelling (CDST) as a participatory method that supports Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) by amplifying Indigenous and local voices and exposing structural drivers of vulnerability in climate research and practice. Designed by the author and implemented in collaboration with Indigenous communities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, CDST draws on oral traditions, Indigenous epistemologies, and creative visual storytelling to co-produce short films that document lived experiences of climate impacts and adaptation. Integrating elements of ethnographic documentary, Indigenous methodologies, and smartphone filmmaking, CDST fosters a reflexive, collaborative space that enables ontological pluralism, intergenerational dialogue, and ethical knowledge exchange, helping to decolonise adaptation research and practice. The article presents empirical insights from CDST initiatives across South and Southeast Asia, outlining the method’s contributions and opportunities for LLA, while also addressing the ethical, logistical, and structural challenges that may constrain its long-term impact. By centring community agency and reorienting adaptation towards social justice, relational accountability, and the sovereignty of local knowledge systems, CDST offers a powerful tool for transformative adaptation and reclaims storytelling as a vital mode of climate action. • Introduces Community Digital Storytelling (CDST) as a method for Locally Led Adaptation research. • Amplifies Indigenous voices and epistemologies in adaptation practice. • Provides practice-based evidence and assesses CDST’s contributions and challenges. • Proposes storytelling as climate action advancing justice and epistemic sovereignty.