It is important to note that CBA has not evolved in a vacuum in Northern Canada but, rather, builds upon work on community‐based participatory research (CBPR), where considerable scholarship on resource management, health, and community development has been conducted with indigenous communities, with substantial focus on how to ethically engage communities and work with indigenous knowledge, epistemologies, and cultural values.82 The focus on intervention, policy development, and planning for future risks—within a context of climate change impacts where uncertainty is high and recognition of change is sometimes contested—differentiates CBA from CBPR, and also brings additional challenges. Indeed, in the workshop, participants expressed unease at how CBA/CBPR terms were being appropriated by the research community (including, at times, by themselves), with many feeling they had become buzzwords that were often used tokenistically to sell projects to funders, with community engagement being viewed as a box to tick as opposed to an ongoing process of dialogue and engagement. Such concerns parallel discussions around the use of the terminology of ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’ in the international development field or in adaptation studies more generally,34, 83, 84 and many felt that any academic with an adaptation focus was now obligated to frame their scholarship with a participatory research lens to meet these expectations. This raises problems, particularly if projects framed as participatory are not in practice, potentially leading to spurious findings and inappropriate recommendations.34