CEDRIG: A user-friendly tool to systematically integrate climate, environment and disaster risk reduction in development cooperation and humanitarian aid
Tackling risks emanating from climate change, natural hazards and environmental degradation in an integrated manner is one of the greatest challenges today. Developing countries are particularly vulnerable to those risks, due to their limited coping capacities to handle the changes. With that, effects of climate change are a major threat to development and jeopardize achievement of the sustainable development goals and other jointly agreed targets. In addition, drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding environmental degradation and preventing the building-up of new risks is a key challenge for all countries. Tackling these risks and impacts is therefore a central task for development and humanitarian actors worldwide.
This is why SDC has developed the Climate, Environment and DRR Integration Guidance (CEDRIG) tool.
CEDRIG is an open-access, practical and user-friendly mainstreaming tool. It helps development and humanitarian aid actors to systematically integrate climate, environment and disaster risk reduction into development cooperation and humanitarian aid. With the use of CEDRIG, interventions can enhance the overall resilience of systems and communities and minimise their negative climate and environmental impacts and. The use of CEDRIG is free of charge. It can be accessed here .
Taking a holistic approach
CEDRIG follows an integrated approach to assess the risks for, and the unintended potential negative impacts of, a strategy or project.
The risk perspective determines whether existing and planned strategies or projects are at risk from climate change, natural hazards or environmental degradation. The impact perspective analyses whether these interventions may have adverse impacts on the climate or the environment or may create new or exacerbate existing natural hazards.
By applying CEDRIG, existing or planned interventions become more climate-, risk- and environment-smart.
Two modules following the same structure
CEDRIG comes in two modules: CEDRIG Strategic applies to country and domain strategies, cooperation frameworks, and programme frameworks. CEDRIG Operational applies to projects and programmes.
Each of the CEDRIG modules have two parts:
- Part I includes a context analysis of the intervention. A sound and thorough analysis of the context in which a strategy or project operates is crucial for the systematic integration of climate change, natural hazards and environmental issues at the strategy or project level. The context analysis includes information on the general hazard context, on exposure, vulnerability and risks. Furthermore, it implies an understanding and a general assessment of existing national or local strategies, policies, interventions and actors.
- Part II includes an assessment of the project or strategy’s potential risks from climate change, natural hazards and environmental degradation as well as the potential impacts the project or strategy may have on the climate, natural hazards and the environment. This analysis then helps you optimise the project or strategy by identifying measures that minimise risks and negative impacts and capture entry points for generating synergies and co-benefits.
The CEDRIG tool explains each step in a user-friendly manner and comes with a wealth of further information such as definitions and examples for key terms and references to literature, checklists and useful data. Furthermore, SDC has developed Thematic Integration Briefs to facilitate mainstreaming of climate, disaster risk reduction and environment into other thematic areas. These are integrated into the CEDRIG tool and can also be found on the website of the SDC’s Thematic Network on Climate, DRR & Environment .
In addition, the CEDRIG website provides a number of supporting documents for the application of the CEDRIG tool, such as a guide for users and facilitators or a concept note for conducting a CEDRIG training.