In December 2016, The Rockefeller Foundation’s African Regional Office hosted the Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Convening in Nairobi, Kenya. Over 150 delegates and 40 speakers participated, sharing insights, examples, and engaging in debate and discussion on why and how ‘resilience’ can enhance Africa’s ongoing development.
Just as cities are hubs for innovations and investments that expand opportunities, they are also living laboratories forced to confront challenges of increasing complexity. What, and who, makes a city resilient—and not just livable in the short-term—has become an increasingly critical question, one we set out to answer in late 2012 with our partners at Arup through the creation of a City Resilience Index.
Launched in 2008, the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) Initiative aimed to catalyze attention, funding, and action for building the climate change resilience of vulnerable cities and people in Asia. Given that current estimates forecast that about 55 percent of Asia’s population will be living in urban centers by 2030, the ACCCRN Initiative is built on the premise that cities can take actions to build climate resilience – including drainage and flood management, ecosystem strengthening,
increasing awareness, and disease control – which can greatly improve the lives of poor and vulnerable people, not just in times of shock or stress, but every day.
At the time the initiative was launched, the concept of urban resilience and models for implementing it were nascent and emergent. ACCCRN proved to be an important experiment and “learning lab” for the Foundation and its grantees and partners to build capacity in cities to better understand and implement resilience solutions to the often devastating shocks and stresses of climate change. The initiative was effective in the initial 10 ACCCRN cities and, later, in an additional 40 cities.
As part of our Foundation-wide commitment to learning and accountability to our grantees, partners and stakeholders, we undertook an independent evaluation of the work of the initiative in 2014 to assess what worked well and not so well in ACCCRN. Conducted by Verulam Associates and ITAD, who also conducted a mid-term evaluation of the ACCCRN Initiative in 2011, this summative evaluation highlights successes, but also provides an important moment to reflect on the challenges we faced and on what we can do better or differently going forward.
Cities around the world are facing challenges brought about by rapid increases in population and geographic spread, which places greater pressure on infrastructure and services. Climate change impacts, including rising sea level, more frequent and severe storms, coastal erosion and declining freshwater sources will likely exacerbate these urban issues, in particular in poor and vulnerable communities that lack adequate infrastructure and services.
Globally, the impacts of climate change on urban areas have received less attention than on rural areas where poverty levels are higher and populations depend directly on climate-sensitive livelihoods. However, more than 50% of the world’s population currently lives in cities. By 2050, this figure is expected to increase to 70%, or 6.4 billion people, and Asian cities are likely to account for more than 60% of this increase. Urban areas are the economic powerhouses that support both the aspirations of the poor and most national economies. Furthermore, urban residents and the economic activity they generate depend on systems that are fragile and often subject to failure under the combination of climate and development pressures. If urban systems fail, the potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change on urban residents in general, on poor and vulnerable populations, and on the wider economy is massive. As a result, work on urban climate resilience is of critical importance in overall global initiatives to address the impacts of climate change.
The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) works at the intersection of climate change, urban systems and social vulnerability to consider both direct and indirect impacts of climate change in urban areas.
The unprecedented damage Hurricane Sandy caused along the East Coast of the US, especially
to the densely populated New York and New Jersey coastlines, was a wake-up call to the threat
that weather events pose to our communities. The world has always been plagued by severe and
seemingly intractable problems, including storms, but today, we live with an unprecedented level of
disruption. Things go wrong with more frequency and severity, greater complexity, and with more
inter-related effects. No longer can we afford to simply rebuild what existed before. We must begin
to rethink our recovery efforts, making sure the damaged region is resilient enough to rebound from
future storms.
Shocks and stresses are growing in frequency, impact and scale, with the ability to ripple across systems
and geographies. But cities are largely unprepared to respond, withstand, and rebound when disaster
strikes. The greatest burden of these increasing shocks, such as the impacts of climate change or public
health threats, often falls on poor and vulnerable people who have limited resources to cope with disaster
and who take longer to recover from it, disrupting livelihoods and increasing inequality.
Effective Public Health Communication in an Interconnected World: Enhancing R...The Rockefeller Foundation
The public health communication community has more tools and mechanisms at its disposal than ever before, but we are also facing increasingly complex public health challenges ushered in by globalization, urbanization, conflict, and connective technologies. We are connected in unprecedented ways, but despite this fact there remains a lack of consistent and coherent communication among responders, within health systems and across the public domain.
In light of this persistent problem, KYNE and News Deeply, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, convened a meeting on Effective Public Health Communication in an Interconnected World: Enhancing Resilience to Health Crises, held at the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy, in October 2015. At the convening, 18 experts in communication, public health, and emergency response came together to detail areas of alignment and gaps.
This report seeks to distill those lessons learned and contribute to the research base on public health communication in times of crisis, by detailing key takeaways from the convening. News Deeply also conducted interviews with participants, as well as external reviews with community organizations and leaders, to inform the body of the report. In addition, we have synthesized case studies from three participants across different regional contexts: the 2013–15 Ebola crisis in West Africa, the SARS epidemic of 2003 in Singapore, and the 2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in New York City.
The City Resilience Framework provides a lens through which the complexity of cities and the drivers that contribute to a city’s resilience can be understood. The 12 capacities in the 100RC City Resilience Framework collectively determine its ability a city’s resilience to a wide range of shocks and stresses.
Just as cities are hubs for innovations and investments that expand opportunities, they are also living laboratories forced to confront challenges of increasing complexity. What, and who, makes a city resilient—and not just livable in the short-term—has become an increasingly critical question, one we set out to answer in late 2012 with our partners at Arup through the creation of a City Resilience Index.
Launched in 2008, the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) Initiative aimed to catalyze attention, funding, and action for building the climate change resilience of vulnerable cities and people in Asia. Given that current estimates forecast that about 55 percent of Asia’s population will be living in urban centers by 2030, the ACCCRN Initiative is built on the premise that cities can take actions to build climate resilience – including drainage and flood management, ecosystem strengthening,
increasing awareness, and disease control – which can greatly improve the lives of poor and vulnerable people, not just in times of shock or stress, but every day.
At the time the initiative was launched, the concept of urban resilience and models for implementing it were nascent and emergent. ACCCRN proved to be an important experiment and “learning lab” for the Foundation and its grantees and partners to build capacity in cities to better understand and implement resilience solutions to the often devastating shocks and stresses of climate change. The initiative was effective in the initial 10 ACCCRN cities and, later, in an additional 40 cities.
As part of our Foundation-wide commitment to learning and accountability to our grantees, partners and stakeholders, we undertook an independent evaluation of the work of the initiative in 2014 to assess what worked well and not so well in ACCCRN. Conducted by Verulam Associates and ITAD, who also conducted a mid-term evaluation of the ACCCRN Initiative in 2011, this summative evaluation highlights successes, but also provides an important moment to reflect on the challenges we faced and on what we can do better or differently going forward.
Cities around the world are facing challenges brought about by rapid increases in population and geographic spread, which places greater pressure on infrastructure and services. Climate change impacts, including rising sea level, more frequent and severe storms, coastal erosion and declining freshwater sources will likely exacerbate these urban issues, in particular in poor and vulnerable communities that lack adequate infrastructure and services.
Globally, the impacts of climate change on urban areas have received less attention than on rural areas where poverty levels are higher and populations depend directly on climate-sensitive livelihoods. However, more than 50% of the world’s population currently lives in cities. By 2050, this figure is expected to increase to 70%, or 6.4 billion people, and Asian cities are likely to account for more than 60% of this increase. Urban areas are the economic powerhouses that support both the aspirations of the poor and most national economies. Furthermore, urban residents and the economic activity they generate depend on systems that are fragile and often subject to failure under the combination of climate and development pressures. If urban systems fail, the potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change on urban residents in general, on poor and vulnerable populations, and on the wider economy is massive. As a result, work on urban climate resilience is of critical importance in overall global initiatives to address the impacts of climate change.
The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) works at the intersection of climate change, urban systems and social vulnerability to consider both direct and indirect impacts of climate change in urban areas.
The unprecedented damage Hurricane Sandy caused along the East Coast of the US, especially
to the densely populated New York and New Jersey coastlines, was a wake-up call to the threat
that weather events pose to our communities. The world has always been plagued by severe and
seemingly intractable problems, including storms, but today, we live with an unprecedented level of
disruption. Things go wrong with more frequency and severity, greater complexity, and with more
inter-related effects. No longer can we afford to simply rebuild what existed before. We must begin
to rethink our recovery efforts, making sure the damaged region is resilient enough to rebound from
future storms.
