Flood resilience through community-driven action and partnerships

This policy brief highlights investing in strengthening community resilience to floods to reduce the impact of floods and the related response and recovery costs. Flood resilience programming developed from risk-informed decisions and driven by communities adopts a holistic approach and thus is more likely to contribute to reducing underlying risks and vulnerabilities, and ultimately to strengthening resilience.

Key recommendations

• Flood preparedness measures need to be community-driven and risk-informed, which means understanding the risks that communities face and the underlying vulnerabilities, and capacities, that are present within the community. 
• Strengthening community flood resilience requires a process that is multi-sectoral and involves numerous actors; it cannot be achieved by governments, organizations or individuals acting alone. Flood risk reduction must be an integral part of policy-making and planning, and requires partnerships with governments, academia, private sector and civil society alongside communities. 
• Community flood resilience solutions need to be: community-driven, holistic, appropriate to the context, technically sound, effective and efficient.

Also available in Spanish: La resiliencia ante las inundaciones a través de acciones comunitarias y asociaciones