Assessing Progress on Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation in Development Processes, SCR Discussion Paper 2
Abstract
Climate change threatens development and the progress needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. With shifting seasons, increasing water scarcity, and potentially more frequent and intense extreme events (IPCC 2007), climate change is bringing a series of disaster and livelihood impacts to the poorest and most vulnerable countries and communities, and is placing development assistance at risk. In managing such risks to development, there is a significant overlap of concepts and shared goals between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA). In Mitchell and Van Aalst (2008), we reviewed the extent of convergence between the two at a number of scales, finding limited integration and both approaches struggling to be mainstreamed into regular development programming. The authors suggested that continued separation risked policy incoherence and ineffective use of resources, due to administrative inefficiencies, duplication of efforts and damaging competition between different inter-sectoral coordinating mechanisms. Since 2008, the momentum toward convergence has continued to grow and analysis in this 2010 assessment indicates pockets and trajectories of integration that promise improved development outcomes. However, it also demonstrates continued separation of DRR, CCA and development in some geographic areas and significant structural barriers to convergence in critical institutions at different scales.
Citation
Mitchell, T.; van Aalst, M.; Villanueva, P.S. Assessing Progress on Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation in Development Processes, SCR Discussion Paper 2. (2010) :
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