A Resilient Environment through The Integration of CCA and DRR: An Overview of Existing Challenges

Creating a resilient environment for disasters is a primary contemporary challenge. Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) are well-known concepts, and practices used to reduce vulnerability and thereby contribute to the creation of a resilient environment. There is growing recognition that the theory and practice of CCA and DRR are converging and therefore, CCA and DRR efforts should be integrated to bring about effective solutions to reduce vulnerability and to create a resilient environment to disasters. However, the integration of CCA and DRR has always been a challenge due to several factors that hinder the process. Asia is highly vulnerable to disasters due to its geographical location, unplanned development, undistributed internal migration for urban areas and so on. Within this context, it is extremely important that the region undertakes strategies to create a resilient environment. In order to create a resilient environment, CCA and DRR integration plays a vital role, but within the current social, economic, political and demographic context of Asia, integration of CCA and DRR has become difficult. Based on the findings of a global analysis conducted as part of the research project ESPREssO, funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, this paper provides a critical review of the existing challenges associated with integrating DRR and CCA in order to create a resilient environment in Asia. During the first phase of the study, a narrative desk-based literature review was conducted, and during the second stage, extensive primary data collection was undertaken. The primary data collection methods were semi-structured expert interviews, expert focus group discussions, and an online questionnaire survey. Analysis revealed that a chaotic institutional set-up, political priorities, funding issues, stakeholder interests, and communication barriers are the prominent challenges to the integration of CCA and DRR in Asia, which must be overcome in order to establish a resilient environment.