IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Managing the Risks from Climate Extremes at the Local LevelChapter 5of self-generated knowledge induces discussions of proactive adaptation strategies and can uncover existing capacitywithin the community and important current shortcomings. [5.4.4]Effectively communicating risk involves multiple pathway exchanges between decisionmakers and localcitizens (high agreement, medium evidence). Viewing risk communication as a social process allows for effectiveparticipatory approaches, relationship building, and the production of visual, compelling, and engaging information foruse by local stakeholders. [5.3.1]Inequalities influence local coping and adaptive capacity and pose disaster risk management and adaptationchallenges (high agreement, robust evidence). These inequalities reflect differences in gender, age, wealth, class,ethnicity, health, and disability. They may also be reflected in differences in access to livelihoods and entitlements.Understanding and increasing the awareness of coping mechanisms in the context of local-level livelihood is importantto climate change adaptation planning and risk management. This signifies the need for the identification andaccommodation of these differences to enhance opportunities arising from their incorporation into adaptation planningand disaster response. [5.5.1]Ecosystem management and restoration activities that focus on addressing deteriorating environmentalconditions are essential to protecting and sustaining people’s livelihoods in the face of climate extremes(high agreement, robust evidence). Such activities include, among others, watershed rehabilitation, agro-ecology,and forest landscape restoration. Moreover, provision of better access to and control of resources will improve people’slivelihoods, and build long-term adaptive capacity. Such approaches have been recommended in the past, but havenot been incorporated into capacity building to date. [5.3.3]Local-level institutions and self-organization are critical for social learning, innovations, and action; all areessential elements for local risk management and adaptation (high agreement, medium evidence). Adaptivecapacities are not created in a vacuum – local institutions provide the enabling environment for community-basedadaptation planning and implementation. Local participation (community-based organizations, development committees)contributes to empowering the most vulnerable and strengthening innovations. Addressing political and cultural issuesat the local levels are fundamental to the development of any strategy aiming at sustained disaster risk managementand adaptation. [5.4]The rapid urbanization of the sub-national populations and the growth of megacities, especially indeveloping countries, have led to the emergence of highly vulnerable urban communities, particularlythrough informal settlements and inadequate land management, presenting challenges to disastermanagement (high agreement, robust evidence). Addressing these critical vulnerabilities means consideration ofthe social, political, and economic driving forces, including rural-to-urban migration, changing livelihoods, and wealthinequalities as key inputs into decisionmaking. [5.5.1]Effective local adaptation strategy requires addressing a number of factors that limit the ability of localpeople to undertake necessary measures to protect themselves against climate extremes and disasters(high agreement, robust evidence). Closing the information gap is critical to reducing vulnerability of naturalresourcedependent communities. Maintaining the ability of a community to ensure equitable access and entitlementto key resources and assets is essential to building local adaptive capacity in a changing climate. Moreover, capacitybuilding and development of new skills for diversifying local livelihoods are key to flexibility in disaster reduction,improving local adaptation, and managing disasters. [5.5]Comprehensive assessments of local disaster risk are lacking in many places (high agreement, mediumevidence). As a foundation for management options, the methodology for locally based vulnerability assessments(exposure and sensitivity) and potential costs needs more development and testing for applications to the localcontext. [5.6]Insurance is a risk transfer mechanism used at the local level (medium agreement, medium evidence). Risksharing (formal insurance, micro-insurance, crop insurance) can be a tool for risk reduction and for recovering livelihoods294