Approaching Climate and Disasters in an Age of Uncertainty

Description

Over the past years, climate science became increasingly clear on the links between climate change impacts and natural disasters, particularly water-related disasters.

Member States face the “no size fits all” challenge when implementing adaptation measures and defining actions to face climate change impacts and water-related disasters. In this context, bottom-up approaches present a good alternative for resilient water management in the face of climatic uncertainty. Such approaches differ from the dominant paradigm guiding water management for the past half-century, namely the assumption that the past can be used to predict and plan for future challenges.

Moreover, working from the bottom-up allows for defining robust adaptation measures, tailored to the communities needs and adjusted to their human and economic resources. The Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) tool, featured in this publication, is a bottom-up approach developed by UNESCO-IHP and its partners which has been increasingly implemented by decision-makers, notably in Latin America and Africa.

This publication is also an invitation to question the current paradigm in water management and climate risk assessment and to consider new methodologies to be applied to the incessant duty of achieving water security and climate-proof strategies.

Reference information