1. Integrating Climate Change Adaptation and
Disaster Risk Reduction:Oxfam GB’s
Approach
Strengthening Climate Resilience (SCR) Regional Workshop
AACC, Nairobi, Kenya
25th June 2010
Brian Otiende
Climate Change Officer
1 Oxfam GB, Kenya Programme
Email: botiendeb@oxfam.org.uk

2. Introduction
1. Definitions
2. Oxfam GB’s Strategic Approach to CCA and
DRR
3. Oxfam GB Kenya Programme Initiatives
4. Challenges, Opportunities
5. Conclusions & recommendations
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3. Disaster Risk Management: Climate
Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster
Risk Reduction (DRR)
 DRM- Use of administrative decisions, organizations,
operational skills and capacities to formulate and
implement policies, strategies and coping capacities of
communities to reduce the impacts of
hazards/disasters
 CCA- Adjustments in natural and human systems in
response to actual or expected climatic stimuli/effects
which moderates harm or exploits benefits
 Adjustments people and communities make (what & how) in
response to, or in anticipation of a changing climate
 DRR- Conceptual framework of elements considered
with the possibilities to minimise vulnerabilities to
disaster risks & impacts (prevention, preparedness) in
the context of sustainable development context
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4. Disasters,Hazards and Risks?
 Disaster – Product of human vulnerability and
physical hazards
 Event overwhelming local capacity,
necessitating appeal for external assistance
from national or international level
 Hazard-Potentially damaging physical event,
or human activity that may cause harm (loss
of life,injury, damage, social and economic
disruption or environmental degradation)
 Risk-Probability of harmful consequences or
expected losses resulting from interaction
between natural or human induced hazard
and vulnerable conditions (impacts)
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5. Climatic Related Disasters and
Development
 Climate variability and change is increasing
the frequency and intensity of hydro-
meteorological disasters (floods, droughts)
 Climatic disasters have huge social and
economic costs therefore a major threat to
development
 Disasters have the potential to stunt and
reverse development gains and goals
(national and MDGs)
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6. MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS POTENTIAL CLIMATE RISKS
MDG 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and Loss of livelihoods and assets, reduced
hunger economic growth, and undermined food
security.
MDG 2 Achieve universal primary Reduced ability of children to participate
education in full-time education by loss of
infrastructure, livelihoods (forcing children to
work), and displaced families.
MDG 3 Promote gender equality and Additional burdens on women as a most
empower women vulnerable group and time to participate in
decision-making and income-generating
activities.
MDGs Reduce child mortality; improve Greater prevalence of vector- and water-
4, 5, 6 maternal health; combat borne diseases, heat-related mortality.
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other Declining food security, maternal health and
diseases, availability of potable water stress.
water.
MDG 7 Ensure environmental Negatively impacted natural resources
sustainability and productive ecosystems.
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7. Oxfam GB and Climate Change
 Development and humanitarian agency
working with others to overcome poverty and
suffering
 CC is undermining Oxfam’s work and thus a
corporate organisational priority
 Equity and justice- caused by the rich but
impacts fall hardest on the poor women and
men in developing countries who bear the
least responsibility
 Urgency-even if emissions are cut rapidly
today, impacts are already being felt by those
living in poverty and may worsen hence need
to adapt to unavoidable impacts
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8. Strategic Approach
 Climate Change Adaptation (CCA)
-Considered within Oxfam’s broader work on
development, humanitarian assistance and
advocacy & campaigns (mainstreaming)
-Responses vary tremendously and range from
short-term to long-term actions (coping
strategies and adaptive capacity and
resilience)
 Climate change mitigation
-Advocating for rich countries to cut their
emissions to avert dangerous climate change
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9. Focus areas
 Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)- humanitarian
assistance to droughts and floods victims
 Sustainable Livelihoods (SL)- building
community resilience through livelihood
diversification amongst pastoralists,
agriculturists, urban lifestyles
 Natural Resource Management (NRM)- water,
soil, arid and semi arid lands, coastal
ecosystems
 Advocacy and campaigning on climate change
- Gender is a key consideration due to
differentiated impacts
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10. What does Climate Change Adaptation Mean for Oxfam?
