DISASTER RISK REDUCTION: A CRITICAL APPROACH

This chapter attempts to narrate the commonalities between climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) and argues how best the ideas of CCA can be embedded within the scope of DRR. It is imperative to understand that both CCA and DRR, alongside the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are essentially developmental issues with many of the targets highly overlapping. The key issues for both DRR and CCA are to identify the approaches that can translate the theoretical notion and policies into appropriate risk reduction measures. The chapter discusses the existing approaches of DRR that may also have simultaneous applications in CCA. Some of the well-researched approaches that have been applied include community-based DRR (CBDRR), ecosystem based DRR (Eco-DRR) and restrictive planning. Having emerged during the 1960s, the traditional approaches for DRR have been, by and large, hard engineering approaches, which, to a significant extent, have been successful in reducing risk from natural hazards including climate-related hazards.