This presentation intends to highlight the strategic role that planned communication activities can play to promote sustainable NRM and reduce rural communities' vulnerability to climate change. It calls for the systematic design and use of participatory communication to share information and knowledge among relevant stakeholders in a particular agro-ecological context, in order to encourage attitudes and practices that increase people's resilience to natural disasters and climate variability.

Climate change and food security require multi-stakeholder action, to foster processes of social learning for adaptive livelihoods. Community-based adaptation (CBA) approaches emphasize the need to support knowledge institutions and rural communities in getting suitable adaptation options through participatory communication and knowledge sharing.

The systematic use of communication methods and strategies is therefore essential to bring rural people and institutions together to plan for the future and achieve collaborative change:

• facilitating equitable access to knowledge and information
• enhancing learning and action → co-creation of knowledge
• promoting peoples' participation and direct involvement in the design of coping strategies
• bridging the "glocal information divide" between global environmental systems and local communities improving linkages among research, advisory services and farmers.

The paper will also introduce an initiative to enhance communication capacities among institutions, development practitioners, field agents and decision-makers. It foresees the establishment of a cross-regional and cross-institutional community of practice for sharing information and knowledge on communication applied to climate adaptation, through networking and partnerships with development programmes, institutions, NGOs, universities and research centres.