Page - 402 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

402 R.Mechler et al. being objectives have a profound impact on risk. Likewise, theway a community approaches its disaster risk has a profound impact on development andwellbeing. The trick is to get these twoworking in a virtuous cycle, rather than undermining eachother.Entrypoints fordeveloping this iterative, cyclical approachareeffective community-levelprocessesandasharedvisionofadaptive learningdiscussedin the following. 17.4 EntryPoints for IntegratingMethodsandModels forPuttingFloodResilience intoPractice 17.4.1 ParticipatoryVulnerabilityCapacityAssessments Forworkingwith communities on implementingDRMactivities, the International Federation of theRedCross (IFRC) andPracticalAction use participatory assess- ment processes to gather, organise and analyse information on the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of communities, which can subsequently be used for joint decision-making.Theseprocesses are broadly referred to asParticipatoryVulnera- bilityCapacityAssessments (P)VCA. Inorder tomeasurevulnerabilityof commu- nities andhouseholds in1989AndersonandWoodrowdeveloped theCapacity and VulnerabilityAnalysismatrix.This largelyqualitative,participatoryandmonitoring approach came to bewidely accepted and used bymanyNGOs in their work on DRMforward (seeActionAid2005;Davis2004). The participatory approaches are particularly valuable in helping to understand thekeychallengesdiscussedabovenamely: (1)Themultitudeofbenefits and local values attached to these; (2) The historical perspective not only in regard tomajor disasters but also the less intense but recurrentminor shocks and stresses; and (3) Providing an opportunity to link community perceptions including locally-derived knowledgewithwhatscienceandpolicymakersarepredictingtooccur in thefuture duetoexistingunderlyingissuesandclimatechange.Thismergerof traditionalwith scientificknowledgeaddsgreatvaluetoplanningapproachesthatattempttoconsider multiplehazardsandaccommodate increasinguncertainty. Overall, VCAs/PCVAs aim to support communities to (i) identify key vulner- abilities of communities; (ii) understand communities’ perceived and actual risks; (iii) analyse the resources and capacities available to reduce said risks; and (iv) developactionplans toaddress identifiedvulnerabilities and risks. Inworkingwith communities on implementingDRRactivities, PracticalAction has been identify- ing and estimating the historic and potential natural hazard situation and has been workingwithcommunitiestoestimatethesocial,environmentalandeconomiclosses expectedintheareaofinterest throughtheirPCVAprocess.Theseprocessesareusu- allycompletedwith thecollectionofsecondary information toprovideabaselineof communities’ risk todifferenthazards.