GFDRR’s Support Related to Climate Change Adaptation

GFDRR works through World Bank operations in order to ensure that its initiatives are leveraging larger investments for maximum impact at both regional and country levels.
The following are examples of GFDRR’s support to World Bank operations related to climate change adaptation (CCA):

Regional

• South Eastern Europe: In early 2008, GFDRR provided grants totaling US$ 665,000 to the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia Region to address disaster risk mitigation (DRM) and CCA issues in south-eastern Europe.  A year and a half later, this initial investment has mobilized nearly US$ 60 million in World Bank funding for DRM projects in Albania, Croatia and Moldova, and €7 million in funding for DRM projects from bilateral and other multilateral donors.
• Central America Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA): The World Bank’s Latin America and Caribbean Regional DRM team applies DRM tools to assess multi-hazard risk—including climate risk—which allow decision makers to learn from down-scaled global circulation models.  Visit the Central America Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) platform.
• The Climate Resilient Cities Primer: This initiative reflects cooperation between the World Bank’s East Asia Pacific Regional DRM team, GFDRR, and the UN’s International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. It adopts a multi-hazard lens and discusses the dual-track approaches of climate change mitigation and adaption that are essential for all cities. Download the Climate Resilient Cities Primer [PDF] (175 pages, 4.4 MB)
• Building climate resilience in Central Asia: Analytic and advisory activities in support of Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan are setting the foundation for investments in climate resilience and reducing weather-related disasters in Central Asia.
• Action plans in North Africa: A GFDRR grant helps the cities of Casablanca, Tunis, and Alexandria to formulate action plans—a critical first step toward increasing their resilience to climate change and natural hazards. Disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation components are managed as one integrated agenda. The resulting risk management approach generates social and economic impacts in the short term, while reducing vulnerability to climate change in the long term.
• Pacific Islands: Action plans to bring institutional synergies between climate change and disaster risk management are being implemented in Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, and Vanuatu.

Country-specific

• Bangladesh: GFDRR is supporting new and improved procedures for safety nets developed based on institutional assessments and international best practices. A menu of adaptation responses and the implications of climate change risks on food security in the country are examined. Also, the development of agricultural risk insurance is supported by GFDRR.
• Senegal: A Hazard and Climate Change risk mapping of the Dakar metropolitan area has been completed to address the issue of increasing risk exposures in rapidly expanding urban and peri-urban areas. The GFDRR supported project developed a new DRM methodology combining state-of-the-art remote sensing spatial analysis and institutional capacity assessment based on field-surveys and interviews.  This approach is being employed in several World Bank DRM projects—such as in Vietnam and Mozambique.
• Malawi: The Lower Shire River Management Study is guiding the country’s disaster risk reduction policy to reduce risks from recurring floods and droughts. The Economic Vulnerability and Disaster Risk Assessment has been finalized and the preparation of a Disaster Risk Management Plan is underway.
• Sri Lanka: GFDRR support has helped strengthen safety nets, establish a Disaster Management Fund, and develop by-laws and an operational manual for the Disaster Management Fund. These are important entry points for building a national DRR system.
• Bolivia: Adaptive river defense systems are being developed for sustainable flood DRR.  A participative risk management system and a pilot learning process for defensive construction are being implemented, in conjunction with a technical assistance to strengthen Bolivia’s DRR framework.
• Incorporating CCA in country-specific Post Disaster Needs Assessments (PDNAs): GFDRR has conducted 16 PDNAs in less than two years.  Each assessment includes a framework to help disaster-hit countries make their recovery both disaster- and climate-resilient. For more information, see the 2013 Post-Disaster Needs Assessments Volume A and Volume B.