Mozambique is racing to adapt to climate change. The weather is winning

By Rebecca Hersher

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[Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth] put Mozambique's government and citizens in the unenviable position of responding to an onslaught of climate-driven disasters while also doing their best to prepare for an even more dangerous future. They also have made clear that, absent international climate action, there's only so much that vulnerable countries can do to adapt to extreme weather.

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But far fewer people died as a result of the 2013 floods. In the intervening years, Mozambique's government and the International Red Cross had studied where and how people were vulnerable to floods and other disasters, then asked community leaders to volunteer to serve on Disaster Risk Reduction Committees for their towns and neighborhoods.

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Such a decentralized approach to disaster preparedness is something that the Red Cross and others argue for around the world. The idea is that local leaders learn how to prepare for disasters and help their neighbors stay safe during extreme weather events.

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"Disasters put people back into poverty," says Michel Matera, a senior analyst at the World Bank in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo. Without efforts to decrease the damage from floods and other disasters, he says, people will be "continuously trapped into poverty."

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