Scaling Up Resilience-Building Measures through Community-Driven Development Projects

Guidance Note

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• Publisher: Asian Development Bank
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9789292613280
• eBook ISBN: 9789292613297
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The poor and vulnerable populations suffer disproportionately from the adverse impacts of climate change and disasters, which result in loss of life, damage to household and community assets, disruption of livelihoods, and loss of income. Solutions that recognize localized risks and address them in the context of wider socioeconomic development are needed. This guidance note underscores the importance of scaling up resilience-building measures through community-driven development projects. It proposes a framework that recommends five key considerations that should be factored in the design and implementation of community-driven development projects to ensure that they deliver on scaling up of resilience-building measures.

^1/INTRODUCTION

1.1 Why this Guidance Note?

The poor and vulnerable populations suffer disproportionately from the adverse impacts of climate change and disasters, which results in loss of life, damage to household and community assets, disruption of livelihoods, and loss of income. The intensity, and in some cases, frequency of climate-related hazards is increasing due to climate change, resulting in greater impact from disasters on the lives and livelihoods of the poor and vulnerable population. Further, the livelihoods of poor population are often dependent on agriculture, water resources, coastal management, and other climate-sensitive sectors. The vulnerabilities in these sectors are increasing due to changes in climate variables, including atmospheric temperature, precipitation, and sea-level rise. The poor are then forced to adopt various coping strategies, such as reducing consumption and making investment choices on education, health, and livelihoods that may impact their long-term well-being.

Thus, if efforts to reduce poverty in Asia and the Pacific are to be sustained, strengthening disaster and climate resilience should be one of the core strategies of poverty reduction. Investments are needed to reduce risk by improving the design, construction, and maintenance of household and community assets and local infrastructure and strengthening resilience of livelihoods and associated skills. Moreover, with uncertainties inherent in disaster and climate risk, investments are also needed to strengthen systems for managing residual risk through strengthened early warning, disaster preparedness, and improved financial preparedness for disasters.

Community-driven development (CDD) projects (see Box 1) aim to reduce poverty and improve access of the poor to basic services. They support community-level subprojects focusing on improving infrastructure, including: (i) basic social services facilities: water system, school buildings, health station and daycare centers; (ii) basic access infrastructure: access roads and small bridges; (iii) community enterprise facilities; and (iv) environmental management-related infrastructure and strengthening capacity of communities and local institutions. CDD projects have worked well in Asia and the Pacific countries where local government capacity is limited or absent, including in post-conflict and disaster-affected areas.

Box 1: Defining Community-Driven Development

Community-Driven development (CDD) is a subset of the broader community-based development approach, and it gives control over planning decisions and investment resources for local development to community groups. It targets communities as a whole, working through community-based organizations in partnership with local governments as implementers, allowing them a greater role in the planning, design, and execution of development projects. The involvement of communities includes participation in assemblies or meetings; mapping of terrain, resources, facilities, services and people; supply or procurement of materials and labor; management of community contributions; procurement and management of contractors; operations and maintenance; community monitoring; and management and accounting for funds. A key element of CDD is the provision of resources, usually in block grants, directly to communities to implement development projects of their choice.

Source: Asian Development Bank

CDD projects that factor disaster and climate risk considerations in its overall design and in the implementation of individual subprojects, are ideal for strengthening community resilience and scaling up such resilience building measures. Pertaining to structural and nonstructural solutions, resilience-building measures can support communities in resisting, absorbing, adapting to, and recovering from the effects of climate and disaster-related shock and stresses in a timely and efficient manner, without jeopardizing their sustained socioeconomic advancement and development (see Table 1 for definition of key resilience-related terms). This is important for several reasons as described below and elaborated in Figure 1:

1. With the impacts of climate and disaster risk felt the most in communities, CDD projects, through CDD’s participatory approaches, allow identification of localized risk—their historical patterns and observed changes— and assess the exposure of people, their assets, and livelihoods.

2. With the root causes of climate and disaster risk being inextricably linked with socioeconomic conditions, ideal resilience-building solutions at the community level are those that are implemented as part of community development interventions related to infrastructure, skills development and livelihoods, which are the focus of CDD projects.

3. Strengthening resilience through CDD approaches is cost-effective and produces multiple dividends including reducing losses, unlocking the development potential of the area, and generating co-benefits.

4. When implemented in conjunction with policy and institutional reforms aimed at decentralization, such as reforms to institutionalize fiscal transfers to villages or to roll out bottom-up planning and budgeting processes, CDD projects can facilitate the participation of the poor and most vulnerable in decision-making processes, including decisions related to managing disaster and climate risk.

5. Experiences show that when designed with due consideration related to shock responsiveness, CDD projects are effective delivery mechanisms for channeling post-disaster recovery and reconstruction efforts.

Figure 1: Examples of Strengthening Resilience through Community-Driven Development Projects

Source: Asian Development Bank

Table 1: Definitions of Key Resilience-Related Terms

Climate change: A change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.^a

Climate change adaptation: In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate.^a

Disaster: A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic, or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community of society to cope using its own resources.^b

Disaster risk: The potential loss of life, injury, or destroyed or damaged assets which could occur to a system, a society, or a community in a specific period of time, determined probabilistically as a function of hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and capacity.^b

Disaster risk management: The application of disaster risk reduction policies and strategies to prevent new disaster risk, reduce existing disaster risk, and manage residual risk, contributing to the strengthening of resilience and reduction of disaster losses.^b

Resilience: The ability of countries, communities, businesses, and individual households to resist, absorb, recover from, and reorganize in response to natural hazard events, without jeopardizing their sustained socioeconomic advancement and development.^c

Shocks: Sudden, sharp events that threaten a community. In this document, shocks refer to the ones that are triggered by natural hazards.^d

Stresses: Factors that weaken the fabric of a community on a daily or cyclical basis. In this document, stresses refer to the ones that have origin in change in climate variables.^d

Vulnerability: The conditions determined by physical, social, economic, and environmental factors or processes that increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets, or systems to the impacts of hazards.^b

^a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2012: Glossary of terms. In C.B. Field, V. Barros, T.F. Stocker, D. Qin, D.J. Dokken, K.L. Ebi, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, G.-K. Plattner, S.K. Allen, M. Tignor, and P.M. Midgley, eds. Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the IPCC. Cambridge University Press. pp. 555–564. ^b UNISDR Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction. http://www.preventionweb.net/english/professional/terminology/ ^c ADB. 2013. Investing In Resilience: Ensuring a Disaster-Resistant Future. Manila. ^d Rockefeller Foundation. Adapted from 100 Resilient Cities. http://www.100resilientcities.org/

1.2 Who is this Guidance Note for?

Projects that adopt CDD or community-based development as an approach spread across various sectors, including agriculture, rural development, urban informal settlement upgrading, social development, among others. This guidance note is for practitioners across government agencies involved in designing CDD and/or community-based development projects and in supporting implementation through different subprojects. It is also for practitioners from development partner organizations that support governments in the Asia and Pacific region in developing and implementing CDD projects through technical assistance and financing.

1.3 What does the Guidance Note contain?

Apart from this introductory and conclusion section, this guidance note has two sections:

Section 2 offers a common understanding of the opportunities for Scaling Up Resilience-Building Measures through Communi...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Tables, Figures, and Boxes
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 / Introduction
• 2 / Why Scale Up Resilience-Building Measures Through Community-Driven Development Projects
• 3 / How to Scale Up Resilience-Building Measures through Community-Driven Development Projects
• 4 / Conclusion
• Back Cover