Building Community Resilience Through Climate Change Adaptation

Building Community Resilience through Climate Change Adaptation

The Building Community Resilience through Climate Change Adaptation project aims to initiate a process, at community as well as national level, to promote and facilitate better understanding of climate change related risks among vulnerable population with a view to demonstrate models of good practices in community-led adaptation to climate change.

The Building Community Resilience through Climate Change Adaptation project will :

Establish a Knowledge Management System (KMS) in BDRCS to accommodate scaled up strategy of best practices in Adapting to Climate Change (CCA). As a part of this, BDRCS will develop its Strategy on Climate Change Adaptation, establish a Climate Knowledge Center (CKC) to profile, showcase and share knowledge on Community Adaptation, etc;
Identify and Demonstrate Appropriate Climate Change Adaptation Measures to reduce vulnerability and exposure to prevalent hazards and risks. This will include conducting Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (VCA), Participatory Approach for Safe Shelter Assessment (PASSA), Access to Early Warning System, Identifying adaptation options to address identified impacts, vulnerability and risks, Facilitate establishment of community owned seed banks, technologies and practices, support livelihood adaptation and climate resilient shelter and settlement at family and community level in the form of skills development, knowledge management, and some financial support, etc.
Improve knowledge and Skills of households vulnerable to climate change. As a part of this, Strengthen community based early warning system in collaboration with Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre(FFWC), meteorological department and CPP, Community Weather Stations, promote awareness and understanding of climate related risks and impacts and adaptation options.

Enhance the role of Bangladesh Red Crescent Society on advocating Adaptation to Climate Change among relevant actors and institutions. This includes strengthen strategic partnership and network on CCA/DRR advocacy, DRR platform, more engages on CCA-DRR issues through evidence based research and cases, Partnership/collaboration with relevant actors in CCA/DRR, Training of local government officials, NGOs, CBOs, BDRCS governance, staff and volunteers on integration of CCA/DRR of CCA/DRR into local level planning.

An estimated 55,180 persons (many of the beneficiaries will be among the most vulnerable households and communities in selected locations) will directly benefit from this project. Moreover, all the activities will recognise , incorporate and respect indigenous knowledge and traditional practice and wisdom of people.

The project will be implemented at the national level, in 8 selected “at-risk” communities falling under four districts ; these are all communities vulnerable to, or already experiencing the impact of climate change. The project will run for three years; from May 2011 to April 2014.

Bangladesh Red Crescent Society BDRCS will implement the Project under the technical support of the IFRC Bangladesh Delegation. The project is funded by Canadian Red Cross under its Disaster Risk Reduction Initiative. The total budget for the project is 710,508 Canadian Dollars.