Progress on integrating climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction for sustainable development pathways in South Asia: Evidence from six research projects

Due to natural vulnerabilities and human factors, losses and damages from natural disasters continue to rise in South Asia. There is also growing evidence for links between climate change and disaster risks. In response, there have been calls for bringing together climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy development, in order to address the risks efficiently and to promote sustainable development pathways. However, progress toward such convergence in the policy arena has been uneven. We report on a group of six research projects awarded in three countries of South Asia to examine progress, research needs and potential mechanisms for improving implementation of CCA and DRR. Some significant localized improvements in CCA-DRR were generated, primarily through facilitating communication across administrative scales and with local communities. We observed a common tendency toward weak institutional coordination between agencies charged with disaster response and those charged with climate change planning (as well as development planning more broadly). The idea that sustainable development requires addressing combined natural and anthropogenic hazards does not yet appear to have penetrated to the institutional levels where disaster response planning commonly takes place. We close by identifying further knowledge needs and proposing recommendations for steps toward convergence of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.