Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction: Bridging mitigation and adaptation for community resilience

Ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction (eco-DRR) is emerging as an approach to disaster risk reduction which bridges mitigation and adaptation, protecting communities from the impacts of disasters in the short term while building long term resilience by addressing both hazards and vulnerability to them. Wide-ranging experience of implementing eco-DRR initiatives in different contexts and to address different hazards highlights the importance of key considerations on which there is extensive consensus across the literature. Firstly, eco-DRR must be appropriate to the context, necessitating knowledge about the ecosystem, the capacity of the community to sustain it, and the role of hybrid solutions combining eco-DRR with grey engineering solutions. Secondly, meaningful community engagement is vital to the success of eco-DRR. Working with the communities involved is of key importance to ensure the eco-DRR initiative is appropriate, sustainable, and strengthened by local knowledge and expertise. Finally, the benefits of eco-DRR initiatives may take considerable time to be visible. Commitment to long term programming and funding, and ensuring that short-term benefits are realised by the community while the longer term benefits accrue, are essential. These considerations provide useful guidance to the design and delivery of eco-DRR. The literature also highlights priority gaps in the global body of knowledge which future research and learning should work to address: firstly, a need to develop a base of evidence as well as evidence-based standard of practice and guidance, and secondly, a need to understand the relationship between eco-DRR and gender and social inclusion, which is a major gap in the current body of knowledge.