The lessons and knowledge emerging from the Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund (UCCRTF) could lead to better and more climate resilient programming, said Shantanu Mitra of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) Asia. 

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The senior climate and environment adviser was recently in talks with the UCCRTF, following his interview at last year’s Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Manila.  

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For DFID, this entails more emphasis on softer interventions such as capacity building, early warning systems, and regulatory frameworks, alongside investments in hard infrastructure, he added. Mitra also stressed that community-led approaches are important for delivering resilient investments, saying that more needs to be done to give voice to communities so that they can identify priority investments. 

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The UCCRTF has been active in establishing methodologies for measuring the impact of resilience at the municipal level. This is work that is vital in order to develop metrics to assess the effectiveness of resilience measures and stimulate investment, said Mitra.  

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“The challenge of designing resilience investments effectively and making sure they offer value for money, prioritizing where we allocate resources, and reporting on whether we’ve had any success requires the development of better metrics,” he said.

 

For more on his take, watch the video here: