Practical Action: New climate and vulnerability handbook

Susan Upton presents the Practical Action's approach called 'From Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R),' a framework that analyses the causes of vulnerability and how disaster risk reduction, climate change impacts, governance and livelihoods interact and affect resilient outcomes. Based on examples from Nepal, Practical Action has now developed a handbook for programming design, which aims to operationalise concepts of resilience.

"It is essential that organisations working on poverty reduction take into account the impact of climate change on the communities and sectors where they are working. In so doing, they will be better able to support community members and government officials to adapt to the adverse effects and take advantage of any opportunities presented. This requires a detailed analysis of the impacts of climate change at the local level in order to build adaptive capacity to withstand both sudden shocks and incremental changes in the climate.

In this handbook participatory tools have been updated for use of uncovering community perceptions of changes, alongside identifying historical climate data. The handbook offers a step process, workbooks and tools. It includes guidance on how to include long-term trends in programming with a focus on climate change."