Climate change is likely to increase both the frequency and severity of extreme weather events around the world, such as typhoons and flash floods. Community-based approaches use local knowledge to cope with and adapt to the impacts of climate change. These are quickly becoming an important element in preparing for climate related disasters.

Historically, disaster management has been led by outside ‘experts’ and concentrated on technological solutions. In the past 20 years, however, developing countries have increasingly turned to community-based approaches. These focus more on building local capacity to adapt and address the root causes of vulnerability, rather than focusing on responses to isolated disaster events. Research of early Philippine National Red Cross initiatives examines how Community-Based Disaster Preparedness (CBDP) programmes can reduce community vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

In the CBDP approach, communities develop practical skills to help them respond quickly and flexibly to changing environmental conditions and possible future disasters. In the Philippines, CBDP projects work with barangay communities, the lowest level of local government. The barangay communities have formal leadership structures, but decision-making remains a negotiated process amongst communities. The main functions of the CBDP approach are to:

• create opportunities for disaster managers to pass technical information and training on to local people, and for local people to communicate their needs and priorities to disaster managers
• raise awareness of local hazard risks and the causes of vulnerability
• allow disaster managers to access local knowledge, ideas and resources, and build on local coping and adaptive strategies
• engage disaster managers in community processes, such as early warning systems that are linked to regional or national systems, but that also use local information and build on existing local capacities
• mobilise local people and link communities with the coping and adaptation strategies of governments, non-government organisations (NGOs) and donors.

Several factors influence the success of CBDP projects, including funding and the political situations in which the projects are carried out. The main weakness is that local communities often lack the resources and institutions that allow them to make key decisions and to address bigger issues that cause vulnerability, such as deforestation.

In the Philippines, community-based approaches have helped to reduce vulnerability and strengthened the ability of local people to adapt to climate change. But CBDP initiatives work best when integrated into wider disaster prevention and sustainable development programmes, rather than when used as stand-alone projects. If the social and political aspects of vulnerability are not addressed, then CBDP projects can disempower local communities. To avoid this, the researcher recommends:

• Disaster management programmes should further prioritise local knowledge and institutions over outside experts.
• Local communities must be given the power to take decisions and act on them independently, without relying on supporting organisations.
• Local communities must contribute to Disaster Management policies.
• Government and NGOs should develop partnerships to make it easier to support small-scale disaster management initiatives that are integrated into wider sustainable development policy and planning. They should also run projects that address the social and political causes of vulnerability.
• All groups involved in CBDP should recognise they bring different sets of values and expectations to the projects.

Source(s):
‘Community-based disaster preparedness and climate adaptation: local capacity building in the Philippines’, Disasters 30.1, pages 81−101, by Katrina Allen, 2006
‘Building Community Resilience to Disaster in the Philippines’ by K. Allen, in The ‘World Disasters Report 2004’, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: Geneva, edited by J. Walter, 2004
‘Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People’,  Earthscan: London, edited by G. Bankhoff, G. Frerks, and D. Hilhorst, 2004

Funded by: The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

id21 Research Highlight: 22 June 2006

Further Information:
Katrina Allen
Social Research Associates
12 Princess Road West
Leicester LE1 6TP
UK

Tel: +44 (0)116 285 8604
Fax: +44 (0)116 285 7637
Contact the contributor: kmallen@uk2.net

Social Research Associates, UK

Other related links:
'Focusing on gender differences can help countries respond to climate change'

'Help yourself: how small islands can adapt to climate change'

'Developments in adaptation: new responses to climate change'

'Insuring against climate change: who will pay for the poorest?'

'Adapting to climate change: developing countries and the global response'