Effective Adaptation What Adaptation is NOT
Managing and reducing Good programming alone
risks associated with CC Re-labelling existing work
Planning for long term One size fits all
impacts while reducing short
Same as coping strategies
term impacts
Climate-compatible
development
Address local social,
economic and climatic
context
Working at different levels
Integrated into
development, humanitarian,
advocacy & governance
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11. Integrating Climate Change Adaptation into
Disaster Risk Reduction
 Common thread- Reduce people’s risk to climatic disasters
before, during and after disasters
Disaster Risk Reduction
Non climate-related Climate-related disasters Non-disaster related
disasters E.g., floods, droughts, climatic impacts
E.g., earthquakes hurricanes, storm surges E.g., temperature,
unpredictable rainfall, sea
level rise, saline intrusion
Incorporating robust Incorporating interventions that
predicted changes in support communities deal with
weather-related hazards gradual changes: focusing on
into DRR (history is an livelihoods, natural resource
increasingly unreliable guide management and national policy
to the future) and practise (I.e., enabling
environment)
Climate Change Adaptation
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12. Similarities and Differences between DRR
and CCA
 Similarities
– Seek to build people’s resilience to hazards in the
context of sustainable development
– Minimize the human, social, economic costs
 Differences
– Different policies, frameworks, funding channels
– DRR deals also with non-climate hazards, whereas
adaptation addresses longer-term impacts/changes
– DRR has a historical perspective based on prior
experiences, whereas CCA tends to be perceived as
having a future perspective and based on science
– DRR focuses on traditional knowledge, whereas CCA
can require resilience to risks that have not yet been
experienced
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13. Existing Opportunities and Linkages-DRR
and CCA
 Adaptation under the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
 Bali Action Plan calls for:
– DRR to advance adaptation; and
– International cooperation to support
implementation of adaptation actions including
climate-resilient development and vulnerability
reduction
 Hyogo Framework of Action’s 5 priority areas -a strategic
global approach to reducing vulnerability to disasters
 DRR can be considered as the first line of defence whilst
building long-term adaptation strategies
 Disaster and climate risk reduction use similar tools: e.g. risk
assessments, early warning, multi-sectoral approaches
 Risk reduction is therefore a critical component of adaptation
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14. ASALs:
• Successive poor
rains/heavy rains-flash floods
• Return rate of droughts
Agriculture: •Increased temperatures
• Rainfall
unpredictability/failure
• Increased temperature
Flood-prone
areas:
•Heavy rainfall
•Increased
temperature
Coastal areas:
• Heavy
/unpredictable rainfall
• Increasing
temperatures
•Coastal floods
Urban areas:
• Heavy rainfall
events-localised
urban floods
•Urban heat
14 island effect

15. Oxfam GB Kenya Programme- ASAL
and Urban
 Strategic Direction 1: Working with pastoral
and other marginalised communities in ASALs
to address effects of chronic poverty,
structural marginalisation and increasing
vulnerability
 Strategic Direction 2: Working with/for urban
poor in informal settlements to address
emerging urban crisis (poverty &
vulnerability, poor governance, uncoordinated
humanitarian response, marginalisation)
 Building upon DRR experience in ASALs as an
entry point to achieve long term Climate
Change Adaptation for vulnerable ASAL and
Urban communities
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16. Kenya Programme
National Policy- Climate Change, Peace
Building and Conflict Mitigation, Policy and
Advocacy Pillars
 Strategic Direction 3: Skills and capacity
development of staff and partners
Governance (advocacy)
Sustainable livelihoods (development)
Disaster Risk Reduction (humanitarian)
 A Right Based and One Programme Approach
Integrates climate change in development,
humanitarian, advocacy & campaigning
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17. Projects
 Assessing CC Vulnerability and Adaptation in
Kenya’s ASALs and Urban areas (case studies)
 Advocacy for Climate Proofing Kenya’s
Development Agenda (National Policy and Strategy
Review- (ASAL, Land, Livestock, Food & Nutrition,
Disaster Management and Peace Building & Conflict
Management)
 Coordinating Kenyan Civil Society on Climate
Change (Kenya Climate Change Working Group)
 Climate Change Campaigning (Climate hearings in
2009 and tribunals in 2010)
 Access to Flood Risk Information through Early
Warning Systems in Nairobi
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18. Existing Opportunities for Oxfam & Partners
 Humanitarian Assistance
– Responding to urgent and immediate
humanitarian crises caused by climatic disasters
to reduce suffering and loss of life , with best
DRR practice
 Long term development planning
– New forms of climate-friendly development
(climate proofing development)
– Livelihood diversification
 Advocacy and campaigning
– Advocating and campaigning for emission
reductions (40% below 1990 levels by 2020, 80-
95% by 2050) and transfer of international funds
towards DRR and CCA
– Adaptation finance-new and predictable (over
and above ODA in the scale of $100billion/year)
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19. Challenges
 Chronic under development/investment and high
poverty levels
 Over dependence on reactive rather than proactive
approaches
 Weak institutional and governance structures
 Lack/ weak policies
 Uncoordinated efforts from different stakeholders
 Weakness in mainstreaming/integrating CCA, DRR into
programmes
 Weakness in climatic disaster risk research capacity
 Lack of financial resources
 Lack of awareness amongst communities
 Difficulties in distinguishing between adaptation,
disaster risk reduction and development
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20. Recommendations
 Investment and addressing marginalization & social
exclusion to address underlying causes of disasters
 Promoting pro-active approaches through preparedness
e.g. early warning systems, flood & drought management)
 Advocating for strong institutional and governance
structures
 Linking policy and practice through implementation and project up
scaling
 Coordinating efforts across different stakeholders
 Mainstreaming CCA and DRR into development
 Investing in climate focused research and disaster risk
analysis-Participatory capacity and vulnerability analysis
(PCVA), community based disaster risk/adaptation
 Advocating for international financing and budgetary
allocation from national government
 Community sensitization and education on risk reduction
 Identifying commonalities between CCA, DRR and
contribution to national development agenda
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21. Conclusions
 Efforts to adapt to the changing climate are
intricately linked to the broader challenges of
sustainable livelihoods, disaster risk reduction,
natural resource management
 Domestication of international frameworks
(UNFCCC and HFA) must implemented at
national and local level
 All stakeholders must participate in addressing
the challenge posed by climate change and
natural disasters
 DRR provides excellent opportunities for building
community resilience and building adaptive
capacity to CC
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22. Thank You!
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