Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance

The Practical Action Bangladesh team will target improving Disaster Risk Management, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) planning and increased finance for DRR/CCA at the local level with the aims to achieve the following:

• Ex-ante resilience of communities is enhanced in line with climate impacts.
• Avert and minimise loss of livelihoods and assets through improved early warning and early action.
• Introduce parametric insurance services to vulnerable communities.

Practical Action is working with rural and urban communities in Bolivia to strengthen resilience at the community level, with a focus on strengthening EWS’s, improving DRM, DRR and CCA planning, increasing finance and introducing resilient practices related to insurance. The Bolivia team will work to achieve the following:

• Anticipatory actions triggered by timely climate information.
• Integrate effective flood risk reduction measures led by communities.
• Ensure that wildfire risk reduction efforts are considered from a local perspective in project and local and national policies.
• Introduce insurance mechanisms to increase wildfire and flood resilience to those most vulnerable.

Through the Climate Resilience Programme in Nepal, our team have a goal to increase social, political and financial investment in community-based flood and heat resilience-building through public, private and third-sector partnerships. They aim to achieve the following outcomes:

• Increase ex-ante resilience of communities at risk.
• Improve early warning and early action.
• Enable quick recovery of people’s livelihoods through compensation and/or insurance.

In order to build safer and more resilient communities in the Rímac and Vilcanota river basins, Practical Action’s work in Peru focuses on three priority topics: early warning systems, the role of ecosystems in disaster risk management, and governance and investments. Through their work as part of the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, the team aim to achieve the following:

• Foster interaction between sectors, people and innovative technological tools.
• Target regional and global initiatives that will help to leverage our impact.
• Advocate for improved decision making for prospective risk reduction.
• Work alongside national entities to ensure that climate and weather forecasts trigger ex-ante action.

As our focus shifts from flood resilience to wider climate resilience, the Practical Action Senegal team will work to achieve the following outcomes:

• Establish an effective and inclusive community-based early warning system (EWS).
• Work on improving disaster risk reduction planning.
• Work on improving local government access to decentralized climate funds.
• Strengthen the resilience of communities affected by floods and heatwaves in West Africa by integrating nature-based solutions into development planning.
• Improve the living conditions of urban communities exposed to the effects of poor urban planning exacerbated by the impacts of climate change.