Locally Led Climate Action by Women Collectives in India is a PDAG engagement that documents practical models through which women's collectives and rural institutions are building climate-resilient livelihoods across India. The work brings together case research, fieldwork, evidence synthesis and communication design to move beyond a narrow description of climate resilience and examine how policy, institutions and lived realities interact at the community level.

Undertaken with the World Bank and the Ministry of Rural Development, the engagement is converting field cases into an evidence-led compendium and communication-ready learning products for policy and implementation audiences. It reflects PDAG's approach of combining grounded evidence with an understanding of implementation constraints, institutional incentives and the experiences of people most affected by policy decisions.

The emphasis across the engagement is not only on producing research, but on making the evidence usable for decision-makers. This meant identifying the practical questions behind the assignment, testing assumptions against field and stakeholder evidence, and translating findings into clear implications for policy, programme design and public communication. Where relevant, local findings were connected to wider policy debates on climate resilience, so that recommendations remained attentive to context rather than defaulting to one-size-fits-all solutions.

The compendium sits within PDAG's Climate & Resilience practice area, part of a wider body of work on how public systems can respond more effectively to complex social and economic change. The resulting work gives partners a stronger basis for understanding how women's collectives and rural institutions build climate-resilient livelihoods, recognising gaps in existing approaches and considering realistic pathways for action.