Shocks and stresses are growing in frequency, impact and scale, with the ability to ripple across systems
and geographies. But cities are largely unprepared to respond, withstand, and rebound when disaster
strikes. The greatest burden of these increasing shocks, such as the impacts of climate change or public
health threats, often falls on poor and vulnerable people who have limited resources to cope with disaster
and who take longer to recover from it, disrupting livelihoods and increasing inequality.
Effective Public Health Communication in an Interconnected World: Enhancing R...The Rockefeller Foundation
The public health communication community has more tools and mechanisms at its disposal than ever before, but we are also facing increasingly complex public health challenges ushered in by globalization, urbanization, conflict, and connective technologies. We are connected in unprecedented ways, but despite this fact there remains a lack of consistent and coherent communication among responders, within health systems and across the public domain.
In light of this persistent problem, KYNE and News Deeply, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, convened a meeting on Effective Public Health Communication in an Interconnected World: Enhancing Resilience to Health Crises, held at the Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy, in October 2015. At the convening, 18 experts in communication, public health, and emergency response came together to detail areas of alignment and gaps.
This report seeks to distill those lessons learned and contribute to the research base on public health communication in times of crisis, by detailing key takeaways from the convening. News Deeply also conducted interviews with participants, as well as external reviews with community organizations and leaders, to inform the body of the report. In addition, we have synthesized case studies from three participants across different regional contexts: the 2013–15 Ebola crisis in West Africa, the SARS epidemic of 2003 in Singapore, and the 2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in New York City.
The City Resilience Framework provides a lens through which the complexity of cities and the drivers that contribute to a city’s resilience can be understood. The 12 capacities in the 100RC City Resilience Framework collectively determine its ability a city’s resilience to a wide range of shocks and stresses.
Urban populations are facing increasing challenges from numerous natural and manmade pressures such as rapid urbanisation, climate change, terrorism and increased risks from natural hazards. Cities must learn to adapt and thrive in the face of these diverse challenges - they must learn how to build resilience in an uncertain world. Armed with this knowledge and understanding, governments, donors, investors, policy makers, and the private sector will be able to develop effective strategies to foster more resilient cities.
Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the City Resilience Index (CRI) is being developed by Arup. It builds on extensive research undertaken by Arup to establish an accessible, evidence-based definition of urban resilience, which culminated in the publication of the City Resilience Framework (CRF) in April 2014 (www.arup.com/cri). This provides a holistic articulation of city resilience, structured around four dimensions and 12 goals that are critical for the resilience of our cities. This structure also forms the foundations of the CRI.
Who is the CRI for?
The CRI will measure relative performance over time rather than comparison between cities. It will not deliver an overall single score for comparing performance between cities, neither will it provide a world ranking of the most resilient cities. However, it will provide a common basis of measurement and assessment to better facilitate dialogue and knowledge-sharing between cities.
It is envisaged that the CRI will primarily be used by city governments who are in the best position to gather administrative data, but it can also be used by other interested organisations and individuals (for example, universities, non-governmental organisations, community groups). It is intended that the CRI process will also provide the means for cities to capture the views of the poor and vulnerable groups as they normally suffer more severely the impacts of disruptions and failures.
Cities are fonts of ideas, opportunity, art and political movements. But urban enclaves can also generate inequality, epidemics and pollution. The rapid pace of urbanization in the coming decades brings these and other unprecedented opportunities and challenges to the fore. Will cities lose their vibrant potential if the challenges they face spiral out of control?
The unprecedented damage Hurricane Sandy caused along the East Coast of the US, especially to the densely populated New York and New Jersey coastlines, was a wake-up call to the threat that weather events pose to our communities. The world has always been plagued by severe and seemingly intractable problems, including storms, but today, we live with an unprecedented level of disruption.
Things go wrong with more frequency and severity, greater complexity, and with more inter-related effects. No longer can we afford to simply rebuild what existed before. We must begin to rethink our recovery efforts, making sure the damaged region is resilient enough to rebound from future storms.
In order to better protect Sandy-area residents from future climate events the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force
initiated Rebuild by Design (RBD) to develop fundable solutions that address structural and environmental vulnerabilities throughout the East Coast region. Recognizing the enormity of this challenge, the RBD process has looked beyond traditional solutions, supporting new approaches in architectural design, regional planning and environmental engineering, all of which are set within an innovative process that combines public, philanthropic and private sector resources and knowledge with community participation in a design competition.
Accelerating Impact: Exploring Best Practices, Challenges, and Innovations in...The Rockefeller Foundation
Effective accelerators play many roles—educator, mentor, and funder, among others—in helping impact enterprises solve complex social problems. This report explores how accelerators and incubators support impact enterprises to better understand the barriers to sustained enterprise development and their ability to achieve scalable impact.
Urban Climate Change Resilience in Action: Lessons from Projects in 10 ACCCRN...The Rockefeller Foundation
This paper presents key insights emerging from an analysis of the 36 intervention projects,totaling approximately $15.5 million, which have been funded and are beingimplemented under the Rockefeller Foundation Asian Cities Climate Change ResilienceNetwork (ACCCRN) in ten initial cities1. As a pioneering effort to advance on-the-groundactions aimed at building urban climate change resilience (UCCR), this portfolio ofprojects2 provides a ‘first generation’ view of how a set of cities have interpreted UCCRchallenges and translated their understanding into targeted priorities and actions. Oneof the intentions of the ACCCRN initiative was to advance the still young field of UCCRwith practical actions that substantiate the growing number of theoretical frameworks.
As the recent National Climate Assessment made clear, extreme weather events—including heat waves, drought, tropical storms, high winds, storm surges, and heavy downpours—are becoming more severe. In many places these risks are projected to increase substantially due to rising sea levels and evolving development patterns, affecting the safety, health, and economy of entire communities. Extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy have made it clear that we remain vulnerable to such events in spite of advances in disaster preparedness. American communities cannot effectively reduce their risks and vulnerabilities without including future extreme events and other impacts of climate change in their planning both before and after a disaster, and in everyday decision-making.
The City Resilience Framework is a unique framework developed by Arup with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, based on extensive research in cities. It provides a lens to understand the complexity of cities and the drivers that contribute to their resilience. Looking at these drivers can help cities to assess the extent of their resilience, to identify critical areas of weakness, and to identify actions and programs to improve the city’s resilience.
The private sector is a logical player to help coordinate
and calibrate resilience-building actions. In the course of their commercial activities, companies may interact with a wide range of city departments—from law-enforcement agencies to public utilities—and therefore have the potential to act as broker, involving a broad range of government players in urban resilience discussions.
Conservation Finance. From Niche to Mainstream: The Building of an Institutio...The Rockefeller Foundation
Sustainable farmland, healthy forests, clean water, and abundant habitat stand to become more valuable as the global population climbs to nine billion by 2050. Already, pioneering investors have put together financial solutions that combine real assets, such as tropical forests, with cash flows from operations in fields such as sustainable timber, agriculture, and ecotourism. Conservation finance, as this field is known, represents an undeveloped, but emerging private sector investment opportunity of major proportion.
Filling this gap to finance the preservation of the world’s precious ecosystems will require USD 200 - 300 billion in additional capital, and private investment capital may be the only source. Attracting that level of private capital will require attractive risk-adjusted rates of return, in addition to clear and measurable conservation impacts.
In this report, Credit Suisse—together with the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment—there is a toolkit for substantially growing the investment that flows into the conservation sector, illustrated by a few concrete ideas that we deem to be scalable, repeatable, and investable. Implementing these ideas will require strong collaboration between the financial and environmental communities to find new and creative ways of solving the financial structuring and conservation challenges at hand.
In an increasingly fast-changing and interconnected world, fostering resilience to withstand unexpected shocks is becoming more important. Bringing together leading figures from governments, businesses, and resilience experts, The Urban Resilience Summit served as a platform for dialogue on how to build robust and resilient cities.
A survey released by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) shows that 90% of business leaders believe they can help prepare cities for the effects of climate change, with 51% saying that investing in climate change resilience gives them a competitive edge.
The dovetailing of potentially devastating climate change impacts and urbanization by mid-century is of great concern to municipal leaders. The portion of the world living in cities is slated to rise to two-thirds of the global population (or 6.4 billion), up from 54% today, according to the United Nations. In tandem, the frequency and severity of floods, storms and drought as a result of climate change are expected to rise significantly in the coming decades, particularly in coastal areas, where many large cities are located. Forging preparative responses for these changes has thus taken on a new sense of urgency for government officials, non-governmental organizations and business leaders.
For business, the executive survey, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, finds that the biggest perceived market and operational risk from climate change is the disruption of energy supplies, which could severely impact on a company’s ability to operate.
