The Pacific is among the world’s most exposed regions to the impacts of disasters and climate change. Humanitarian and development actors are faced with the imperative to continuously adapt and scale up disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience-based programming to the wide-ranging challenges facing the region and its communities. This requires elevated participation and leadership from community members in decision-making to ensure the voices of those most at risk are heard, their lived experiences and local knowledge are valued, and their needs are met. Central to improving resilience-based action in the Pacific is the need to strengthen integration between DRR and climate change adaptation (CCA) at policy and programming levels.
This report provides a progress update of the Beyond Barriers research project, which is designed to reveal the challenges to, and potential for, better integration of DRR and CCA programming to support community resilience in the Pacific. As Beyond Barriers moves from its first phase into a second focused on action research, this report provides a recap of progress and summary of research findings to date, and draws on this to outline the priority areas and actions for the next phase of work.