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

to explain the concept of adaptation and adaptive capacity (Burton et al, 2002). In general, the
improvement in adaptive capacity refers to either increment in financial resources, reduction in
poverty, provision of diversified income sources, better governance, social and political capital
and even equitable flow of resources etc (Smithers and Smit, 1997; Yohe and Tol, 2001).
Capacity building has been the integral part of various disaster risk management programs
worldwide (Alexander, 1997; Benson et al, 2001; Rocha and Christoplos, 2001). The usual topics
covered in such programs are disaster risk management planning, rescue and evacuation planning,
relief planning, emergency communication, fire fighting, conducting risk and vulnerability
assessments, hazard and vulnerability mapping, disaster risk mitigation systems etc. Some times,
these programs also include the role of different stakeholders and achieving coordination among
them in disaster risk reduction (Lynne et al, 1997; Seth and Jain, 2002). Involvement of
communities in disaster risk management and planning has been considered a necessity owing to
the capacities and knowledge that the communities possess those could be of use in effective
disaster risk reduction (Yodmani, 2001; Pearce, 2003; Allen, 2006). There is a need to enhance
the existing capacities in order to deal with the future disasters and increasing uncertainty
(Coutney et al, 1997; Shook, 1997). Experiences have suggested that the existing capacities are
not sufficient even to deal with the current level of disasters and that the disaster intensities
would only increase in future (Burton et al, 2002; McEntire et al, 2002; Sperling and Szekely,
2005). Consideration of future vulnerabilities is important in order to design effective capacity
building programs as the current and future vulnerabilities differ in the context of climate change
(Brooks, 2003).
Capacities are of different kinds and different stakeholders need to asses their capacities in order
to deal with the climate change related risks (Adgers et al, 2005). In the context of climate change
and disaster management, capacities refer to institutional, technological, economic and social
capacities to plan and implement programs of change that could reduce the vulnerabilities and
increase the capacities of communities. Capacity needs could include simple aspects such as
mutual understanding on the terminology used by climate change and disaster risk management
personnel. Often, it required to make a clear distinction for the meaning of the word ‘mitigation’
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