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DRR & Climate Change - Let's get practical

Photo: Dan Chung/Oxfam GB, 2009

Published on 1 July 2009

ECB Conference June 8-12, 2009

Can we design and implement our humanitarian and development programs so that they reduce disaster risks and support vulnerable communities to adapt to the effects of climate change? Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is a key theme of the ECB Project, whilst forging links and exchanging knowledge between staff working in the field staff and global networks and debates is the focus of one of the Project’s three Objectives. So we jumped at a generous offer by the Rockefeller Foundation to bring together DRR practitioners from all five ECB consortia, HQ-level technical specialists from our DRR Adviser group and key actors from the wider sector including the Feinstein International Center, UNDP and ADPC, for five days of dialogue and planning June 8-12 at their Bellagio Conference Centre in Italy.

The week was a fertile blend of the conceptual - acknowledging the indivisibility of the social, economic, political and climate variability and change context in determining risk, and recognizing that building resilience requires the convergence of DRR and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in order to address the underlying drivers of vulnerability – and the practical – with the identification of a few examples of successful integration of DRR and CCA approaches into hands-on programming. For example, in Indonesia climate change is likely to mean higher rainfall, temperatures and sea levels, and Mercy Corps are now incorporating this analysis into their ongoing DRR work in the slums of Jakarta.

There was a clear demand from practitioners at the meeting for simple guidance to ensure DRR and CCA approaches are built into projects from the design stage onwards. In response to this plea, and following the ‘good enough’ approach used successfully elsewhere in the ECB Project, the group developed the basic elements of what such guidance would look like. With the weight of six large humanitarian NGOs behind it, partners ready with the necessary technical expertise and five field consortia eager to test approaches and feed back learning, the next four years of ECB Phase II offer a significant opportunity to make DRR and CCA integration into all our programming a reality. If this opportunity is taken, the Bellagio meeting will have been a key first step.

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