Building climate resilience through inclusive communities

By Eng. Thushara Dissanayake

In the face of escalating climate change, a developing country like Sri Lanka is undergoing a hard time due to the frequent impacts of multiple extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and landslides. Mitigating these to an affordable level requires technical solutions that involve heavy investments. In the meantime, these impacts are exacerbated by socio-economic disparities where marginalied communities have to pay a higher price. Encouragingly, research indicates that by fostering inclusive communities the capacity of withstanding and adapting to the impacts of climate change can significantly be increased.

The key features of an inclusive community are diversity where all sorts of differences are valued, equity in resource allocation, accessibility to all areas of community activities, providing opportunities for participation, and treating every individual with respect and dignity. Hence, in an inclusive community, individuals of different backgrounds, identities, abilities, and perspectives feel welcomed, respected, and empowered to actively participate in decision-making processes, community events, and social activities. As a result, inclusive communities tend to be more resilient, creative, and adaptive, as they can draw on various perspectives and experiences to address challenges and opportunities.

In terms of climate change, there are powerful reasons why inclusivity leads to climate resilience.

Diverse Perspectives and Knowledge

As inclusive communities bring together people with diverse backgrounds, experiences, knowledge bases, and skill sets it leads to different perspectives on innovative solutions and adaptive strategies to climate-related challenges.

Social Cohesion

Stronger social ties and cohesion can create a community that is better equipped to respond to and recover from climate-related disasters. Mutual trust, cooperation, sharing resources, and emotional support within a community are drivers of faster recovery during climate impacts.

Equitable Access to Resources

The objective is to assure that the resources will be distributed more equitably making sure that vulnerable populations are adequately able to access the necessary resources for adaptive measures of climate impacts. Essentially this can include timely access to accurate information, infrastructure, healthcare, and services that enhance resilience. This approach helps minimise existing social inequalities and ensures that marginalized groups are not affected by resource scarcity.

Community Empowerment

Community empowerment goes beyond mere involvement. The mere involvement of people will not bring about effective and sustainable solutions to climate change impacts. Only when people are empowered and have a say in taking initiative, they will take ownership of climate resilience efforts. In practical terms, empowering communities for climate resilience involves providing access to education and training, facilitating community-led planning and decision-making processes, promoting sustainable livelihoods and economic opportunities, and strengthening local governance structures.

Floods in Sri Lanka. (Picture courtesy Imago/Xinhua)

Adaptive Capacity

If a community is equipped with a wider range of knowledge, skills, and resources it will showcase a higher adaptive capacity. Therefore, by harnessing this adaptability an inclusive community can adjust its existing practices, livelihoods, and infrastructure better to suit with escalating challenges of climate change. For instance, farmers can adopt drought-resistant crop varieties or farming methods to overcome water scarcities resulting in erratic rainfall patterns.

Reduced Vulnerability

Although inclusivity can help identify and address vulnerabilities within a community, different groups may face different challenges. Hence, it is important to understand their specific needs and challenges and strategies have to be developed accordingly. For instance, low-income families in flood-prone areas should be provided with flood-resistant infrastructure. Ultimately this type of approach would reduce the overall vulnerability of the community to climate impacts.

Conclusion

Inclusive communities for climate resilience are increasingly being recognised and practiced worldwide. Many countries are implementing community-based adaptation projects to enhance resilience to climate change. Sri Lanka too, is promoting inclusive communities for climate resilience through national policies, community-based projects, and international partnerships. Increasing productivity in agriculture, protecting and restoring wetlands, restoration of mangroves and coastal ecosystems, improving water management, and providing safe housing to vulnerable populations in flood and landslide-prone regions are strategies currently being implemented with community involvement.

However, continuous efforts are needed to address resource and implementation challenges to ensure that climate resilience actions keep pace with rapidly escalating climate impacts. A notable challenge would be the prevailing socio-political fragmentation and biases that considerably affect the allocation of resources to vulnerable communities. However, fostering inclusive communities is only one part of the broader effort to enhance climate resilience.

(The writer is a chartered Civil Engineer specializing in water resources engineering)