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We bend, we do not break: Resilient communities dealing with disaster and climate change

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CARE
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Partners for Resilience

Disasters have strongly increased in both frequency and impact, with climate change as one of the main contributors to more extreme, frequent, and unpredictable weather. Degradation and loss of ecosystems intensify natural hazards. Combined with the high vulnerability of communities in the Global South, this leads to increased disaster risk. Despite these many challenges, there are solutions to create a sustainable future. When provided the necessary resources, communities mobilize to adapt to and prepare for increasing risks. In Partners for Resilience, CARE works to reduce disaster risk by increasing community resilience – enabling people to bend and not break in the face of adversity.

The poorest people in the most vulnerable countries suffer disproportionately from disasters and climate change impacts. Disasters wipe out hard-won reductions in poverty, and communities are caught in a vicious circle where poverty creates vulnerability, and disasters and climate change impacts increase poverty. To ease this situation, the Partners for Resilience program reduces the impact of hazards on vulnerable communities in the South.

Partners for Resilience (PfR) is an alliance of the Netherlands Red Cross, CARE Nederland, Cordaid, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and Wetlands International. The name originates in the fundamental belief of its five members in the central role of resilience as the way to deal effectively with disasters. PfR uses an integrated approach, called Integrated Risk Management (IRM), to mitigate disaster risk and enhance livelihoods, particularly by addressing climate change and ecosystem management and restoration. PfR is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Integrated Risk Management

CARE defines Integrated Risk Management (IRM) as the systematic process of reducing disaster risks through anticipative, absorptive, adaptive and transformative actions, taking into account the effects of climate change and the role of ecosystems. It addresses the drivers of risk, the capacities and assets of communities and individuals, and their enabling environment.

This publication**

In this publication, CARE aims to highlight how the implementation of an Integrated Risk Management approach leads to social transformation and more resilient communities that are well prepared to deal with a diversity of shocks and challenges. The protagonists are the people themselves, sharing how their lives and the lives of members of their communities have improved.
These stories are expanded upon with examples of CARE’s work within PfR in each country