Climate Change and Local Level Disaster Risk Reduction Planning ...

such elaborate frameworks. This calls for a simpler framework, which could go as a subset of
these sophisticated frameworks, for local level disaster managers and policy making personnel. In
this section, we provided a simple framework for mainstreaming climate change concerns in local
level disaster risk management process.
We propose that, for any mainstreaming to happen, it is important for the local disaster risk
managers and other stakeholders to understand what national and regional climate change
assessments mean for the scales at which these personnel operate. Because these personnel work
at local scale (city, group of villages etc) and often lack the perspective of climate and long-term
implications of climate change, it is essential that a local Climate Task Group (CTG) is
established. The CTG should consist of personnel from disaster risk management, climate and
atmospheric and policy making domains (O’Brien et al, 2006). Such a group is necessary as the
disaster management personnel alone cannot obtain and infer the often challenging climate
information available from global and regional climate change studies and reports. However, the
required personnel may not always be available at the administrative scale under consideration
(e.g. small and medium cities and institutions). Under those circumstances, cross-scale
collaboration becomes necessary. There may be similar groups existing for monitoring drought
or flood conditions, similar to the Drought Monitoring Center established in Karnataka State of
India or Flood Management Boards in Vietnam which are provided with capacities to assess and
monitor local drought and flood situations (Imamura and To, 1997; Samra, 2004). These Centers
and Boards could form a good beginning as they have capacities such as data processing that are
relevant for the operation of CTG. In addition to its role in disaster risk reduction planning, the
CTG can also play a vital role in integrating disaster and climate risk reduction aspects in
developmental planning as well. For example, the representative of CTG could be a member in
local level development committees similar to the District Development Committees and Village
Watershed Committees established in India. Such integration would enable free flow of
information.
The next step is to identify the region’s vulnerabilities and how climate change may influence
those vulnerabilities (Thomalla et al, 2006). This brings the crucial need for identification of
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