Category: Uncategorized

WeRobotics – Robots to the rescue!

At last month’s General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) meetings in New York, partners agreed to mobilize and accelerate action for building climate resilience. The platform for this mobilization is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s initiative on Climate Resilience known as A2R (Anticipate, Absorb, Reshape) which was launched at the Paris Climate Conference in 2015. […]

How Kenyan communities embrace flood resilience strategies

Kenyans are all too familiar with floods. The rainy seasons are almost always accompanied by flooding in both rural and urban areas of Kenya. Despite efforts to work with communities to mitigate the effects of potential flooding, nongovernmental organizations and humanitarian agencies are always prepared to respond. One of the most discussed topics last year […]

Stage One Water Window Challenge Finalists Announced

Stage One Water Window Challenge Finalists Announced I am delighted to announce that 16 Stage One finalist teams have been selected to move on to Stage Two of the Water Window Challenge – a competition which gives those bold enough to find innovative resilience-based solutions to extreme weather the financial backing to turn their plans […]

Flood resilience and accurate data

Erratic weather patterns, a generally accepted indicator of climate change, have a major impact on the water supply in communities. Extreme weather — intense rainfalls, drought, or simply untimely rains — has a serious impact on the availability of safe and clean water, soil degradation and erosion, and ultimately agricultural production, nutrition and health. In […]

Facing the floods : A resilience approach.

A discussion about how development organizations and businesses can support vulnerable communities prepare for flood risk and build a more secure future in the face of persistent shocks and stresses. The Global Resilience Partnership looks to identify and scale local solutions in an effort to pivot away from reactive responses to disasters and build resilient […]

Take a fluid approach to build fresh water resilience

Water is a dynamic and variable resource, with shifting and changing states and flows. In one of our more foolish endeavors, however, rather than embrace this dynamism, humans have continually tried — and failed — to control water. We succeed — for a time. Sometimes even for decades. But these are pyrrhic victories, and water […]

A new journal article published by Meta Meta, a GRP partner, looking at roads for resilience: turning a problem into an opportunity.

Abstract Roads have both positive and negative impacts in the areas surrounding them. With the expansion of roads growing at an inexorable speed in Ethiopia and all Sub-Saharan Africa, these impacts need to be well understood. A questionnaire was used to gather information on road-related impacts on the rural population. A total of 529 sample […]

Taking the fight to the floods

Natural disasters come in many different forms, yet their devastating impact on vulnerable communities remains the same. Worryingly, what also remains the same is today’s aid and development approach, and the way it fails to successfully address these disasters. Floods cause more damage worldwide than any other type of natural disaster, costing the global economy […]

Asia-Pacific needs stronger financial preparedness for disasters

Asia and the Pacific is one of the regions that is most vulnerable to natural disasters and the effects of climate change. And yet, most governments have limited financing arrangements for disaster response and the levels of disaster insurance penetration are very low. As part of its efforts to help its developing member countries boost […]

Money matters: will global aid spending ever be enough?

Shortly before the recent World Humanitarian Summit, UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon called for the percentage of global aid spent annually on disaster risk reduction to be doubled to 1%, bringing the figure to USD $1 billion. Following this, British charity Christian Aid called for the percentage to be raised to 5%, publishing a report […]