Learning for climate resilience programming

In September 2018, the DFID-funded Building Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Extremes and Disasters (BRACED) programme and the Bond Resilience Learning Group hosted a workshop to explore what has been learned from designing and delivering large-scale climate adaptation and resilience programmes to date.

The aim of the workshop, which brought together climate resilience practitioners and donors from over 25 organizations, was to consider recommendations for future resilience programming by exploring some of the approaches deemed fundamental to supporting resilience and considering how programmes can be adaptive to changing and challenging contexts.

This report summarizes discussions from the workshop and provides lessons for designing and delivering future resilience programmes. The outcomes from this workshop, however, are not in isolation from the previous learning and sharing of good practice that has been undertaken within the sector. Lessons from previous collective learning within the Bond Resilience Learning Group are also incorporated where they relate to workshop discussions.

Following the structure of the workshop, the first part of the report looks at how large climate adaptation and resilience programmes with various components and multiple partners can be designed, set up, and implemented effectively. This focuses on:

• working in partnerships
• management structures
• reporting and information flows
• working in challenging operating environments.

The second part of this report explores challenges faced in resilience programming. This centres on the following questions:

• Is it all about “scalability”?
• Are we working with the most vulnerable?
• Is capacity strengthening enough?
• What and how should we “influence” in the policy environment?
• How long does it take to create impact?

The Bond Resilience Learning Group brings together agencies, academics and companies to share experiences and generate learning about what good resilience work looks like. Bond members can join for free.