Community-based DRR

This manual provides practical guidance for strengthening community-based flood risk management in Djibouti. It aims to help local communities reduce their vulnerability to flooding and strengthen their capacity to prepare, respond and recover from flood.

After repeated flooding, villagers in southern Malawi planted trees and built a dyke. Their local approach is now helping to protect their homes from rising water – and it is becoming a role model for disaster preparedness throughout the country.

For this year’s International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNDP describes how risk-informed housing and land-use planning is taking shape in Cuba, Jamaica and Venezuela, in a region where 81.2 per cent of the population lives in cities.

On International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, SRSG Kamal Kishore reflects on how everyday decisions about our homes shape disaster risk, how public policy can expand people’s capacity to act, and why recovery works best when households shape it.

Nobody knows a home's risks better than the people who live in it. These seven examples show what happens when women, young people and residents with disabilities help plan, build and check the work.

Participants from 25 organizations visited Bangkok’s Mahanak Mosque community during the Global Heat Forum 2026 to see how heat risk mapping helps residents identify vulnerable households, plan emergency responses and build resilience.

This study compares household vulnerability, community perception, and coping strategies for cyclone-induced disasters in two coastal settlements in Ganjam, Odisha

Certain invasive species from climate regions comparable to Portugal could be incorporated into a biodiverse planting plan that includes their removal once the other species are established.

Based on five years of research with flood action groups in England, this paper shows how communities negotiate, contest and resist resilience agendas, developing a typology of emotional, symbolic, discursive, collective and procedural resistance.

This NDMA guide integrates psychosocial support into disaster management in Pakistan, emphasizing that early, inclusive PSS is key for mental health, resilience, and recovery—advocating MHPSS as central to sustainable development, not a stand-alone add-on

1 in 3 Navajo need to haul-in water from another place due to the lack of proper infrastructure in the midst of a drought. Hope is on the horizon, as the local government and nonprofit organizations have invested in proper water supply projects.

This bulletin examines how communities in Somalia are coping with a “double shock” drought, highlighting failing coping strategies, declining trust in official warnings, reduced aid, and the importance of supporting community-led responses.

This brief highlights Save the Children Nigeria’s Community-Led Early Warning Systems (EWS) and Anticipatory Action approach, which helps communities prepare for and respond to predictable hazards before they escalate into crises.

This study shows how nature-based solutions help residents of an informal settlement in Fiji adapt to growing climate risks. Located in a coastal area, the community faces recurring flooding, sea-level rise, extreme heat, and variable rainfall.

This study examines community-based disaster management in Chandpur, Bangladesh, identifying six capacity-building initiatives and 13 governance- and society-driven challenges affecting sustainable community resilience.

This paper presents the Community Capacity Co-design Process (C3P), a trauma-informed, seven-step framework that enables communities to localise and evaluate their own disaster response capacities.

Forecasting and early warning technology remain essential, but they have to be matched by readiness at the community level – evacuation plans, trusted communication networks, prepared local institutions and people able to act when information arrives.

Ethical preparedness requires communities to recognise vulnerability beforehand. Ethical leadership must move beyond the actions of individual leaders and become embedded within the culture and practices of organisations and communities.

This study investigates the complex interplay between local knowledge, awareness, perception, and preparedness among residents of Bogura City, Bangladesh, in the context of earthquake risk.

There were two “systems” that warned people about the impending danger that day: one built by the state relying on sensors and SMS messages, the other relying on community-based ties. Only the second worked reliably.

This toolkit examines how extreme weather events fuel mis- and disinformation and provides frameworks for assessing readiness, triaging threats, building partnerships and strengthening information resilience before, during and after disasters.

This study assesses preparedness, response and recovery following Cyclone Ana in Zimbabwe. It finds gaps in preparedness, warning communication and coordination, and calls for community-centred DRM, stronger capacity, financing and contingency planning.

Along the Nepal-Tibet border, the long road to recovery has only just begun. Amidst profound grief and loss, local communities are already providing support to their most vulnerable. Governments and international organisations should follow their lead.

Using a case study involving residents, First Nations communities and local organisations, this paper explores how community-led co-design was enacted in local recovery across four wildfire-affected regions in Australia.

A recent WMO project mission to Djibouti highlighted tangible progress from CREWS Djibouti in advancing people-centered early warning systems and set priorities for the next phase of implementation with national partners.

This paper shows the need for sustained, context-sensitive strategies and policy reforms that address power dynamics and foster inclusivity. Strengthening participation across all disaster phases can enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of DRR.

This solution brief looks at how community resilience action groups (CRAGs) in Bangladesh are strengthening local governance and promoted sustainable, long-term community resilience in highly flood-prone districts.

This report captures the outcomes and impact of the Urban Climate Resilience Program (UCRP) in Spain between 2023 and 2026.

Early warning for all is not achievable without local power. The choice facing policymakers is clear: reinforce centralised systems that fail the most at-risk, or invest in locally led solutions that save lives, livelihoods, and dignity.

The manual provides practical guidance for designing and implementing participatory climate risk assessments and locally led adaptation processes.

Seeking contributions on traditional medicine, vernacular architecture, agricultural practices, clothing traditions, oral history, and other community-based knowledge related to heat prevention and management

The heatwaves of today are the coolest heatwaves we are likely to experience for the rest of our lives. SRSG Kamal Kishore reflects on how cultural institutions can play a central role in extreme heat action – and in disaster risk reduction more broadly.

Across Africa, the impacts of climate change are often felt first and most severely by low-income communities living in informal settlements.

This solutions brief shares practical and replicable local knowledge of this approach in Nij Goddimari village in Lalmonirhat, Bangladesh, a community which faces chronic flooding and waterlogging due to its proximity to the Saniajan River.

The report distils what the Alliance has learned through working directly within planning and budgeting processes in 10 countries: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

Focusing on care within Locally Led Adaptation is not about being “nice”; it is about being effective. It involves addressing the power imbalances that sustain systemic inequities.

From Kinshasa to Dire Dawa, cities across Africa are discovering that wetlands, trees and parks could be their strongest defense against climate change.

Chesapeake communities are at a heightened and increasing risk for flooding and coastal hazards.

Filipinos’ ideas about how to improve disaster response and recovery. Distributed to local communities, local government partners and high schools to support teaching on DRR.

This study shares lessons from implementing community-level participatory climate vulnerability assessments processes in nearly 100 communities in Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe from 2024 to 2025.

This report brings together a set of grounded, practice-based insights on how adaptation can be more effective when it is led from the local level.

The Uganda Red Cross Society identified the most vulnerable and underserved communities and layered with catchment management plans from the Ministry of Water and Environment.