Adaptation to climate change in the countries of - Mekong River ...

Adaptation to climate change in the countries of the Lower Mekong Basin
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on identified risks and vulnerabilities, Oxfam’s Livelihood programme is working with
related departments regarding crop diversification, irrigation, and evacuation centres,
maintenance of livestock and poultry, and the safe storage of food items, preservation of
seeds etc.
• Oxfam’s emergency preparedness for emergency response: This includes producing
guidelines and standards, regularly collecting information from the field, developing and
practicing assessment and baseline data collection, organizing training on humanitarian
needs assessment, and arranging contingency catastrophe funds to begin humanitarian
responses. This process helps appraise existing development programmes in relation to
humanitarian activities such as preparedness, mitigation and protection.
• Partners’ Emergency Preparedness: Initiatives have been taken to improve partners’
capacity for responding to emergencies. Oxfam is developing partners’ capacity
assessment tools to identify gaps in capacity and to design training manuals accordingly.
Major training courses will be held on conducting humanitarian needs assessments,
rescue and evacuation, monitoring and evaluation, SPHERE, gender and humanitarian
response, designing humanitarian projects, and project management, etc. Partners
will also be trained in establishing community-managed early warning mechanisms,
developing contingency plans and organizing emergency drills.
• Oxfam’s involvement in Inter-agency Coordination Groups DMWG and CCWG: Oxfam
is promoting the partnership approach in disaster management, and is one of the core
members of the Disaster Management Working Group (DMWG). This group facilitates
inter-agency humanitarian needs assessment, improves coordination, and conducts
research and advocacy.
8.17 CARE
In keeping with its core poverty-fighting mission, CARE’s aim is to help the most vulnerable
communities adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. CARE focuses on community
based adaptation using known climate predictions and participatory analysis of vulnerability,
and by tapping local knowledge and experience in building adaptive capacity.
CARE has many years of experience in participatory methodology development, supporting
community planning in the context of sustainable livelihoods development and disaster risk
reduction. This experience contributes to and forms the foundation for the development of
CARE’s growing expertise in community based adaptation. CARE is building on its experience
carrying out adaptation projects by developing regional ‘learning programmes’ which function
as incubators and test-beds for ground-breaking ways to design, implement, monitor and
evaluate the effectiveness of adaptation projects. They also demonstrate the complementary
roles that national government, local authorities and civil society can play in helping highly
vulnerable people adapt to the impacts of climate change.