Resilience to disasters needs to be built at all levels - from the international and regional, to the national and household.
DFID is committed to making resilience a central part of our work. The UK Government response to the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (HERR), stated that DFID will take a leadership role in this important new area of work. We have produced an approach paper on disaster resilience, along with a two page overview, to help take forward the debate with partners. This forms part of our overall work to turn the ideas presented in the UK's response to the HERR into practical action whilst committing resources to its implementation.
Although resilience is a new area for DFID, we have been working on disaster risk reduction (DRR) for almost ten years. Our resilience work will build on the successes of our DRR work to move this agenda forward. Building disaster resilience will mean working with nations and communities to manage change and to maintain or transform living standards in the face of a disturbance, without compromising long-term prospects. It will involve a focus from us in two areas:
- Reducing vulnerability to risk, such as violent conflict, floods and drought. Reducing the vulnerability of households, communities and nations will include a range of work from conflict mitigation in communities to the development of cyclone shelters.
- Helping individuals, communities and nations build adaptive capacities to cope better themselves with the threat of disasters. Examples of programming in this area include diversifying income sources (at national as well as at household level) and the development of better water management systems.
The new resilience agenda will draw upon the skills, resources and ongoing work of different parts of DFID. Resilience building will also be vital to our work in fragile states where we will need to improve our understanding of how resilience to disasters can be built, particularly how weak, but vital institutions can be strengthened to prevent or cope better with disasters.
We will work closely with our multilateral partners, Non Governmental Organisations/civil society and private sector businesses to build the resilience of the most vulnerable nations and communities.