Disaster Risk Reduction for Community Resilience

Last updated:

31 December 2015

Author:

Aaron Clark-Ginsberg

Partner/Network:

Centre for Humanitarian Action, UCD

Language:

This publication is a synthesis of lessons from more than a decade of Concern Worldwide’s disaster risk reduction (DRR) programming in the area of community resilience.

A slope in Dessie Zuria, Amhara, Ethiopia, which has been terraced, planted with leguminous and fodder crops, and open grazing prohibited as part of a broader watershed management initiative within a community resilience building programme. Photo: Dom Hunt.

Based on research in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Haiti, Mozambique, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Niger, and Ethiopia, this publication describe Concern’s approach to DRR and community resilience and offers lessons and guidance on how to use DRR to build resilience. The publication presents lessons learned in the following themes:

risk analysis;
coordination;
reducing scale, intensity or frequency of hazards;
reducing vulnerability;
addressing drivers of inequality;
improving coping and recovering capacity;
improving response capacity;
building governance institutions;
innovation, learning and exit strategies

The publication is part of a series documenting Concern’s approach to disaster risk reduction. The series consists of five context papers focusing on DRR approaches in mountainous, dryland, coastal, urban, and riverine contexts. This sixth paper, Disaster Risk Reduction for Community Resilience, synthesizes conclusions from these context papers and identifies how Concern uses DRR build community resilience. Key lessons are highlighted in the learning brief ‘What we have learned’. The series is the output of a two-year project documenting Concern's approach to DRR and involving empirical research across 10 countries.