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Two worldwide trends in recent decades are commonly noted and sometimes linked in discussing disasters. First, the reported global cost of natural disasters has risen significantly, with a 14-fold increase between the 1950s and 1990s (Munich Re, 1999). During the 1990s, major natural catastrophes are reported to have resulted in economic losses averaging an estimated US$ 54 billion per annum (in 1999 prices) (ibid). Record losses of some US$ 198 billion were recorded in 1995, the year of the Kobe earthquake – equivalent to 0.7 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) (ibid).

Purpose – The chapter explores the gender dimensions of climatic impacts in urban areas and draws lessons for cities in Africa.

Methodology – The data presented was generated through focus group discussions with female and male residents of Kasubi-Kawaala neighborhood in Kampala city as well as extensive review of relevant literature.

Findings – Climatic impacts in Kasubi-Kawaala and Kampala city at large, mainly include prolonged dry spells, erratic heavy rains, and seasonal floods, which destroy physical infrastructure, expose households to environmental health hazards, contaminate air and water sources, and lead to unprecedented spread of cholera and malaria. These climatic impacts on one hand do worsen gender inequalities across different urban sectors, while on the other such gender inequalities contribute to the intensity of climatic impacts. These are the gender dimensions of climatic impacts in urban areas that require deep examination while planning to adapt or reduce emissions.

Research limitation – The methods used to collect data were qualitative in nature and therefore no statistical data was obtained on gender inequalities and climatic impacts. But the review of different literature did enable the study gain relevant descriptive statistics on the effects of climatic change in Kampala city.

Value of the chapter – There have been studies on gender and climate change in Africa, but many of these have focused on rural settings and women in particular. This chapter provides a relational understanding on women's interface relative to men's interface with climatic impacts in Kampala with the aim of drawing lessons that can be applied to local circumstances in different African cities.

Living with physical hazards is an everyday issue for the people of Bangladesh because different seasons bring different kinds of uncertainties. Sometimes traditional knowledge and practices (Alam, 2007) help them to adjust to these conditions; in some occasions, these hazards turn into catastrophic disasters causing deaths and bringing unbearable damages in different sectors. In addition to the tangible damages incurred due to hazards, in most of the cases, these hazards injure the internal social organizations at different levels (for example, household, community, and institutional) and affect their assets. Thus, the community resilience is greatly weakened, which makes people susceptible to upcoming hazards. Scientists suggest that climate change-induced threats and uncertainties in the forms of erratic rainfall patterns that result in drought conditions and sometimes floods, abnormal foggy conditions, change in the wind direction and the characteristic patterns of seasons, anomalies in the temperature regimes, and the occurrence of cyclones will bring new dimensions to existing situations. These natural hazards, temperature rises, and sea level rise–induced inundations will contribute to the breakdown of the traditional systems of living; they also bring change in topographical factors (for example, flooding), biophysical factors (changes in the crop yields, runoff, risks of the spread of infectious diseases, changes in the vegetation pattern), and socioeconomic factors (per capital income, health, education, population density) (World Bank, 2001).

Pakistan is one of the most climate change and natural disaster-affected countries in the globe, where the lives and livelihoods of people are repeatedly affected due to these natural disasters. Over the past few decades, the country has been impacted by numerous devastating floods, droughts, and storms. As a result, households face enormous complications, particularly those dwelling in disaster-prone areas. Therefore, this study intends to explore the status of household vulnerability and resilience practices of hazard-prone communities in Pakistan from existing literature. This study has identified the 17 most relevant documents. It argues that household vulnerability is increasing consistently with the increasing rate of disaster intensity. Frequent flooding, landslide, erosion, and crop loss are the leading causes of household vulnerability. This study reveals five types of household vulnerability components which look into several livelihood vulnerability indicators of Pakistani households. Moreover, the study unfolds that the main causes of disaster vulnerability are widespread crop loss, a lack of water, loss of soil fertility, and low socioeconomic situations. The major vulnerability components of dwellers are exposure (increasing summer duration, the rapid increase of population house build-up in the riparian areas, and increasing occurrence of hailstorms), sensitivity, low access to education facilities, human loss, diseases infestation, food insecurity, and social conflict), and less adaptive capacity (social networks, migration, poor emergency services, multiple income sources, and less access to the health facility). To address the household vulnerability, this study has also identified four key aspects of resilience, like social resilience, economic resilience, institutional resilience, and physical resilience. The findings will effectively help to understand the dynamics of household vulnerability and resilience and its measurement and management strategy from developed indicators.

