Practical Action Handbook from Nepal: This handbook is aimed at practitioners who seek examples of how the V2R framework can be used in practice, based on examples from Nepal. It offers a step process, workbooks and tools. It includes guidance on how to include long-term trends in programming with a focus on climate change.
It is essential that organisations working on poverty reduction take into account the impact of climate change on the communities and sectors where they are working. In so doing, they will be better able to support community members and government officials to adapt to the adverse effects and take advantage of any opportunities presented. This requires a detailed analysis of the impacts of climate change at the local level in order to build adaptive capacity to withstand both sudden shocks and incremental changes in the climate. Participatory tools have been updated for use of uncovering community perceptions of changes, alongside identifying historical climate data.
A Background to the Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R) Guidance Note
Introduction
Promoting resilience in practice is an emerging development goal. How to operationalise concepts of resilience is a challenge for many organisations. Practical Action‖s framework on resilience, called the Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R) Framework (see Figure 1 below) offers an approach of how to build resilience in a variety of contexts, through numerous entry points. It can be applied for policy, programme and project design as well as monitoring and evaluation.
This V2R Guidance Note offers an example of how it can be used for programme design based on field experience in Nepal. As such, it is aimed at practitioners who seek examples of how a framework for resilience can be used in practice, with an example from Nepal on programme design being offered. It includes guidance on how to include long-term trends in programming with a focus on climate change.
The V2R Guidance Note begins with a background of why it is needed, offers a short overview of the V2R Framework and provides a step-by-step process for holistic programme design. Sample workbooks are included to assist with information gathering and analysis. The appendices offer information on key climate resources as well as participatory tools used to uncover information with community members around livelihoods, hazards, climate perceptions and governance. The participatory tools have been updated to gather key information needed on community perceptions of climate change. The V2R Guidance Note ends with a short review of tools and frameworks for responding to climate change.
Why a V2R Guidance Note?
People face a range of shocks and stresses which is deepening vulnerability. Those who are marginalised are often exposed to changing hazards and risks. This compounds their vulnerability and can result in entrenched poverty. Practical Action recognises that people are living with uncertainty and are experiencing changing risks. We also recognise that the increased frequency and intensity of hazards is reducing development gains.
Our challenge is to design holistic programmes that meet the complex and dynamic nature of poverty. This includes the impact on livelihoods that a changing climate brings. Our programmes also need to identify opportunities to build adaptive capacity of community members and government officials in order to promote resilience.
Our programming focused on food security and disaster risk reduction has led to a holistic approach for effective programme design – which we call the Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R) Framework (see Figure 1 below). This approach has been developed through practice from programmes and projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Zimbabwe over the past seven years.
We began to see that interventions which worked with the complex and dynamic nature of poverty were promoting resilience. We observed through our work with communities that interventions which considered the changing climate and identified appropriate innovations and technologies were leading to improved livelihoods. Technologies were identified based on needs and strengths and were adapted to the local context.
Climate considerations meant that, for example, certain crops and breeds were chosen; specific heights of raised tube wells were built to meet increased trends in flooding and early warning systems put in place to protect communities from changing hazards (for example case studies see Resilience in Practice: Briefing Paper, Upton and Ibrahim, Practical Action, 2012).
It also meant that community members and government officials were trained on how to gather information of changing risks and encouraged to build disaster reduction plans based on the realities at the local level. Policy processes, such as District Disaster Management Plans have been influenced as a result of local experience. This was done by building on existing governance systems and working across scales – local, meso and national…
