Climate and Disaster Resilience at the Community Level Recording

To strengthen climate and disaster resilience of urban poor communities, a range of programmatic responses need to come together at the community level, including access to risk-informed neighborhood planning, delivery of resilient basic services and community infrastructures, livelihood and skills development, protection of natural resources, and financing for community-led actions.

These responses also need to be linked with complementary actions at the household and city levels, to ensure the impacts are sustainable. Equally important is to ensure such responses are delivered through the involvement of communities. Responses that give organized community groups control over planning decisions and investment resources for local resilience building are likely to have a wider transformational impact.

An example is a community-driven development (CDD) which enables the provision of resources, usually in block grants, directly to communities for social preparation, community planning, community-managed implementation of development projects, formation of a CBO, and community-based monitoring. It has proven to be an effective strategy for reducing disaster risk, restoring essential services, and rebuilding communities after a disaster.

This session aimed to discuss the challenges and lessons learned on implementing community-level resilience-building responses and identified opportunities for scaling up such actions in the face of increasing climate and disaster risk.