Developing Climate Change Resilience

 

The Challenge

For millions of people around the world, the consequences of climate change are increasingly devastating. Higher temperatures bring more droughts and the spread of heat-related, infectious diseases such as dengue,

Human actions have degraded ecosystems more drastically in the last 50 years than in all of history.

malaria and cholera. Flooding and the loss of food and safe water—and more frequent and more intense storms—lead to dramatic coastal erosion.

All of these impacts, taken together, could result in the loss of homes, jobs and food. For many, they could also result in the loss of lives. Over the past 50 years, severe weather disasters have caused more than 800,000 deaths. The far-reaching effects of climate change hit poor people the hardest. They have the fewest resources and the least capacity to prepare for, plan for, and withstand climate change crises.

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Our Strategy

The Rockefeller Foundation’s Developing Climate Change Resilience Initiative aims to catalyze attention, funding and action to promote resilience to climate change on several levels. We focus on three pivotal areas:  Asian urban environments, African agriculture and US policy. We are creating models for action on climate change in cities—models that can be replicated and expanded in other regions. We are helping adapt African agriculture to cope with environmental changes. And we are promoting awareness and guiding funders and policymakers to support broader action on climate change resilience, nationally and internationally, to help poor and vulnerable people around the world.

Specifically, the Foundation partners with governments, other foundations, donors, NGOs and groups from the private sector, to work in the following areas:


Key Outcomes

We aim to to develop a deeper understanding of climate resilience and the capacities and resources needed to build resilience to current and future climate risks on a large scale. This inititiative has three anticipated outcomes:

  • Within the agriculture development sector in Africa, the initiative supports more climate resilience practices within agricultural development institutions.
  • Within the US context, the initiative informs federal and local government policymakers about the benefits of both adopting domestic resilience efforts and policies and supporting international resilience efforts.

Full Summary: Developing Climate Change Resilience & ACCCRN (PDF)


 

See all initiatives

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MoMA's "Rising Currents"

 

Climate change isn't just a problem—it's also an opportunity. Consider New York City today with Venice-style canals and protective oyster reefs. Fresh urban visions like these, designed to thwart damage from rising sea levels and increasingly frequent storms, could have big payoffs in the future.

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See this online exhibit created by The Foundation with the American Museum of Natural History and other partners.