Building Resilience: World Bank Group Experience in Climate and Disaster Resilient

Concurrently addressing disaster risk and the effects of climate change delivers both immediate and longer term development gains, while also reducing fragmentation of the limited human and financial capacity found in many developing countries. Over the last few years, the World Bank Group has been systematically integrating climate and disaster resilience into its support to low and middle income countries. Early lessons indicate the need to pursue the disaster risk management pillars of risk identification, risk reduction, preparedness, financial and social protection, and resilient reconstruction. Institutional arrangements that bring together multiple sectors and stakeholders with support at the highest level of government is needed for sustained climate resilient development effort and outcomes. While investing in climate resilience often requires higher start-up costs, it is cost effective in the long-term. Spatial planning that considers short-to-long-term risks reduces the possibilities of stranded assets, with proactive management of at risk investments needed. Flexible and predictable financing as part of long-term development programmes can address climate and disaster risk, meet the needs of countries, and reduce poverty in the most vulnerable communities and countries.

This report presents the World Bank Group's experience in climate and disaster resilient development and contends that it is essential to eliminate extreme poverty and achieve shared prosperity by 2030. The report argues for closer collaboration between the climate resilience and disaster risk management communities through the incorporation of climate and disaster resilience into broader development processes. Selected case studies are used to illustrate promising approaches, lessons learned, and remaining challenges all in contribution to the loss and damage discussions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The introduction provides an overview of the UNFCCC and also introduces key concepts and definitions relevant to climate and disaster resilient development. Section two describes the impacts of globally increasing weather-related disasters in recent decades. Section three summarizes how the World Bank Group's goals to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity are expected to be affected by rising disaster losses in a changing climate. Section four discusses the issue of attribution in weather-related disasters, and the additional start-up costs involved in climate and disaster resilient development. Section five builds upon the processes and instruments developed by the climate resilience and the disaster risk management communities of practice to provide some early lessons learned in this increasingly merging field. Section six highlights case studies and emerging good practices in climate and disaster resilient development. Section seven concludes the report, summarizing key lessons learned and identifying potential gaps and avenues for future work.