Global recommendations

1. Complex threats need integrated solutions

Strengthen local risk assessments

The current practice of developing risk maps are limited to mapping hazards, and rarely portray vulnerabilities and their interconnectedness, community exposure and community capacities. Localised risks assessments are essential. The process of the risk assessments should be strengthened with community participation and done regularly. All of this must be institutionalised, so that it does not become a one-off exercise that quickly becomes outdated. Government must prioritise allocating resources for this and using these local risk analyses to inform local development plans, policies and processes.  

Local data is needed

There is still a need for local, disaggregated data. With disasters becoming more complex, the identification of those most at risk desegregated by age, sex, and persons with disabilities is crucial to respond to need at the individual level. 

Focus on lives, livelihoods and assets

Include both social and economic analyses of communities at risk before proposing preparedness and risk reduction actions. Keep lives, livelihoods and assets at the forefront of disaster protection.  

Leverage formal and informal engagement mechanisms

Non-structural measures to address threats often rely on communities’ abilities to gather together and identify solutions that they can carry out. Identify existing mechanisms for community engagement, whether these are formally established or informally created. Communities find different avenues to collaborate, some of which can be unique to particular contexts. For example, in some communities faith-based organisations are the most trusted and so their role becomes crucial in community engagement and development.

Increase research in collaboration with science and academia

Bring together scientific/technical knowledge and local resilience practices. Blended learning can support communities most at risk to develop innovative solutions to reducing the complexity of disasters.

Civic education, awareness-raising and associations 

Programmes that support communities’ civic engagement play a key role in ensuring participation in decision-making spaces. These include awareness-raising activities, resilience education days, and incentives for fostering a culture of local associations. 

Local leadership in programming

Various suggestions were made on this point. One is to adopt a ‘street-level upwards’ programme design for organisations working with partners on the ground: this includes planning for a period of co-creation of the project based on community priorities. Another recommendation was to make a conscious effort to level power relations by, for example, ensuring that consultation processes are structured so that everyone’s input holds the same weight. 

Adopt an ‘adaptive management’ approach

This approach refers to project plans that include a degree of flexibility to be adapted as consultations with community groups evolve. From a donor perspective this translates into increased flexibility in the project and the level of budget detail required from funded organisations so that activities and budget lines can shift according to community priorities. Moreover, funding should be granted on the condition that projects are co-designed with communities most at risk.

Strengthen and leverage local skills and knowledge

Capacity strengthening activities are an important part of working with many community groups. They should be bespoke services with needs jointly identified and tailored to increasing leadership capacities. Local knowledge should be leveraged for risk assessments and planning by governments and CSOs alike. International actors should consider approaching capacity strengthening more as a way to identify complementarities between local and international partners, instead of a way to ‘pass on’ one’s own strengths to the other. This can ensure that local skills are effectively leveraged in national and international settings. 

Adopt a human rights based approach to resilience

This idea rests on the understanding that communities most at risk have the power and capacity to fulfil their human rights and create change for themselves, their families and their communities. This can be done by planning for, and delivering, sensitisation activities on human rights, the rights-based approach and how to link risk to advocating for duty bearers to ensure these rights can be realised.

3. Strengthen government accountability for good governance on risk management

Strengthen local democratic structures

Local democratic structures are the main entry point for community resilience. Processes that define the roles and responsibilities of elected officials and citizens, that provide mechanisms for monitoring and accountability, as well as platforms for citizen participation, are some of the core elements of these structures. Identifying gaps and working to strengthen local authorities is a first step to building local resilience. National laws should be reviewed with the aim of clearly identifying responsibilities for resilience building and the distribution of roles across levels and sectors. Resilience plans and standard operating procedures for risk management should be integrated in local government development plans.

Strengthen monitoring, accountability and transparency

These are key aspects of good governance and should be strengthened at the local level. Legal mechanisms for raising concerns and holding the government accountable should be established in all localities. This provides a space for communities, governments and local CSOs to jointly assess if plans and policies reflect the needs of people most at risk and effectively build their resilience. Public reviews of local and national plans should be held, to allow for community groups to feed back on the effectiveness of the actions planned by the government.

