Climate and Disaster Resilience at the Household Level Recording

Resilient households form the basis for ensuring resilient communities and cities. Without resilience at the household level, the urban poor cannot be protected from climate change and disaster-related risks. Building climate and disaster resilience involve multidimensional issues requiring various policy and financial investments on social protection, adequate and resilient housing, access to essential health services, and sustainable livelihoods.

Social protection can help reduce exposure to shocks and stresses and mitigate their impacts at a household level to reduce current and future vulnerability contributing to climate change adaptation. By targeting the poorest of households, beneficiary households receive regular, predictable, and timely social transfers, which help absorb their exposure to shocks, for example, through increased household savings and better housing in less exposed locations.

This has a multiplier effect on other related aspects of housing, health, and livelihoods as households eventually become better prepared to be more resilient. Climate-related shocks and stresses significantly impact the livelihoods and health of the urban poor, but social protection measures help alleviate the immediate threat. Social protection measures used to improve the housing conditions for the urban poor will also directly improve their health outcomes as the ability to live in more sanitary and less cramped conditions reduce exposure to communicable and non-communicable diseases.

This session aimed to discuss how urban poor households can be made more resilient and to discuss good cases from country experiences by demonstrating how household-level interventions, in particular with the introduction of ex-ante measures, can reduce risk and strengthen the adaptive capacity of poor households and vulnerable groups to strengthen climate and disaster resilience, such as through social protection programs.