Urban women face significant economic and social constraints due to their limited ability to access, own and control property, including immovable property (e.g., land, structures), movable property (e.g., business equipment, personal possessions), and financial assets (e.g., cash, financial accounts). Insecure property rights make women more vulnerable and less economically, politically and socially empowered; inhibit them from improving their families’ health and well-being; and prevent them from fully contributing to the sustainability and economic growth of their cities. With increasing numbers of women living in cities, especially vulnerable groups like migrants and the elderly, women’s insecurity of property rights in the urban context is rapidly growing in urgency.
Following its successful partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) post–Hurricane Sandy Rebuild by Design competition, The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Resilience Academies and Capacity-Building Initiative. Designed to support HUD’s National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC), the Academies and the Initiative provide eligible state, county, and municipal governments with subject-matter expertise and lessons from the Foundation’s years of on-the-ground disaster recovery programming and mitigation planning. Further, the Foundation hoped to assist these key players in moving global knowledge and resources to meet homegrown needs.
Equity and Inclusive Growth from a Development Perspective is essential reading for development and evaluation practitioners. It provides a concise history and critical examination of the concepts related to growth, poverty, and equity. These three foundational elements of contemporary development theory and practice are at the root of The Rockefeller Foundation’s movement toward advancing inclusive economies and building resilience.
The paper offers many insights about the measurement and evaluation of programs. It illuminates the debate surrounding ways to assess well-being beyond GDP. It covers the many ways to approach the measurement of poverty and the most commonly used indexes. Finally, it examines the important distinction between equity and equality and the policy implications of pursuing equity.
A Synthesis Review of Key Lessons in Programs Relating to Oceans and FisheriesThe Rockefeller Foundation
This synthesis was designed to provide an evidence base on the success factors in small-scale coastal fisheries management in developing countries and, in turn, to assist the Rockefeller Foundation in developing its strategy for its Oceans and Fisheries Initiative. In doing so, it identifies and describes some 20 key factors believed to influence success in small-scale coastal fisheries management.
The report was completed via a rapid review of key sources of knowledge from formal published literature, institutional literature, key informants and Internet searches. The focus was on key success factors in achieving a balance of social, economic and ecological benefits from the management of small-scale coastal fisheries.
Craig Applegath of Cohos Evamy presents on the need for resilient cities in the face of increasingly volatile social and environmental changes.
Presented at the 5th annual Green Building Festival in Toronto, Canada, 2009.
National Disaster Resilience Competition's Resilience Academies - Emerging In...The Rockefeller Foundation
In 2015 The Rockefeller Foundation partnered with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to launch the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC)
Resilience Academies. Recognizing the salient need to infuse resilience thinking into HUD’s NDRC, these Academies were established to expose state and local governments to new approaches for protecting and promoting the long-term well-being and safety of their communities. A recent independent evaluation of the Academies has provided instructive insights about what works in efforts to build innovative resilience capacity.
Future Cities Africa
resilience.io prototype development in GAMA
Supporting inclusive, resilient low carbon development
Stephen Passmore
24th March 2015
UiWE presentation on "CPH Social Innovation Lab" - a hub for creating new social solutions in Scandinavia - at MindLab June 2, 2010. UiWE is cultural design company based in Copenhagen.
Urban populations are facing increasing challenges from numerous natural and manmade pressures such as rapid urbanisation, climate change, terrorism and increased risks from natural hazards. Cities must learn to adapt and thrive in the face of these diverse challenges - they must learn how to build resilience in an uncertain world. Armed with this knowledge and understanding, governments, donors, investors, policy makers, and the private sector will be able to develop effective strategies to foster more resilient cities.
Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the City Resilience Index (CRI) is being developed by Arup. It builds on extensive research undertaken by Arup to establish an accessible, evidence-based definition of urban resilience, which culminated in the publication of the City Resilience Framework (CRF) in April 2014 (www.arup.com/cri). This provides a holistic articulation of city resilience, structured around four dimensions and 12 goals that are critical for the resilience of our cities. This structure also forms the foundations of the CRI.
Who is the CRI for?
The CRI will measure relative performance over time rather than comparison between cities. It will not deliver an overall single score for comparing performance between cities, neither will it provide a world ranking of the most resilient cities. However, it will provide a common basis of measurement and assessment to better facilitate dialogue and knowledge-sharing between cities.
It is envisaged that the CRI will primarily be used by city governments who are in the best position to gather administrative data, but it can also be used by other interested organisations and individuals (for example, universities, non-governmental organisations, community groups). It is intended that the CRI process will also provide the means for cities to capture the views of the poor and vulnerable groups as they normally suffer more severely the impacts of disruptions and failures.
Cities are fonts of ideas, opportunity, art and political movements. But urban enclaves can also generate inequality, epidemics and pollution. The rapid pace of urbanization in the coming decades brings these and other unprecedented opportunities and challenges to the fore. Will cities lose their vibrant potential if the challenges they face spiral out of control?
The unprecedented damage Hurricane Sandy caused along the East Coast of the US, especially to the densely populated New York and New Jersey coastlines, was a wake-up call to the threat that weather events pose to our communities. The world has always been plagued by severe and seemingly intractable problems, including storms, but today, we live with an unprecedented level of disruption.
Things go wrong with more frequency and severity, greater complexity, and with more inter-related effects. No longer can we afford to simply rebuild what existed before. We must begin to rethink our recovery efforts, making sure the damaged region is resilient enough to rebound from future storms.
In order to better protect Sandy-area residents from future climate events the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force
initiated Rebuild by Design (RBD) to develop fundable solutions that address structural and environmental vulnerabilities throughout the East Coast region. Recognizing the enormity of this challenge, the RBD process has looked beyond traditional solutions, supporting new approaches in architectural design, regional planning and environmental engineering, all of which are set within an innovative process that combines public, philanthropic and private sector resources and knowledge with community participation in a design competition.
Accelerating Impact: Exploring Best Practices, Challenges, and Innovations in...The Rockefeller Foundation
Effective accelerators play many roles—educator, mentor, and funder, among others—in helping impact enterprises solve complex social problems. This report explores how accelerators and incubators support impact enterprises to better understand the barriers to sustained enterprise development and their ability to achieve scalable impact.
Urban Climate Change Resilience in Action: Lessons from Projects in 10 ACCCRN...The Rockefeller Foundation
This paper presents key insights emerging from an analysis of the 36 intervention projects,totaling approximately $15.5 million, which have been funded and are beingimplemented under the Rockefeller Foundation Asian Cities Climate Change ResilienceNetwork (ACCCRN) in ten initial cities1. As a pioneering effort to advance on-the-groundactions aimed at building urban climate change resilience (UCCR), this portfolio ofprojects2 provides a ‘first generation’ view of how a set of cities have interpreted UCCRchallenges and translated their understanding into targeted priorities and actions. Oneof the intentions of the ACCCRN initiative was to advance the still young field of UCCRwith practical actions that substantiate the growing number of theoretical frameworks.
As the recent National Climate Assessment made clear, extreme weather events—including heat waves, drought, tropical storms, high winds, storm surges, and heavy downpours—are becoming more severe. In many places these risks are projected to increase substantially due to rising sea levels and evolving development patterns, affecting the safety, health, and economy of entire communities. Extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy have made it clear that we remain vulnerable to such events in spite of advances in disaster preparedness. American communities cannot effectively reduce their risks and vulnerabilities without including future extreme events and other impacts of climate change in their planning both before and after a disaster, and in everyday decision-making.
The City Resilience Framework is a unique framework developed by Arup with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, based on extensive research in cities. It provides a lens to understand the complexity of cities and the drivers that contribute to their resilience. Looking at these drivers can help cities to assess the extent of their resilience, to identify critical areas of weakness, and to identify actions and programs to improve the city’s resilience.
The private sector is a logical player to help coordinate
and calibrate resilience-building actions. In the course of their commercial activities, companies may interact with a wide range of city departments—from law-enforcement agencies to public utilities—and therefore have the potential to act as broker, involving a broad range of government players in urban resilience discussions.
Conservation Finance. From Niche to Mainstream: The Building of an Institutio...The Rockefeller Foundation
Sustainable farmland, healthy forests, clean water, and abundant habitat stand to become more valuable as the global population climbs to nine billion by 2050. Already, pioneering investors have put together financial solutions that combine real assets, such as tropical forests, with cash flows from operations in fields such as sustainable timber, agriculture, and ecotourism. Conservation finance, as this field is known, represents an undeveloped, but emerging private sector investment opportunity of major proportion.
Filling this gap to finance the preservation of the world’s precious ecosystems will require USD 200 - 300 billion in additional capital, and private investment capital may be the only source. Attracting that level of private capital will require attractive risk-adjusted rates of return, in addition to clear and measurable conservation impacts.
