Rethinking Resilience: Empowering People for a Changing Climate

This report argues that resilience to climate change will ultimately depend on the adaptation decisions of millions of individual households, farms, and firms. The report offers several broad principles to guide policy and proposes specific policy actions to build resilience.
Global warming is accelerating, and harmful weather events caused by climate change--such as extreme storms, droughts, heatwaves, or wildfires--are becoming more frequent and severe. The burden of climate disasters is, and will continue to be, borne disproportionately by poor people and poor countries. This report argues that resilience to climate change will ultimately depend on the adaptation decisions of millions of individual households, farms, and firms. Public policy can coordinate collective adaptation actions, provide incentives, and extend direct support where necessary. But the evidence suggests that adaptation efforts have fallen short. The drivers of the muted adaptation response by households, farmers, and firms include: incomplete information; financial constraints; markets for adaptation tools or services that do not exist or offer limited products; or public policies that are confusing or distorting. Enabling and empowering individuals to take actions and invest in resilience measures appropriate to their own context is the priority for policies. The report offers several broad principles to guide policy and proposes specific policy actions to build resilience. Resilience challenges are complex, and the report recommends layering instruments to deal with multiple constraints, varied weather events, and differential financial abilities of households, farms, and firms