Reducing vulnerability

Programme aim 1: coping with environmental change and conflict

Poor people are the most vulnerable. Their lives are highly susceptible to shocks or disruptions caused by climate change, natural disasters, conflict and the spread of infectious disease.

fetching water from a well by donkey The unsustainable use of fossil fuels in developed countries makes the planet more vulnerable to climate change, and the developing world is the hardest hit. Even a small degree of environmental degradation can damage the local ecology and livelihoods.

The effect of climate change, combined with rapidly changing socio-economic conditions, is an increased incidence of natural disasters that create more refugees than wars and conflict. Today, 96 per cent of all deaths from natural disasters occur in developing countries.

Armed conflicts are increasing and are now mainly within rather than between states. Poorer and more marginalised people are the principal victims of such conflicts rather than members of the armed forces, and the death and destruction that conflict brings to people living in poverty also contributes to their displacement and the disruption of their livelihoods.

Climate change, environmental degradation and under-resourced public health systems in developing countries also aid the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDs and malaria – to which poor people are particularly vulnerable.

While the challenges are great, technology can offer viable solutions that change lives for the better.

Practical Action’s approach to reducing vulnerability

Practical Action works with poor people in Africa, Asia and Latin America to build on their skills and knowledge and use appropriate technologies to help them develop more secure lives, cope with the risks they face and adapt their lives successfully to meet future challenges. Practical Action’s approach includes:

  • Enabling communities to organise and plan their own development.
  • Increasing poor people's access to technologies and skills for sustainable agriculture production and managing natural resources such as soil, land and water.
  • Increasing access to a range of skills so that poor people have more ways of making a living.
  • Helping people to assess risks and find ways of coping better with hazards including drought, flood and conflict.
  • Working directly with local people and also with partners so we can share our work and reach more people. 
  • Working at all levels from local to international in order to have a bigger impact on the policies that affect vulnerable people.

What we want to achieve

The Reducing Vulnerability programme focuses on poor people living in fragile rural environments and has two goals:

Goal 1: More secure livelihoods and long term food security, based on technologies and skills for natural resource management.

Goal 2: Better ability to cope with the risks of natural and complex hazards, including climate change, based on technologies and participation in risk management

The programme also has an international objective related to each goal which seeks to influence national and international development agencies to adopt the approaches Practical Action has developed through its own work.

Impact

During the financial year 2007-8, almost 340,000 people benefited from the programme's work through 43 projects in 11 countries.

Goal 1: The programmes of work are well established producing good results in terms of empowering communities and making links between poor people and local government and other service providers. There have also been very visible increases in production and incomes – from sandbar cropping in Bangladesh (the project awarded the 2007 APFED prize for outstanding contribution to managing fragile environments) to crescent terraces in Sudan.

Goal 2: Over the past two years our Disaster Risk Reduction work has spread from Sri Lanka and Peru to the rest of our regional offices, and we are now one of a small group of NGOs recognised as experts on the subject. Two case studies of our work in Peru and Bangladesh have been selected by ISDR (the UN agency responsible for disaster reduction) as examples of good practice.

Integrating Approaches: Sustainable Livelihoods, Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation 3 December 2009, London
As part of an international series, Practical Action is hosting a seminar bringing together academics, practitioners and policy-makers to explore the links between Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches (SLA) and approaches to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. Read more »