Minimum Standards for local climate-smart disaster risk reduction
- Abstract
Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme events and disasters.1 While disaster risk reduction (DRR) offers an important opportunity to adapt to current climate variability, in order to be successful, DRR efforts must also take into account changing climate‐related risks in the medium to long‐term. Many national climate change adaptation plans consider the need to plan over various timescales and acknowledge the essential role of local communities in addressing these changing risks. With this in mind, the Minimum Standards for local climate‐smart disaster risk reduction were developed as a practical checklist to help local community leaders and DRR practitioners ensure their risk reduction efforts are climate‐smart and contribute to climate change adaptation, meaning that these efforts consider the future risk patterns induced by a changing climate, often including rising uncertainties. The Minimum Standards are not idealized solutions but rather practical approaches to implement DRR activities in a way that is achievable by communities with relatively limited external support. At the same time, the Minimum Standards can support national actors to integrate achievable community‐level action on DRR into national adaptation and climate risk management strategies. National strategies that consider the Minimum Standards will be able to go to scale and, as donors increasingly require programmes to consider climate‐related risks, the Minimum Standards can help establish that strategies are realistic and do indeed go beyond business as usual.
- Resource Type
- Report
- Author
- Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre
- Date
- Nov 2013
- Institution
- Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre
- Organization Type
- Ngo
- Solution
- Disaster preparedness