Climate extremes reveal the expected and unexpected ways communities respond to shocks

Climate extremes give us the chance to learn why some people are able to cope with the shocks, and why some are not. The BRACED webinar on Reality of Resilience brought practitioners and scientists together to explore how best to learn from extreme events and apply lessons learned into practice.

The Reality of Resilience project looks at people’s coping mechanism before, during and after extreme climate events – from floods to landslides to on-going droughts. Typically, when extreme events result in disasters, we hear about the homes, livelihoods and lives that are lost. Reality of Resilience goes further by also looking at extreme events that did not turn into disasters – and how that was avoided.

Climate shocks provide an important lens for learning about resilience because they can show us the expected and unexpected ways complex systems respond during a shock. This gives us an opportunity to take stock of what is effective and, as Carina Bachofen noted, “what offers potential to work at scale in future programmes. This is one of the major benefits of BRACED.”

The webinar included an explanation of the Reality of Resilience project, but also examples of how we can learn from climate extremes.

Kathryn Werntz, working for BRACED with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, gave a potent example of Reality of Resilience in action in Dakar, Senegal after extremely heavy rainfall hit the city during the second week of August.

In the Dakar village of N’gor, where Werntz lives, the heavy rains destroyed homes and kept young and elderly people at home for days. Yet, just ten kilometres away in the village of Pikine, people living in the area of the Vivre Avec l’Eau project were able to return to their normal lives after the heavy rains and avoided having water ruin their homes and businesses.

Within the context of the Reality of Resilience project, following the rains, journalists and the local BRACED field teams worked together to gather evidence about the response of the Vivre Avec l’Eau flood water capture project.

That is, what physical and social infrastructure enabled people in Pikine to pull through the heavy rains fairly easily?

To determine where and to what degree a climate extreme event is happening, the webinar introduced the multitude of ways the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre monitors climate extremes. This includes using the University of Maryland’s Global Flood Monitoring System, and the FEWS NET/USGS Mapviewer to identify areas of potential flooding and drought across BRACED countries and beyond. The event is then confirmed by BRACED partners on the ground.

Once it’s confirmed that an extreme climate event has happened, the project begins collecting information around the resilience of the community. With the help of network of local journalists, regional BRACED Engagement Leaders (8 in Africa and 1 in Asia) and Implementing Partners, we can collect this post-shock learning as blogs, news stories, videos and pictures on the Reality of Resilience webpage, giving projects from within and outside BRACED a chance to learn from one another.

An important outcome of this webinar came in the form of a discussion on how this evidence can be put to use. Sophie Rigg posed this key question:

 “How do we make this valuable – so much information and there seems to be a lack of targeted value. I do not have an answer to this it is just a worry of mine.” 

This gets to the crux of an important challenge, getting knowledge and evidence that is generated through Reality of Resilience, and more widely through BRACED, into use.

After all, learning and application of that learning is not an easy process, as David Hajjar said, “Learning and subsequent application is a discipline, it takes deliberate commitment to reflect, observe and take lessons learned to glean how they might inform and impact what we do.” 

The webinar prompted many other questions including about who the target audiences are and how we can best reach them, with Nicole Giordano adding that “every country would have a specific set of key stakeholders.”

To help answer some of these questions and continue this valuable discussion, the BRACED KM has scheduled a follow up webinar focused on some of the practical and innovative ways that knowledge and learning can be packaged and presented for incorporation into the day to day functions of communities and organizations within and beyond BRACED.

We invite you to join us on Thursday January 7^th 12pm GMT, for Reality of Resilience: From learning to practice and bring your ideas and experiences to share!