In this report, Credit Suisse—together with the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment—there is a toolkit for substantially growing the investment that flows into the conservation sector, illustrated by a few concrete ideas that we deem to be scalable, repeatable, and investable. Implementing these ideas will require strong collaboration between the financial and environmental communities to find new and creative ways of solving the financial structuring and conservation challenges at hand.
In an increasingly fast-changing and interconnected world, fostering resilience to withstand unexpected shocks is becoming more important. Bringing together leading figures from governments, businesses, and resilience experts, The Urban Resilience Summit served as a platform for dialogue on how to build robust and resilient cities.
A survey released by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) shows that 90% of business leaders believe they can help prepare cities for the effects of climate change, with 51% saying that investing in climate change resilience gives them a competitive edge.
The dovetailing of potentially devastating climate change impacts and urbanization by mid-century is of great concern to municipal leaders. The portion of the world living in cities is slated to rise to two-thirds of the global population (or 6.4 billion), up from 54% today, according to the United Nations. In tandem, the frequency and severity of floods, storms and drought as a result of climate change are expected to rise significantly in the coming decades, particularly in coastal areas, where many large cities are located. Forging preparative responses for these changes has thus taken on a new sense of urgency for government officials, non-governmental organizations and business leaders.
For business, the executive survey, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, finds that the biggest perceived market and operational risk from climate change is the disruption of energy supplies, which could severely impact on a company’s ability to operate.
Urban women face significant economic and social constraints due to their limited ability to access, own and control property, including immovable property (e.g., land, structures), movable property (e.g., business equipment, personal possessions), and financial assets (e.g., cash, financial accounts). Insecure property rights make women more vulnerable and less economically, politically and socially empowered; inhibit them from improving their families’ health and well-being; and prevent them from fully contributing to the sustainability and economic growth of their cities. With increasing numbers of women living in cities, especially vulnerable groups like migrants and the elderly, women’s insecurity of property rights in the urban context is rapidly growing in urgency.
Following its successful partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) post–Hurricane Sandy Rebuild by Design competition, The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Resilience Academies and Capacity-Building Initiative. Designed to support HUD’s National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC), the Academies and the Initiative provide eligible state, county, and municipal governments with subject-matter expertise and lessons from the Foundation’s years of on-the-ground disaster recovery programming and mitigation planning. Further, the Foundation hoped to assist these key players in moving global knowledge and resources to meet homegrown needs.
Equity and Inclusive Growth from a Development Perspective is essential reading for development and evaluation practitioners. It provides a concise history and critical examination of the concepts related to growth, poverty, and equity. These three foundational elements of contemporary development theory and practice are at the root of The Rockefeller Foundation’s movement toward advancing inclusive economies and building resilience.
The paper offers many insights about the measurement and evaluation of programs. It illuminates the debate surrounding ways to assess well-being beyond GDP. It covers the many ways to approach the measurement of poverty and the most commonly used indexes. Finally, it examines the important distinction between equity and equality and the policy implications of pursuing equity.
A Synthesis Review of Key Lessons in Programs Relating to Oceans and FisheriesThe Rockefeller Foundation
This synthesis was designed to provide an evidence base on the success factors in small-scale coastal fisheries management in developing countries and, in turn, to assist the Rockefeller Foundation in developing its strategy for its Oceans and Fisheries Initiative. In doing so, it identifies and describes some 20 key factors believed to influence success in small-scale coastal fisheries management.
The report was completed via a rapid review of key sources of knowledge from formal published literature, institutional literature, key informants and Internet searches. The focus was on key success factors in achieving a balance of social, economic and ecological benefits from the management of small-scale coastal fisheries.
Craig Applegath of Cohos Evamy presents on the need for resilient cities in the face of increasingly volatile social and environmental changes.
Presented at the 5th annual Green Building Festival in Toronto, Canada, 2009.
National Disaster Resilience Competition's Resilience Academies - Emerging In...The Rockefeller Foundation
In 2015 The Rockefeller Foundation partnered with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to launch the National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC)
Resilience Academies. Recognizing the salient need to infuse resilience thinking into HUD’s NDRC, these Academies were established to expose state and local governments to new approaches for protecting and promoting the long-term well-being and safety of their communities. A recent independent evaluation of the Academies has provided instructive insights about what works in efforts to build innovative resilience capacity.
Future Cities Africa
resilience.io prototype development in GAMA
Supporting inclusive, resilient low carbon development
Stephen Passmore
24th March 2015
UiWE presentation on "CPH Social Innovation Lab" - a hub for creating new social solutions in Scandinavia - at MindLab June 2, 2010. UiWE is cultural design company based in Copenhagen.
Our first issue of 2013 starts with three important topics that are recently receiving much attention,
but whose consequences and dynamics are difficult to grasp. These three topics deserve another
look because the visibility of some events may hinder what are their actual potential in the future.
Our first article is about various countries in the South American region organizing macro-events
in order to attract tourist and promote their service sector —where a great portion of informal jobs
and precariousness exist. Governments are investing heavily in creating infrastructure and giving
all the support that the private sector needs to organize successful events. Nevertheless, these
events are just the tip of the iceberg: governments may be losing the opportunity of having a wave
of tourist in the next ten years in order to extend benefits to a vast group of informal workers that
depend on services that tourist demand, such as retailing, restaurants, and tours, among others.
Climate change is making things worse for vulnerable population in South American countries.
Nevertheless, the rhetoric at negotiation tables still refers to the time when the Kyoto Protocol was
being designed. Such clear division of responsibilities between developed and developing countries
simply cannot hold in a post-Kyoto world. It is now that such divisions are becoming a
insurmountable barrier to reach an agreement. Nevertheless, such divisions of interests, goals and
coalitions has roots in the growing diversity of countries in the region, but they cannot be a pretext
for not reaching a shared criteria to deal with global negotiations about climate change.
Participation was, two decades ago, the flavor of the month in development policies. Giving power
to people in democracies was a correct strategy to improve social services and design public
policies. Nevertheless, the growing gap between the political discourse on what participation can
potentially bring and what actually achieves in most localities is giving ammunition to some
authorities to reverse participatory processes. Again, cities need to be creative, not only by
improving consultations with alternative techniques to reach people that has been reluctant to
participate, but also by improving their internal bureaucratic processes to become more responsive
and open to citizens’ preferences.
Yang design service design lab social innovation powered by service designYANG DESIGN
Service design is a relatively young discipline, dating back to the late 1990s, and even more so in Asia, where it began emerging around 2008-2009. As an emerging field that is drawing more and more interest, service design is not fully understood by both private and public institutions.
Long‐term unemployment has reached historic highs in the United States in recent years. Currently, nearly 40 percent of unemployed workers have been out of work for six months or longer, compared to a high of 25 percent in the 1980s recession. Lengthy periods of joblessness profoundly affect the economic and social resilience of workers and their families. Long‐term unemployment erodes assets, diminishes reemployment possibilities and significantly reduces lifetime wages. Additionally, the longterm unemployed face higher rates of family instability, mental and physical health problems.
Suburban poverty affects over 16.4 million people across the U.S. and is growing rapidly, significantly outpacing the growth rate of urban poverty over the last decade (64% vs. 29%). Experts suggest that the problem of suburban poverty is “the new normal.” While the basic needs of the poor in the suburbs are similar to those of the urban poor (e.g. education inequity, poor access to quality healthcare etc.), there are some critical systemic differences (e.g. limited transportation options, jurisdictional challenges etc.). These challenges are further exacerbated by the lack of awareness and understanding of the problem and
potential solutions.
Over the past century, The Rockefeller Foundation has remained true to the pursuit of health access for all mankind. We have helped to build and develop schools of medicine and public health, contributed to new medicines and treatments that helped cure patients and advanced the field of health. Our long history has given the foundation a unique place in the field of global health. We have the ability and privilege to convene great minds, catalyze new initiatives, identify new opportunities and increase global health and wellbeing.
Is convening the right tool for your work? Convening places a significant demand on people’s time and resources, so it’s important to make informed decisions about when and how to bring a group together.
GATHER: The Art & Science of Effective Convening is a unique guidebook for convening planners and change agents interested in harnessing the potential of collective intelligence through in-person convening.
Learn more: http://rockefellerfoundation.org/gather-guide
Informal workers face substantial risks and vulnerabilities due to insecurity surrounding their employment status and lack of control of the conditions of their employment. In addition, informal workers have limited access to affordable and appropriate health care for themselves and their families, and they may not seek care if they have insecure legal status, or due to the potential expense or loss of income. The combination of high vulnerabilities and inadequate social protections (including insufficient access to affordable health services) results in high incidences of injury, illness, susceptibility to chronic diseases and poverty.
