24,809 research outputs found
University-Community Collaboration for Climate Justice Education and Organizing: Partnerships in Canada, Brazil, and Africa
In the coming decades, countries around the world will face increasingly severe challenges related to global climate change. While the details vary from country to country, the impacts will be especially grave for marginalized people, whose access to food, potable water, and safe shelter may be threatened due to fluctuations in rainfall and temperature and to disasters related to extreme weather events. International strategies for addressing climate change are in disarray. The complicated financial and carbon-trading mechanisms promoted by the United Nations and other global institutions are far too bureaucratic, weak, internally inconsistent, and scattered to represent meaningful solutions to climate change. Already the housing, health, and livelihoods of marginalized people worldwide are being threatened by the ramifications of climate change. This means that the marginalized in every community, by definition, have expertise in how priorities should be set to address climate change. Their experiences, knowledge, and views must be part of local, regional, national, and international governanceâincluding urban planning and housing, water management, agriculture, health, and finance policies.This research was supported by the International Development Research Centre, grant number IDRC GRANT NO. 106002-00
Why Information Matters: A Foundation for Resilience
Embracing Change: The Critical Role of Information, a research project by the Internews' Center for Innovation & Learning, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, combines Internews' longstanding effort to highlight the important role ofinformation with Rockefeller's groundbreaking work on resilience. The project focuses on three major aspects:- Building knowledge around the role of information in empowering communities to understand and adapt to different types of change: slow onset, long-term, and rapid onset / disruptive;- Identifying strategies and techniques for strengthening information ecosystems to support behavioral adaptation to disruptive change; and- Disseminating knowledge and principles to individuals, communities, the private sector, policymakers, and other partners so that they can incorporate healthy information ecosystems as a core element of their social resilience strategies
a review of the instruments of the EU, Germany, France, and Italy
This paper explores how the idea of resilience has made its way into the external action of the European Union (EU) and selected member states (Germany, France and Italy) as a means to address areas of limited statehood and contested orders. It examines the debates informing the development of the EUâs external action and current concerns in economic, political, and migration instruments. The main findings are that the EUâs economic and political instruments have become gradually dominated by resilience framings, with an emphasis on multilateralism, adaptation, and long-term and bottom-up responses. Resilience also increasingly drives the humanitarian assistance and development cooperation policies in Germany and to a lesser extent France, which have gradually moved away from top-down administrative and centralized models of governance. The EU and member states like Italy, however, have been more reluctant to foster resilience to address migration issues. Instead, they have prevented flows of irregular migrants into Europe by means of containment strategies such as improving border management, policing, and surveillance and combating smuggling networks
The Implication of Hyogo Framework for Action for Disaster Resilience Education
The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) is the first global strategy to provide a detailed work plan for different sectors and actors to work on disaster risk reduction. Although, the Priority Action 3 of the HFA demand for a global call to governments and others to use knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels. Evidence suggests that there are only very few effective initiatives that have been implemented by stakeholders and especially in the higher education sector where the future policy makers and practitioners are trained. This creates a significant challenge as the ten year plan of the HFA is coming to an end in 2015. This paper attempts to view the world in post-HFA and suggested a framework on mapping and integrating disaster risk reduction into formal, informal and non-formal education at policy, practice and community levels. A case study approach was used to examine how the HFA has been embraced into disaster resilience related higher education programme. The study argues that integrating disaster resilience into education is a key factor for reducing the adverse impact of future disasters. The suggested framework provides an insight into current gaps in knowledge, innovation and education and proposes solutions for effective integration of disaster resilience education at all levels
Towards a Resilient Future: Experiences with Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation
This testimony shows the urgency of the problems faced by people on the front line of climate change, which is exposing more and more people to increased risk of dis This testimony shows the urgency of the problems faced by people on the front line of climate change, which is exposing more and more people to increased risk of diaster and directly affecting their lives and livelihoods. Tragically, the global community turns a blind eye to the severity of the risks posed by climate change and is doing too little to help people prepare themselves for these risks. Community managed disaster risk reduction (CMDRR) is an effective strategy of addressing the impacts and effects of climate change and reducing communities' vulnerability to disasters
challenges to multi-level capacity building
Communities facing the effects of climate change are actively trying to boost
their resilience. At the same time, governments are mainstreaming climate
change into their development frameworks. Close examination of current
practice, however, points at a disconnect between government policy and
community initiatives. This study explores how strengthening specific
capabilities at various levels can ensure synchronization of policy and
practice and further community resilience in face of climate change. Choosing
an approach that appreciates the interplay of top-Ââdown and bottom-Ââup
logics towards performance under stress, it illust rates that understanding
resilience in terms of capacity opens the door to practical thinking on
policies as well as practices. Evidence is taken from case studies in Chile
and Vietnam to show how governments can play an enabling role when connecting
their efforts to initiatives taken by communities. At the same time,
top-Ââdown structures, such as the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), can help
to break silos between different (inter)national political agendas and
underscore the need to link top-Ââdown and bottom-Ââup approaches to ensure
resilience. This paper contends that improving communities' adaptive capacity
demands bridging the disconnect between multiple levels of policy and
practice. In doing so, different, and too often conflicting, values,
interests, and political agendas need to be aligned. Moreconcretely, we found
that resilience, as an emergent property of human systems, can be enhanced
when government and local stakeholders work together in a number of specific
areas. For instance, combining multi-Ââstakeholder platforms in which diverse
actors â ranging from policy-Ââmakers to researchers to community
representatives â translate lessons learned at the community level intolocal
and national policy, with initiatives aimed at strengthening capacitiesand
ensuring access to relevant assets at the community level
Resilient livelihoods and food security in coastal aquatic agricultural systems: Investing in transformational change
Aquatic agricultural systems (AAS) are diverse production and livelihood systems where families cultivate a range of crops, raise livestock, farm or catch fish, gather fruits and other tree crops, and harness natural resources such as timber, reeds, and wildlife. Aquatic agricultural systems occur along freshwater floodplains, coastal deltas, and inshore marine waters, and are characterized by dependence on seasonal changes in productivity, driven by seasonal variation in rainfall, river flow, and/or coastal and marine processes. Despite this natural productivity, the farming, fishing, and herding communities who live in these systems are among the poorest and most vulnerable in their countries and regions. This report provides an overview of the scale and scope of development challenges in coastal aquatic agricultural systems, their significance for poor and vulnerable communities, and the opportunities for partnership and investment that support efforts of these communities to secure resilient livelihoods in the face of multiple risks
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