Climate change, deforestation and hydropower dams are contributing to environmental change in the Lower Mekong River region, the combined effects of which are felt by many rural Cambodians. How people perceive and manage the effects of environmental change will influence future adaptation strategies. The objective of this research was to investigate whether the use of a low-cost, explicitly spatial method (participatory mapping) can help identify locally relevant opportunities and challenges to climate change adaptation in small, flood-prone communities. Four villages along the banks of the Mekong River in Kratie Province, Cambodia, were the subject of this research. To identify perceived environmental hazards and adaptive responses, eight workshops were conducted using focus-group interviews and participatory mapping. The communities’ responses highlight the evolving nature of environmental hazards, as droughts increase in perceived importance while the patterns of wet season flooding were also perceived to be changing. The attribution of the drivers of these hazards was strongly skewed towards local factors such as deforestation and less towards regional or global drivers affecting the hydrology of the Mekong and climate patterns. Combining participatory mapping with focus-group interviews allowed a greater depth of understanding of the vulnerabilities and opportunities available to communities than reliance on a single qualitative method. The study highlights the potential for a bottom-up transfer of information to strengthen existing climate change policies and tailor adaptation plans to local conditions.

Due to changes in climatic conditions, hydrometeorological hazards are increasing. Cities are becoming more vulnerable due to usual urban issues, and additional pressure of climate-related hazards. While it is rather impossible to make a city resistant, urban resilience is the possible entry point for dealing the new types of hazards. Keeping this in mind, this book provides a unique series of examples of climate and disaster resilience initiative, which focuses on the different dimensions of city's resilience. Evolved through a participatory approach, the book exemplifies innovations in redefining city's resilience in a way, which is closely linked to city services. Analyzing the cities resilience through five dimensions of physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural, the Climate and Disaster Resilience Initiative (CDRI) focuses on detailed analysis on city or subcity level. CDRI is considered as a tool, as well as a process to enhance the city resilience through steps of assessment, planning, and implementation.

Multi-risk environments pose challenges for rural and coastal communities in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly with regard to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation strategies. While much research has been published on disaster response and recovery for specific climate-related hazards in the region, such as cyclones, floods and droughts, there is a growing need for insight into how communities respond, recover and adapt to the multiple, intersecting risks posed by environmental, societal and economic change. This chapter frames the body of new research presented in this book from the perspective of multi-risk environments, paying particular attention to concepts central to the disaster response and recovery cycle, and rejecting the notion of a distinct boundary between climate and society. Further, this introductory chapter foregrounds the importance of cultural values, power relations, Indigenous knowledge systems, local networks and community-based adaptive capacities when considering resilience, recovery and adaptation to climate-induced disasters at the community and household level. Overviews of the research presented in this book demonstrate a diverse range of responses and adaptive strategies at the local level in case studies from Solomon Islands, Fiji, Cambodia and Samoa, as well as implications for policy, planning and management.

Private household insurance has been relatively uncommon among households in Samoa to date. Meanwhile, numerous other adaptation interventions are also being implemented, including community-based adaptation (CBA) projects which draw on the skills of the community to address the climate change-related hazards that are expected to affect local communities. Through semi-structured interviews with community members from the urban/peri-urban area around Apia (with and without insurance) and an insurance company representative, this research explores private household natural perils insurance uptake in Samoa and the effect that the uptake of this insurance has on household engagement in other climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies such as CBA projects. Findings suggest that individuals whose homes are already insured with natural perils insurance are more likely to express more individualistic values or beliefs than those without natural perils insurance. Insured homeowners commonly framed adaptation as a technical challenge, with insurance being part of the technical and expert-led approach to prepare for, manage and recover from extreme events. In contrast, householders without insurance perceived CCA as less of a technical task and more of a social process. Those individuals with private household natural perils insurance coverage (in keeping with their more individualistic values) reported that they were less engaged in CBA projects compared to participants without insurance (who held more communalistic values). Given the importance of household participation in CBA projects, an increased uptake of insurance may have problematic outcomes for the adaptive capacity of the broader community.

Ever since human society developed, environmental and social changes have led to major challenges that must be dealt with. Some of these major challenges are seen as “disasters,” for which a definition that is frequently used is similar to “A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources” (UNISDR, 2004; see, e.g., Quarantelli, 1998, and Furedi, 2007, for discussions on the meaning(s) of “disaster”). From witnessing disasters and being forced to work through the aftermath, humanity has been shifting toward trying to reduce disasters’ impacts or to avert them entirely. This field has the modern-day interpretation of “disaster risk reduction,” defined as “The conceptual framework of elements considered with the possibilities to minimize vulnerabilities and disaster risks throughout a society, to avoid (prevention) or to limit (mitigation and preparedness) the adverse impacts of hazards, within the broad context of sustainable development” (UNISDR, 2004).