Empower community members to complement local government roles

Individuals and households can play an important part in strengthening resilience in addition to local government actions. There should be mechanisms for community members to individually understand their vulnerabilities and plan ways to cope with and adapt to the threats they might face. For example, local governments could encourage each household to develop their own specific guidance on disaster preparedness (e.g. defining specific actions households need to take when different levels of early warnings are issued). Supporting individual resilience is a strong component of creating community resilience.

Strengthen the role of CSOs as facilitators

Local CSOs are best placed to facilitate interaction between communities and their governments. If national targets for community engagement are included in resilience plans and translated into specific responsibilities at the local level, CSOs can support local authorities in ensuring these targets are reached. Moreover, CSOs can provide technical advice to support local governments where strong expertise on resilience building is lacking.

5. Increase availability of finance for disaster risk reduction at the local level

Commit to devolve funding to local actors

Following the Grand Bargain commitments and other pledges to increase funding directly to local actors, more needs to be done to achieve them. International funding structures should be reviewed and compliance requirements simplified: this is an important step to encourage local actors to apply for funding. INGOs could take the role of guarantors with their local partners to address donors’ risk aversion. Funding regulations should be reviewed to ensure that grassroots organisations can easily receive financial support. National governments can devise mechanisms to devolve more budgets to local authorities. Specific grants could be designed for local governments wishing to implement resilience measures; resilience innovation funds to local governments can also be a way to devolve budgets downwards. Where development budgets are the responsibility of local authorities, increased awareness of risk-informed approaches to development could help integrate resilience at the local level. Businesses’ corporate social responsibility contributions could be channelled towards funding for local resilience. INGOs should strengthen local organisations’ capacities for project design, fundraising and implementation, with the aim of fully equipping communities to roll out their own resilience activities.

Identify innovative approaches to local funding

It is important to identify transferable lessons learned on innovation in local funding that can be replicated. These include building funding mechanisms and income-generating activities into local projects. Saving groups, micro-grants and micro-insurance are just some examples of this. Resilience building loans or cooperative-managed grants can also be effective tools to increase local funding. The design of bankable projects (Ellis and Pillay, 2017) is another approach to generate funding locally. Seed funding for piloting bankable projects and other income-generating programmes can be used to prove their validity and cost-effectiveness. 

Champion collaboration over competition

Competition among local groups and CSOs is often a natural result of scarce resources available at the local level. However, collaboration is a success factor in accessing resources, especially for local organisations and essential for community level resilience. Championing collaboration over competition should be a priority for CSOs at all levels: CSOs should outline the benefits of collaboration and define a set of principles to foster collaboration, level power dynamics and leverage local leadership.

7. Prioritise nature-based solutions

Conduct policy reviews

Increased global attention on ecosystem-based approaches to resilience provides an opportunity to review older national policies and identify areas where effectiveness can be increased with nature-based solutions. Advisory boards of scientists, professionals and community members can support the identification of effective nature-based solutions in each sector (3). Embedding environmental protection in national legislation is an effective tool for increasing awareness of the danger of environmental degradation. Financial institutions could create mechanisms (eg. bonds, incentives) to support the uptake of nature conservation by individuals and businesses.

Distribute responsibilities at all levels

The benefits of utilising ecosystem-based approaches for resilience can be seen at both national and local levels. It is therefore important that responsibilities for this are shared between national and local governments, and that communities have the ability to participate in environmental management activities in their locality, for example by joining nature conservation groups that act and advocate for environmental protection. The involvement of community members could also be encouraged through volunteering opportunities.

Communicate the benefits of nature-based solutions

Use media channels, art, or community discussions to highlight environmental conservation activities in your area, and showcase the biodiversity that exists in your region and how it may be in danger of being lost. Nature-based solutions education can also be integrated into school curriculums and youth groups’ initiatives (4).