Strengthening institutional capacity for disaster management and risk reduction through climate-resilient agriculture


Book Description

The frequency of natural disasters, especially storms and floods, has been increasing globally over the last several decades. Developing countries are especially vulnerable to such disasters but are often the least capable of coping with the associated impacts because of their limited adaptive capacity. Despite the increased interest in strengthening institutional capacity, it remains a challenge for many developing countries. Institutional capacity for disaster management and risk reduction can be built through various mechanisms. One key approach is via the agriculture sector, where climate-resilient agriculture has become an effective tool for adapting to climate change and developing resilience in the long run – resulting in increased capacity for disaster management and risk reduction at the system, institutional, and individual levels. This paper presents the experiences of four countries, which we have evaluated to develop an institutional strengthening framework.




Investing in Resilience


Book Description

Investing in Resilience: Ensuring a Disaster-Resistant Future focuses on the steps required to ensure that investment in disaster resilience happens and that it occurs as an integral, systematic part of development. At-risk communities in Asia and the Pacific can apply a wide range of policy, capacity, and investment instruments and mechanisms to ensure that disaster risk is properly assessed, disaster risk is reduced, and residual risk is well managed. Yet, real progress in strengthening resilience has been slow to date and natural hazards continue to cause significant loss of life, damage, and disruption in the region, undermining inclusive, sustainable development. Investing in Resilience offers an approach and ideas for reflection on how to achieve disaster resilience. It does not prescribe specific courses of action but rather establishes a vision of a resilient future. It stresses the interconnectedness and complementarity of possible actions to achieve disaster resilience across a wide range of development policies, plans, legislation, sectors, and themes. The vision shows how resilience can be accomplished through the coordinated action of governments and their development partners in the private sector, civil society, and the international community. The vision encourages “investors” to identify and prioritize bundles of actions that collectively can realize that vision of resilience, breaking away from the current tendency to pursue disparate and fragmented disaster risk management measures that frequently trip and fall at unforeseen hurdles. Investing in Resilience aims to move the disaster risk reduction debate beyond rhetoric and to help channel commitments into investment, incentives, funding, and practical action




Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction


Book Description

Deals with the topic of Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR). This book provides an overview of the subject and looks at the role of governments, NGOs, academics and corporate sectors in community based disaster risk reduction. It examines experiences from Asian and African countries.







Climate Resilient Cities


Book Description

'Climate Resilient Cities: A Primer on Reducing Vulnerabilities to Disasters' provides city administrators with exactly what they need to know about the complex and compelling challenges of climate change. The book helps local governments create training, capacity building, and capital investment programs for building sustainable, resilient communities. A step-by-step self-assessment challenges policymakers to think about the resources needed to combat natural disasters through an innovative hot spot risk and vulnerability identifi cation tool. This primer is unique from other resources in its treatment of climate change using a dual-track approach that integrates both mitigation (lowering contributions to greenhouse gases) and adaptation (preparing for impacts of climate change) with disaster risk management. The book is relevant both to cities that are just beginning to think about climate change as well as those that already have well established policies, institutions, and strategies in place. By providing a range of city-level examples of sound practices around the world, the book demonstrates that there are many practical actions that cities can take to build resilience to climate change and natural disasters.




Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation


Book Description

Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the social as well as physical dimensions of weather- and climate-related disasters, considering opportunities for managing risks at local to international scales. SREX was approved and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 18 November 2011 in Kampala, Uganda.




Building agricultural resilience to natural hazard-induced disasters


Book Description

Natural hazard induced disasters (NHID), such as floods, droughts, severe storms, and animal pests and diseases have significant, widespread and long lasting impacts on agricultural sectors around the world. With climate change set to amplify many of these impacts, a “business as usual” approach to disaster risk management in agriculture cannot continue if we are to meet the challenges of agricultural productivity and sustainability growth, and sustainable development. Drawing from seven case studies – Chile, Italy, Japan, Namibia, New Zealand, Turkey and the United States – this joint OECD?FAO report argues for a new approach to building resilience to NHID in agriculture. It explores the policy measures, governance arrangements, on?farm strategies and other initiatives that countries are using to increase agricultural resilience to NHID, highlighting emerging good practices. It offers concrete recommendations on what more needs to be done to shift from coping with the impacts of disasters, to an ex ante approach that focuses on preventing and mitigating the impacts of disasters, helping the sector be better prepared to respond to disasters, and to adapt and transform in order to be better positioned for future disasters.




The impact of disasters and crises on agriculture and food security: 2021


Book Description

On top of a decade of exacerbated disaster loss, exceptional global heat, retreating ice and rising sea levels, humanity and our food security face a range of new and unprecedented hazards, such as megafires, extreme weather events, desert locust swarms of magnitudes previously unseen, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people – most of them in low-income developing countries – and remains a key driver of development. At no other point in history has agriculture been faced with such an array of familiar and unfamiliar risks, interacting in a hyperconnected world and a precipitously changing landscape. And agriculture continues to absorb a disproportionate share of the damage and loss wrought by disasters. Their growing frequency and intensity, along with the systemic nature of risk, are upending people’s lives, devastating livelihoods, and jeopardizing our entire food system. This report makes a powerful case for investing in resilience and disaster risk reduction – especially data gathering and analysis for evidence informed action – to ensure agriculture’s crucial role in achieving the future we want.




Building Urban Resilience


Book Description

This handbook is a resource for enhancing disaster resilience in urban areas. It summarizes the guiding principles, tools, and practices in key economic sectors that can facilitate incorporation of resilience concepts into decisions about infrastructure investments and urban management that are integral to reducing disaster and climate risks.




Eaters Of The Dry Season


Book Description

"A remarkable blend of geography, demography, sociology, development economics, history, cultural anthropology, ecology, politics, sharia (Muslim religious law), and government policies.... This book dispels many misconceptions and is an education in itself." Choice