In August 2013, a multidisciplinary group gathered at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center to address the theme of “Community Resilience Through big data and Technology.” Creative and critical thinkers were selected from the technology sector, academia, the arts, humanitarian and ecological spheres. Over ten days, we explored how data could be used to help build community resilience in the face of a range of stresses — environmental, political, social and economic. Large data collection and analysis may support communities by providing them with timely feedback loops on their immediate environment. However, the collection and use of data can also create new vulnerabilities and risks, by enabling discriminating against individuals, skewing evidence, and creating dependencies on centralized infrastructure that may increase a system’s vulnerability. After analyzing these risks and opportunities, we developed a framework to help guide the effective use of data for building community-driven resilience. In this framework, we propose six domains: ethics, governance, science, technology, place and sociocultural context. We believe that by considering all six domains together, organizations can safeguard against predictable failures by exposing project weaknesses from the outset rather than in hindsight.
Urban transportation is undergoing massive change and expansion, especially in the developing world. The rapid growth of cities is driving demand for better urban transportation and many cities are set to invest heavily in infrastructure. Unfortunately, the needs of low-income households are often overlooked in the selection, design, and service decisions related to these investments. According to the World Bank, urban public transportation systems disproportionately disadvantage the urban poor and vulnerable, especially in cities in the developing world.
Meanwhile, innovative business and service models are emerging that are disrupting the established transportation systems in cities by taking advantage of open data, the Internet and mobile telephony. Services such as bike share, ZipCar®, Waze®, Hopstop®, and Uber® are reducing consumption and reconfiguring the relationship between modes, users, and providers of transportation. These new approaches improve urban transportation by making it more efficient, dependable, and sustainable.
As Susan Zielinski of the University of Michigan’s SMART Initiative puts it, “Transportation is at a crossroads. In response to rapid urbanization, shifting demographics, and other pressing social, economic, and environmental factors, cities and regions are shifting investment dollars from single mode infrastructure to multi-mode, multi-service, IT-enabled door-to-door systems… innovations and opportunities (are going) beyond the bounds of the traditional transportation industry.”
Collectively referred to as the emerging New Mobility sector, this innovative industry sector provides a key opportunity to build more inclusive cities and more resilient communities.
Catalyzing the New Mobility in Cities is an exploratory effort focused on identifying innovative business and service models that are beneficial to the urban poor, both as users and providers of urban transportation.The primer briefly summarizes and showcases some of the hallmark innovations that are challenging the status quo in rapidly growing cities in the developing world.
While the mobile sector has grown significantly over the last 5-7 years, scale and sustainability have yet to be achieved. To further explore opportunities and barriers to investment and partnership to scale mobile-enabled technology, the Rockefeller Foundation has supported the work of Mobile for Development Intelligence, an open data research portal for the developing world mobile industry.
This report analyzes market and user data to provide a fuller picture of activities in the mobile sector and present recommendations on how to accelerate economic, social and environmental impact with mobile solutions.
Recurrent food crises are one of the principal impediments to development in the Horn and Sahel regions of Africa. In 2011, a drought-related emergency affected over 12 million people in the Horn – the fourth such event since the turn of the millennium. Precise numbers are unavailable, but estimates indicate that hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and tens of thousands more died. A year later, 18 million people were affected by a major crisis in the Sahel – the third to hit the region in eight years.
Food crises are slow-onset disasters. They emerge over a period of months and are routinely tracked and anticipated by famine early warning systems – specialist units that monitor and forecast risk factors such as food prices, health indicators, rainfall and crop production. These systems provide governments and humanitarian actors with the chance to take early action and prevent the situation from escalating into an emergency. Cost-benefit analyses indicate that, compared with emergency response, early action offers significant cost savings in the long run.
Yet all too often the link between early warning and early action fails and the opportunity to mitigate a gathering crisis is lost. This disconnect was starkly apparent in Somalia during 2010/11, when increasingly urgent early warnings accumulated for 11 months before famine was finally declared in July. Only after that did the humanitarian system mobilize.
Beginning with the failures that allowed the Somalia famine to take place and drawing on the recent history of other early warnings, this report considers in detail the various political, institutional and organizational barriers to translating early warning of famine into early action to avert it, and makes recommendations for how these can be overcome.
In 2013, in response to the opportunities presented by Africa’s rapidly growing youth population and the ubiquity of information and communications technologies across the continent, The Rockefeller Foundation launched its Digital Jobs Africa initiative. The initiative aims to enable young people to access jobs by providing them with in-demand technology-related and other employability skills. Now just past its two-year mark, the Foundation is taking stock of the rich learning that has emerged from the initiative.
The Global Resilience Partnership, spearheaded by The Rockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), aims to help millions of people in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and South and Southeast Asia build stronger and more resilient futures.
Threats and stresses to our 21st century world come in all shapes and sizes, just as they have since the beginning of human existence. But what distinguishes today’s threats from those of the past is the escalating rate at which they are occurring, without mind for geography or man-made borders. Issues once identified and analyzed individually – our environment, the economy, and social challenges – are now inextricably interlinked.
Despite all we know about resilience and the large body of research and literature that has been written on the subject – too few societies, organizations, and systems get resilience right.
In our new publication, titled Rebound: Building a More Resilient World, we asked leaders from various disciplines to share their lessons of what resilience means and what it requires of us. Through the lens of their own experiences, we can begin to explore some of the ways we can help prepare for, withstand and emerge stronger from the acute shocks and chronic stresses of the 21st century.
Financial Innovations For Relief, Recovery, And Resilience Insights Reports.pdfIIX Global
Explore how IIX and Australian DFAT revolutionize post-COVID-19 recovery with RRR. Join our webinar to uncover key insights and hear success stories, highlighting the program’s potential for global replication.
For more information please visit: https://iixglobal.com/rrr-research-paper-2024/
"Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCS, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations." Could disruptive change of such a magnitude also threaten top brands among international civil society organisations (ICSOs) such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Oxfam or Save the Children?
This question was at the centre of the deliberations of a group of about 20 experts and leaders from ICSOs and some of their key stakeholders who worked together from January to August 2013, trying to identify strategies to detect, prepare for and navigate disruptive change as it arises. The Disruptive Change Working Group communicated via an online platform and email, and held several telephone conferences and one face-to-face meeting in Bellagio, Italy as a basis for their collaboration. Published by the International Civil Society Centre, this text reflects the inputs and discussions of the whole group.
The presentation focuses on the importance of investing in human capital in building and strengthening community resilience against disasters. It is evident that poor health and education impact longer term employment opportunities and income prospects for young people entering into job market. Lower income and/or employment opportunities thus in turn affect the capacity of individuals, families and communities as a whole to respond effectively and efficiently to shocks, stress and disasters. That’s why it becomes crucial to invest for building human capital which in the longer run helps strengthening resilience and coping capacity.
The presentation targets to build awareness and sensitization among the stakeholders involved in community resilience and disaster risk reduction.
Resilience Building in Complex Emergencies: WASH Programming in Conflict Stat...Katrice King
Numerous crises are concurrently faced in South Sudan including conflict, mass displacement, drought, chronic hunger and economic deterioration. A context that requires a long-term holistic view of the transitions between humanitarian and development initiatives, so that outcomes are mutually reinforcing.
Resilience building through strengthening absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity and transformative capacity, has the ability to ensure reinforcing transitions. This paper demonstrates that
it is possible to build adaptive capacity of crisis affected communities through emergency WASH programming in remote conflict states in South Sudan to build resilience.
This presentation is an introduction to the Disaster Risk Reduction Ambassador Curriculum. This presentation was given at the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association's annual Symposium held every July in Broomfield, Colorado.
This presentation is given by Katie Skakel, Senior Hazard Mitigation Planner. Watch the presentation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCPHwnwVupA
Similar to Resilience Week 2016 Hosted by The Rockefeller Foundation (20)
The Transforming Health Systems (THS) initiative was one of The Rockefeller Foundation’s largest global health initiatives. Aligned with the Foundation’s mission to promote the well-being of humanity, THS aimed to improve the health status and financial resilience of poor and otherwise vulnerable populations through activities promoting improved health systems performance and the expansion of universal health coverage (UHC).
This report synthesizes findings from a five-year, multicomponent evaluation of the THS initiative. The objectives of the evaluation were to assess i) the effectiveness of the three core strategies – global advocacy, regional networks, and country-level investments – employed under THS to advance progress toward UHC in low- and middle-income countries in four focus countries, ii) the overall effectiveness and influence of the initiative, and iii) the Foundation’s legacy in the UHC arena. A key component of the evaluation was to document lessons learned from achievements and challenges to inform the development of future initiatives at the Foundation.
