Practical Action’s Flood Resilience Programme
Read the latest from the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance.
Our role is to work with communities around the world to help them plan and adapt their lives to cope better with flooding. The Alliance consists of humanitarian, development, research and private sector partners who share a vision that floods should have no negative impact on the ability of people and businesses to thrive.
2013 – 2024
Africa, Asia, Latin America
Climate resilience
Title: Flood Resilience Programme
Dates: 2013 – 2024
Location: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Nepal, Peru, Senegal and Zimbabwe, with global advocacy from the UK
Our role: As part of the Flood Resilience Programme, our role was to work with communities to make resilience a way of life by advising people how to adapt and plan for predictable flood events and sharing our knowledge and experience of what works with communities, practitioners, and decision-makers.
Participants: We worked with over 120,000 people in more than 80 communities.
Project Budget for phase II (2018-2024): £7.2 million
Theme: Climate resilience
Lead Donors: Z Zurich Foundation, Swiss Development Cooperation, Bristol University and Insuresilience Fund
Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance Partners: Concern Worldwide, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET-International), London School of Economics (LSE), Mercy Corps, Plan International, Practical Action and Zurich Insurance Group.
people globally have been affected by climate and weather related disasters in the past decade
of disasters triggered by natural hazards were caused by extreme weather and climate related events
increase in climate related disasters since the 1990s
We worked with local people across the globe to use the innovative Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC) framework and tool developed by the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance partners. To meet the increasing demand to measure resilience to multiple hazards in order to accelerate climate change adaptation, the FRMC has now evolved into the Climate Resilience Measurement for Communities (CRMC) tool.
This approach helps communities understand why they’re at risk, plans interventions that build resilience, and provides them with the knowledge and tools they need to have a say in how development and disaster risk reduction investment happens.
We generate evidence of what works by demonstrating simple, ingenious solutions, selected and designed with local people to unlock potential, building on local resources and capacities. We use our online knowledge repository to broker our own and others’ knowledge, supporting practitioners, organizations, institutions, and decision-makers in designing and implementing flood resilience policies and practices.
We use the evidence gained from our own and our partners’ work and research to influence decision-makers at all levels to invest in climate change adaptation and resilience. And where adaptation is no longer an option, to encourage those with the means and responsibility to pay for the losses and damages incurred.
We know that pre-event investment reduces the losses and damages caused by floods. We seek to expand the scope and reach of the programme with new partnerships like those we have with the Swiss Development Cooperation in the Andean region of South America and with the Insuresilience Fund in Nepal.
We have become a community that says what we want to others. We are standing up, we are saying: Yes, there is a solution. We are putting forward proposals, and for us that means resilience.
Eva Luz Dávila, president of Carosio’s Asociation of Victims and Affected People and community brigade leader in Peru
Our vision is for floods to have no impact on people’s and businesses’ ability to thrive. Through a collection of six country projects and global level advocacy and knowledge work, we prepared, raised awareness and equipped communities to manage the impact of floods while encouraging social, political and financial investment in community resilience through partnerships:
Our flood resilience programme introduced technology, tools and knowledge to forecast extreme weather and build resilience effectively:
This project contributes to progress against four of the 17 SDGs.
Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being
By investing in resilient infrastructure and providing training in hygiene measures, we’re reducing the risk of communicable diseases spreading during floods.
Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
By promoting holistic disaster risk management at all levels, we are helping save lives, livelihoods and reducing the financial cost of disasters in communities across the globe.
Goal 13: Climate Action
We’re working with communities, practitioners, researchers, and decision-makers across the globe to build resilience against climate change related hazards.
Goal 15: Life on Land
We’re working with communities to protect and restore ecosystems and invest in nature-based solutions which can reduce flood risk.
Help us work with communities to tackle some of the world’s toughest problems.
