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 The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) set up by the U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) and the Rockefeller Foundation
will focus on South and Southeast Asia, the Sahel and the Horn of
Africa, where typhoons, floods, earthquakes and drought destroy
lives and jobs and hamper development.
Scientists say climate change could bring more frequent and more
intense weather-related disasters. If communities become more
resilient, disaster recovery and relief efforts will cost less, and
people will be able to reduce the disruption to lives and jobs and
avoid falling into destitution.
“Both USAID and the Rockefeller Foundation see resilience as a vital
framework to help alleviate poverty, promote more sustainable
development and lessen the impacts of disasters,” said Michael
Yates, director of the USAID regional mission in Asia.
The GRP’s first project is the Global Resilience Design Challenge, a
multi-phase competition to be launched in September at the USAID
Frontiers in Development Forum in Washington, D.C.
Multi-sector teams and organizations need to submit proposals by
November on how to make communities in the three focus regions more
resilient to disasters, food insecurity and the effects of climate
change. Teams going through to the next round will be announced in
January.
It is not yet clear how many winners there will be, but USAID and
the Rockefeller Foundation say the best teams will receive funding
to put their ideas into action.
“It’s going to be a competitive process and we’re very anxious to
bring in ideas that are innovative and creative and have strong
likelihood for scale-up,” said Yates.
SHOCKS GETTING WORSE
The two organizations say $100 million is just an initial investment
and they are talking to groups from both private and development
sectors who may put in more funds or provide technical support.
In addition to the Resilience Challenge, the GRP will look at
developing flexible financing, predictive analytics and technologies
such as crowd-sourced data collection, vulnerability and crisis
mapping, and early warning systems.
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“In Bangladesh, rising sea levels threaten to drown one-fifth of the
country’s land mass where 18 million people now reside. In Nepal,
over 2 million people live on potentially hazardous fault lines,”
said Yates.
“According to the World Bank, $1 out of every $3 in development
funding is lost as a result of recurring crises, and over the last
30 years that has added up to a total of $3.8 trillion,” he added.
Ashvin Dayal, the Rockefeller Foundation’s associate vice president
and managing director in Asia, said the Fund hoped to better
integrate humanitarian and development approaches, encourage
cross-sector collaboration, and involve new partners such as the
private sector in efforts to make communities more resilient.
“We face a new reality where disasters and shocks are coming faster
and harder, throwing vulnerable populations into crisis year after
year,” he said.
“The work of USAID and (Rockefeller Foundation) in some of the
world’s most vulnerable regions shows that building resilience
reduces the likelihood that stresses or sudden disruptions turn into
a disaster,” he added.
(Reporting by Thin Lei Win, editing by Tim Pearce; Phone +44 207 542
2299; Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson
Reuters, covers underreported humanitarian, human rights, corruption
and climate change issues. Visit www.trust.org)
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