Overall, the evaluation found the THS initiative to be successful in its efforts to activate a global movement to accelerate progress toward UHC. The Foundation catalyzed and shaped the global UHC movement and, ultimately, influenced the inclusion of UHC in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the post-2015 agenda. It also created enduring cross-learning platforms and tools to support country progress toward the SDGs’ UHC targets. Although THS gained less traction in advancing UHC through its focus country investments, its success in making UHC a global development target and creating networks and coalitions to support UHC reform efforts in LMICs will likely have country-level impacts for years to come.
This guide is designed for program officers to use in their work related to networks, coalitions, and other relationship-based structures as part of their initiatives, program strategies, and outcomes. It offers a set of core components that make up the basics of strategizing, implementing, and sustaining inter-organizational relationships and structures. You can work through the guide from beginning to end or jump to specific issues with which you might be struggling. Every component suggests concrete “actions” or questions that a program officer can apply.
Putting “Impact” at the Center of Impact Investing: A Case Study of How Green...The Rockefeller Foundation
More than ever before, investors are looking to put their money where their values are. As a result, impact investing has burgeoned into an over $100 billion industry in just over ten years. But how do impact investors know whether their money is truly having a positive impact on people and
the planet? How can these investors better manage their results, and use material data – both positive and negative – about social and environmental performance to maximize their impact?
This case study documents the journey of one organization, Green Canopy Homes – and its financing arm, Green Canopy Capital – toward more systematically thinking about, measuring, and managing its impact. While developing the impact thesis for its resource-efficient homes, Green Canopy applied a theory of change tool, an approach common within the social sector, to systematically map the causal pathways between its strategies and intended impact. Its rationale for adopting this approach was simple: use it to maximize impact, and understand and minimize possible harm. The tool also effectively positioned Green Canopy to measure and communicate about its social and environmental performance, and to make client-centric adaptations to its business.
The case study provides an illuminating example of how investors can adapt theory of change to serve their impact management needs. By demonstrating the relevance and transferability of this tool for articulating, measuring, and managing impact, the hope is that this case study can contribute to strengthening other investors’ approaches, in turn contributing to building the evidence base for the “impact” of impact investments.
Electricity is one of the most important drivers of socio-economic development, yet up to 250 million Indians are not connected to the national grid, and the majority of rural consumers have grossly unreliable power supply. More than solar lanterns and home systems that power a few lights and fans, among the most efficient ways to provide reliable electricity in remote areas is through local mini-grids. India has several run by energy service companies and usually funded by philanthropic capital.
Most of these enterprises have not been able to scale-up their impact meaningfully because the risk of the national grid entering their markets can render their mini-grid unviable. Rather than seeing “grid versus mini-grid” as a policy choice, Beyond Off-Grid: Integrating Mini-Grids with India’s Evolving Electricity System explores ways we can encourage more of both: to have the grid operate in partnership with a network of distributed mini-grids to accelerate electrification.
What does the roadmap for this ‘interconnection’ of our energy system look like? How can we leverage both government and private investment? What are the different interconnection models and their commercial, technical and regulatory implications? Where do mini-grids go from here? This timely report – commissioned by the Asha Impact Trust in collaboration with Shakti Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation – provides a multi-layered perspective to address these questions based on extensive research, wide-ranging policymaker interactions, and our investment experience evaluating mini-grid operators.
We cannot achieve significant poverty reduction without stimulating electricity consumption, which fuels income-generating activities in the modern economy. In India, about 237 million people have little or no access to reliable electricity -- more than 90% of them live in rural areas. This severely constrains economic opportunities. Addressing this chronic problem requires going beyond simply expanding the government grid.
Mini-grids have emerged as a viable solution to complement and integrate with the national grid, and can support the government in achieving its ‘Power for All’ vision. The Rockefeller Foundation’s Smart Power for Rural Development (SPRD) initiative is the first to pursue the creation of a mini-grid sector that is robust enough to fuel commercial enterprises and drive economic development beyond just one village. Smart Power India (SPI), which leads the SPRD initiative in India, has proven that mini-grids can be swiftly deployed to deliver reliable power, and has likewise demonstrated that mini-grids can spur economic activity needed to help people lift themselves out of poverty.
This issue of Smart Power Connect, published after the hundredth village was connected to Smart Power, explores the efforts, success stories, and challenges faced in SPI’s mini-grid journey to date. With insights from government agencies, policy experts, energy service companies, investors and mini-grid customers themselves, this publication provides a glimpse into the potential of the mini-grids to transform the energy sector – and how rural communities are embracing and utilizing clean, reliable and adequate power to improve their lives.
Today, nearly 240 million Indians lack access to reliable electricity, and 90 percent of them live in rural areas. Despite the government’s ambitious plans to accelerate universal electrification by 2018, challenges remain in providing reliable and sufficient energy to the last mile. Distributed renewable energy (DRE) solutions, and in particular mini-grids, have emerged as a reliable complement to the government’s electrification programs by providing rural areas with access to reliable and high-quality electricity at a much faster pace. The growth of the DRE sector will be an important fillip to the last-mile challenge.
Smart Power India (SPI) is an organization that implements The Rockefeller Foundation’s Smart Power for Rural Development (SPRD) to build viable and commercially oriented mini-grid ecosystems in India. This report explains the Smart Power mini-grid model and explores the drivers of success. Analyzing early data from a cohort of the 106 Smart Power mini-grids operational as of 2017, SPI provides data on commercial performance as well as recommendations to further accelerate the rural mini-grid business.
Encouragingly, the report reveals that the 23 top-cohort plants have an average unit-level profit margin of approximately 30% after the first year of operations. It also highlights that villages receiving electricity from SPRD mini-grids show early signs of social and economic impact (also see Understanding the Impact of Rural Electrification.) SPI has observed that site selection, a strong focus on operations, support for demand generation and marketing optimized for rural customers, are critical to the continued improvement of mini-grid operations. Finally, the report provides recommendations to address external challenges such as the need for increased financing, stronger policy support and further technological innovation.
A successful philanthropic initiative depends not just on the strategy pursued – but also on how that strategy is implemented. Implementation considerations can vary significantly based on the shape of an initiative – starting a new organization can look very different than investing in a portfolio of existing organizations. This report looks at four “models” for implementing initiatives. These don’t represent an exhaustive set of potential models to pursue, or even the most high potential models. Rather, these are four examples of models, each of which has significant potential for impact when chosen wisely and executed well. The report outlines the considerations involved in choosing to pursue each of these models and findings on how to implement them, drawn from real-world experience.
Globally, over 1 billion people still live without electricity. Roughly 237 million of these people are in India. Smart Power for Rural Development (SPRD) is a $75 million initiative aimed at accelerating development in India’s least electrified states. Through the deployment of decentralized renewable energy mini-grids, SPRD works to accelerate the growth of rural economies, while at the same time improving the lives and livelihoods of poor and marginalized families and communities. With access to energy, individuals, households, and communities can generate economic opportunities and enhance their quality of life. Understanding the Impact of Rural Electrification has generated significant insights on how SPRD is having an impact on the lives of villagers, and what more is needed to sustain, grow, and scale these gains. We’ve learned that households and businesses are slowly but surely moving up the energy ladder; enterprises are expanding and new ones are being created as a result of energy access, and women are feeling safer and more mobile after dark. In this report, we also introduce the innovative GDP+ approach which, which quantifies and measures the social, economic and environmental gains of access to electricity in GDP terms. The initial findings here show that SPRD villages experienced an $18.50 per capita increase in GDP+.
The information in this brief is drawn from a case study of the JLN conducted by Mathematica Policy Research in consultation with the THS team and the Evaluation Office of The Rockefeller Foundation. The study, completed in 2016, was undertaken to assess the extent to which the JLN had achieved its goal of becoming a country-driven, sustainable network helping to advance progress toward universal health coverage in low- and middle-income countries.
The Joint Learning Network (JLN) is a key innovation and central part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s efforts to promote universal health coverage (UHC) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) under its Transforming Health Systems (THS) initiative (2009-2017). Launched in 2010, the JLN is a country-led, global learning network that connects practitioners around the globe, in order to advance knowledge and learning about approaches to accelerate country progress toward UHC. The JLN currently includes 27 member countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America that engage in multilateral workshops, country learning exchanges, and virtual dialogues to share experiences and develop tools to support the design and implementation of UHC-oriented reforms. The core vehicles for shared learning and resource development under the JLN are technical initiatives, which are managed by several technical partners and organized around key levers for reaching UHC objectives.
