Risk Wise

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Co-benefits and the efficiency

of an integrated approach

Patterns of disaster risk are already changing and the criti-

cal ecosystems that support community resilience are being

lost at an alarming rate due to human mismanagement as

well as changes in climate. An integrated approach to climate

change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and ecosystem

services must be adopted if development programmes and

theMDGs are to be achieved. Evaluating the effects of inter-

ventions in one field of development programming on others

can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes.

The idea of co-benefits has been used widely in discus-

sions of climate change, referring specifically to ‘joint

primary benefits resulting from the selection of one instru-

ment aimed at reaching several targets’, and is used as a

means to weigh options through benefit-cost analyses in

the policy selection process.

This approach is equally

useful when looking at community vulnerability and

resilience. In this sense, ‘co-benefits’ refer simply to multi-

ple benefits in different fields resulting from one policy,

strategy or action plan. Achieving co-benefits requires inte-

gration or the overt design of development programmes to

meet multiple needs: poverty alleviation, protection of

ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation, disas-

ter risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Climate change

Designing development interventions without consideration of how

climate change will affect programme outcomes is no longer an

option. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Fourth Assessment Report

affirms that “since the IPCC Third

Assessment, confidence has increased that some weather events and

extremes will become more frequent, more widespread and/or more

intense during the 21st century; and more is known about the poten-

tial effects of such changes.” Climate change will also affect the

underlying vulnerabilities of communities worldwide. The report,

for instance, indicates that “for increases in global average temper-

ature exceeding 1.5-2.5

C and in concomitant atmospheric carbon

dioxide concentrations, there are projected to be major changes in

ecosystem structure and function, species’ ecological interactions,

and species’ geographical ranges, with predominantly negative conse-

quences for biodiversity, and ecosystem goods and services.”

As the governments of the world work toward a new international

climate change agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocol, they have

drafted the ‘Bali Action Plan’ which was adopted at the United

Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007. The

Bali Action Plan calls for enhanced action on adaptation, including

consideration of “disaster reduction strategies and means to address

loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in devel-

oping countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects

of climate change.”

The condition of ecosystem services has direct effects on livelihoods

Image: UNEP