With 62.5 million tons of food wasted in the United States each year, there is much work to be done to
bring about substantial changes in the food industry that will create a more efficient food system and
help preserve the environment. This guide describes promising opportunities to reduce food waste
in three areas—packaging, food retail, and home kitchens—and discusses a number of solutions that
could be piloted, validated, and scaled to significantly reduce food waste in America.
As part of its overall mission of promoting the well-being of humanity throughout the world, The Rockefeller Foundation developed the goal of advancing inclusive economies. The framing of this goal is deliberate: the word inclusive stresses the need to overcome disadvantage while the choice of economies versus growth suggests the need to consider all dimensions of economic life. This executive summary outlines efforts to develop a framework to better understand and measure the characteristics of an inclusive economy. It includes:
• The evolution of the concept of an inclusive economy
• Key lessons learned from an analysis of indicator initiatives
related to measuring an inclusive economy
• A recommended indicator framework composed of 5 broad
characteristics, 15 sub-categories, and 57 indicators
• Implications for future work
For more details, a full report is available at:
inclusiveeconomies.org
Situating the Next Generation of Impact Measurement and Evaluation for Impact...The Rockefeller Foundation
Situating the Next Generation of Impact Measurement and Evaluation for Impact Investing contends that measurement practices need to evolve by borrowing from the strengths of both private business and social sector evaluation. Suggesting that an impact thesis is a crucial anchor for impact measurement strategies, the paper offers several measurement approaches in use today. The ‘next generation’ of impact measurement and evaluation must stem from a commitment of impact investors to strengthen evidence for their social returns alongside the evidence for financial returns.
The goal of the CEO & Gender Media Audit was to understand the media coverage of CEOs in various situations and determine if there are differences in the way male and female CEOs are covered.
Building Capacity for Innovation and Systems Change: Innovation Fellowship Pr...The Rockefeller Foundation
Achieving The Rockefeller Foundation’s goals to build resilience and advance inclusive economies requires moving beyond traditional approaches to problem-solving. New ways
of thinking and working are needed in order to have impact at scale. The Rockefeller
Foundation Global Fellowship Program on Social Innovation was designed to enable
leaders to innovate in order to address the underlying causes of complex social and
environmental challenges. With two successive cohorts of Fellowships now complete and
a third underway, the timing is right to reflect on what the Foundation is learning about
building individual and institutional capacity to innovate and drive systems change.
Assessing Market-Based Solutions: Lessons from Evaluating a Youth Employment ...The Rockefeller Foundation
Creating employment opportunities for youth is a priority for many countries. How can these opportunities – increasingly situated within market-based approaches to development – generate and sustain positive employment and social outcomes for individuals, their families and communities? This paper reports on an evaluation of a Rockefeller Foundation initiative that provided instructive lessons on how to assess youth employment and digital jobs programs that embed market-based principles.
The Rockefeller Foundation has long recognized the importance of meaningful engagement of the private sector in addressing many of the world’s most complex problems. While many social sector leaders understand that engaging the private sector matters, far fewer understand how to do so, or the key questions one should consider before starting down this path of cross-sector collaboration. For instance: Why would a network want to include a company? Or conversely, why would a company want to participate in a network focused on social impact? Can social impact efforts deliver business value? What makes network relationships durable? And ultimately, what are the different needs around accountability, leadership, governance and mindset? To answer questions such as these, The Foundation and our partners at Monitor Institute, a part of Deloitte Consulting LLP, have created “PARTICIPATE: The power of involving business in social impact networks”—a handbook for social change leaders aspiring to effectively engage the private sector as authentic participants in the pursuit of social impact.
In 2015, The Rockefeller Foundation collaborated with several partners to begin developing incentive-based mechanisms to address competition for freshwater, and to bring human water use back in balance with the water needs of freshwater ecosystems in order to build long-term resilience. The early solutions that emerged, and the wider lessons from the group’s work, are captured in this report.
31052024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
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03062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
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#First_India_NewsPaper
In a May 9, 2024 paper, Juri Opitz from the University of Zurich, along with Shira Wein and Nathan Schneider form Georgetown University, discussed the importance of linguistic expertise in natural language processing (NLP) in an era dominated by large language models (LLMs).
The authors explained that while machine translation (MT) previously relied heavily on linguists, the landscape has shifted. “Linguistics is no longer front and center in the way we build NLP systems,” they said. With the emergence of LLMs, which can generate fluent text without the need for specialized modules to handle grammar or semantic coherence, the need for linguistic expertise in NLP is being questioned.
01062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
हम आग्रह करते हैं कि जो भी सत्ता में आए, वह संविधान का पालन करे, उसकी रक्षा करे और उसे बनाए रखे।" प्रस्ताव में कुल तीन प्रमुख हस्तक्षेप और उनके तंत्र भी प्रस्तुत किए गए। पहला हस्तक्षेप स्वतंत्र मीडिया को प्रोत्साहित करके, वास्तविकता पर आधारित काउंटर नैरेटिव का निर्माण करके और सत्तारूढ़ सरकार द्वारा नियोजित मनोवैज्ञानिक हेरफेर की रणनीति का मुकाबला करके लोगों द्वारा निर्धारित कथा को बनाए रखना और उस पर कार्यकरना था।
role of women and girls in various terror groupssadiakorobi2
Women have three distinct types of involvement: direct involvement in terrorist acts; enabling of others to commit such acts; and facilitating the disengagement of others from violent or extremist groups.
‘वोटर्स विल मस्ट प्रीवेल’ (मतदाताओं को जीतना होगा) अभियान द्वारा जारी हेल्पलाइन नंबर, 4 जून को सुबह 7 बजे से दोपहर 12 बजे तक मतगणना प्रक्रिया में कहीं भी किसी भी तरह के उल्लंघन की रिपोर्ट करने के लिए खुला रहेगा।
2. 2 Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report
Mamadou Biteye
Rose Goslinga
Sandy Andelman
Executive Summary
In December 2016, The Rockefeller Foundation’s African Regional
Office hosted the Rockefeller Foundation
Resilience Convening in Nairobi, Kenya.
Over 150 delegates and 40 speakers
participated, sharing insights, examples,
and engaging in debate and discussion
on why and how‘resilience’can enhance
Africa’s ongoing development.
Since 2011, ‘building resilience’
has emerged as a key goal for
governments and other development
and humanitarian stakeholders in Africa. Originally applied
predominantly to countries and contexts chronically affected by
drought or other climatic shocks,‘resilience’is now gaining traction
in contexts as broad as urban planning, infrastructure development
and agriculture.
Theconveningwasdevisedtoenabledelegatestodevelopadeeper
understanding of resilience and what it means in practice when
applied to their own field of work or experience.Through field visits,
presentations and discussions, delegates had the opportunity to:
• LEARN – Deepen knowledge and understanding of
resilience
• EXPERIENCE – Learn from first-hand examples of resilience
practice with demonstrable impact
• ENGAGE – Interact and share knowledge with others
• NETWORK–Meetresilienceleadersandkick-startpotential
partnerships.
Key Themes
Adopting a resilience-based approach is complex. Across the
three days of the convening a number of key, cross cutting themes
emerged:
Innovation is essential to accelerate the pace of change– “We
have all the tools to help African farmers take control of their own
destiny.”
There are many great examples of
change and innovation going on across
Africa, however there is still a huge need
for innovation that significantly increases
the pace and scale of change; that is if the
continent’s extreme poor and vulnerable
are to be lifted out of poverty any time
soon. And such innovation will only be
achieved by trying (and sometimes)
failing to do things differently.
Governments and donors, who often can
be very risk averse, have a responsibility to create an environment
that encourages innovation and can tolerate (some) failure.
Mindsets around ‘who does development’ need to be
challenged and changed– Transformational change at scale
will require new ways of doing development and increasing the
engagement of non-traditional development actors, such as the
private sector. Such changes do bring challenges, both in terms
of how development is delivered and also in terms of how it is
understood. But as Luca Alinovi, Director of the Global Resilience
Partnership urged: “Let’s not be scared of profit – it is a key driver
for change when it meets and addresses the needs and demand of
the poor”. Whilst the private sector is important, governments also
have a key role, particularly in their responsibility to build bridges
between stakeholders, share and use information, and ensure the
right enabling policy environment at community, local and national
levels.
Shocks and crises are inevitable and need to be part of
how we do development– from addressing climate change to
expanding urbanisation, any development initiative needs to
accommodate and plan for change and disruption. Indeed, it is
the acknowledgement of a changing, and at times unpredictable
environment, that is at the heart of a resilience-based approach.
Information and the skills to use it are essential to a resilience
approach– if people and institutions are to respond to a changing
environment, then they need to be able to measure and understand
the impact of interventions,
ideally in real time. Information
technology advances have vastly
improved our ability to collect,
analyse and share data. However,
using data to drive decision
making, from the individual to the
country level, means addressing
“the challenge of getting the right
information to the right people in
the right place at the right time.”
(Sandy Andelman, Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President at
Conservation International and lead on the Resilience Atlas).
A resilience approach can only be achieved through multi-
stakeholder processes and partnerships– thinking about
resilience demands systems thinking; for it recognises that any
intervention affects a range of stakeholders and issues and
consequently, better and more inclusive partnerships are key.
Transformational change involves creating win-win partnerships
between non-traditional actors in different sectors, particularly the
private sector, communities, all levels of government, donors and
others as required.
Understanding Resilience
What Is Resilience?
Resilience is a broad concept. Traditionally, it has been applied to
predominantly environmental contexts where drought, flood and
other natural disasters have caused shocks and crises. However, it
is increasingly recognised as having relevance to a much broader
range of development contexts; indeed resilience is not a sector or
a specific project, but an approach.
In his opening keynote address, Ashvin Dayal, Associate Vice
President and Managing Director (Asia) for The Rockefeller
Foundation, set out the Rockefeller Foundation’s definition
3. Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report 3
Ashvin Dayal
and understanding of resilience: “Resilience is the capacity
of individuals, communities, and
systems to survive, adapt, and grow in
thefaceofstressandshocks,andeven
transform when conditions require.”
Whilst across the convening we did
hear a number of alternative definitions
– from ‘resilience is sustainability 2.0’,
to ‘resilience recognises deep rooted
problems that need multiple solutions
combining hard and soft measures’.
Overall there was broad consensus on
what resilience is and what it achieves.
The more challenging questions come on how and why to take a
resilience approach?
Why Invest In Resilience?
The term “the resilience dividend“ was coined by the Rockefeller
Foundation’s President, Judith Rodin, in her definitive book on the
subject Realizing the Resilience Dividend. Simply put, it is “the
return on resilience investments, whether it’s a financial return,
or a more qualitative return, such as reduced inequality or
increased social cohesion. It’s the idea that building resilience
realizes benefits in both times of crisis and times of calm.”
Adopting a resilience approach cannot be assumed to be cost free.
Indeed, it can often require additional upfront investment, be it
to build a road with greater carrying capacity, create and manage
better data collection and flows, or invest in a multi-stakeholder
partnership platform. And so ‘a dividend’ from this added
investment needs to be both predicted, understood and measured
if the investment is to be justified.
The graphic below (shared by Ashvin Dayal) illustrates how the
resilience dividend can pay out. For example, whilst a standard
shock response mechanism such as cash transfers to affected
communities may take six to nine months to materialise, a resilient
(or shock-responsive) approach would have the built-in ability to
pay out on agreed triggers before drought impacts hit hard. This
approach can prevent households resorting to negative coping
strategies such as selling productive assets (e.g. ploughs), or pulling
children out of school. The resilience dividend, in this example, is
these households’ ability to withstand the shock and return to
normal more quickly without fundamentally compromising their
long term development.
Why Build Africa’s Resilience?
The Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Convening reinforced the
4. 4 Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report
Acute Shocks
Sudden, human & naturally caused
• Flooding
• Industrial accidents
• Extreme rainfall
• Terrorism
• Earthquake
• Disease outbreak
• Riot / civil unrest
• Infrastructure failure
• Heat wave
Chronic Stresses
Perenial, human & natural casued
• Water scarcity
• Lack of affordable housing
• Poor air quality
• Traffic & mobility
• Homelessnes
• Changing demographics
• Lack of social cohesion
• Aging infrastructure
• Macroeconomic trends
• Crime & violence
Dr. Polly Ericksen
Selline Korir
premise that Africa needs resilience. The welcome speeches by
Zia Khan, Vice President, Initiatives and Strategy, The Rockefeller
Foundation and representative Wohoro Ndoho, Director General
of the Directorate of Public Debt Management, National Treasury
Kenya, reminded us that the continent is experiencing an
unprecedented period of growth and change and that a resilient
approach is critical to sustain this growth and avoid“slipping back”.
Maintaining development in Africa must entail planning for, and
transcending, the multiple shocks and stresses that exist. A number
of acute and chronic shocks were identified across the convening,
all of which have the capacity to undermine Africa’s sustained
growth and development – these included:
Whilst all the shocks in the table are significant, three specific
shocks were mentioned more than any others – climate change,
urbanisation and the demographic youth bulge.
Climate Change– There has been wide acceptance of climate
change in Africa, given its clear and demonstrable effects on
communities and places. Polly Erikson, Programme Leader with
the International Livestock Research Institute Why Build Africa’s
Resilience shared some of the rainfall and
vegetation data from Northern Kenya
and the impact this has had in terms of
drought and food insecurity in the region.
Indeed, to date climate disaster resilience
has dominated discussions on resilience
in Africa. This is a result of so much of the
continent’s population being dependent
on rain-fed subsistence agriculture,
resulting in precarious food security –
often a primary driver of humanitarian
crisis, and one of the most visible examples of a failure to build
resilience. Consequently, many of the most prominent examples of
resilience in action focused on climate-based issues.
Urbanisation– Africa’s population and economic base is still largely
rural, but, as several speakers highlighted, this is changing. By 2050
75% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities. Cities
are complex and understanding their development requires a
whole new set of diagnostic skills. Although each city is unique,
they share many of the same problems – traffic, too much water,
too little water, crime, etc. The day-to-day challenge of managing
city growth means planners often do not factor in the future
threats, shocks and changes – be they from complexity in climatic
conditions, geopolitical discontent, criminality, or uncertain
markets. Developing cities without consideration of these both
known and unknown shocks, undermines a city’s long term ability
to function effectively. Shocks have a high risk of bringing cities
to a standstill for days, weeks or months, as well as potentially
significant impact on social and political stability. As Africa trails the
world in urbanisation, it has a great opportunity to get it right and
build resilience thinking into urban development.
“Three-quarters of Nairobi’s infrastructure has yet to be built” Ashvin
Dayal, Associate Vice President and Managing Director, Asia, The
Rockefeller Foundation.
The Youth Bulge– As with urbanisation, if managed well the
youthful population of Africa could yield a demographic dividend
in terms of labour resources. However, without development
that generates inclusive economic growth at a rate that outruns
population growth, youth population
could prove a major threat. The threats
of social unrest, crime and violent
extremism, which could arise from a
failure to ensure inclusive development
for all, were raised by several speakers
during the convening, including Selline
Korir, the Deputy Chief of Party from
USAID’s NiWajibu Wetu (NIWETU), a
programme focused on reducing violent
extremism (VE).
5. Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report 5
Characteristics ofResilience Approach Description Examples from the Convening
Aware and Reflective Knowing the strengths, assets,
liabilities and vulnerabilities you
have, and what threats and risks
you face
• Liz Yee the Vice President of City Solutions who delivers
the 100RC programme explained that a key part of
their support to their 100 Resilient Cities was the
development of City Resilience Strategies. Each City
Resilience Strategy is the product of a six-to-nine
month process during which a city develops a better
understanding of the challenges it faces; reviews its
ability to address those challenges; and unites people,
projects, and priorities, so that cities to collectively act
on their resilience challenges to 100RC video shown
• The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) funded
Resilience Atlas demonstrated how it integrated and
analysed more than 12 terabytes of data from over 60
of the best available datasets related to resilience. By
overlaying different data sets they are able to reveal
and better understand how socio economic issues
interact with environmental ones – this in turn allows
a better understanding of the constraints communities
face, and the opportunities to generate change.
“What shouldn’t we forget?
Shocks are the norm – but it’s the poor who suffer the most!
• More exposed and vulnerable
• Fewer resources to cope
Climate variation is the norm, but the effects are drastic and increasing.
Agriculture needs to be resilient at household and system level.
Agricultural security is essential for Africa’s food security.”
Polly Erikson ILRI
Resilience In Context
Whilst there is a broad consensus on what ‘resilience’ means in
theory, in practice its application takes many forms.The table below
lists the characteristics associated with building resilience. The
table provides a composite list of characteristics drawn from those
presented by Ashvin Dayal in his keynote address and those used
by the 100 Resilient Cities initiative. Many of the excellent resilient
investments and initiatives that were presented or discussed at the
convening are highlighted in the table below as real life examples of
these characteristics. It should be noted, however, that many of the
examples cited demonstrate several (or all) of these characteristics,
so it is worth following the links to learn more about the programme
and innovations.
6. 6 Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report
Characteristics ofResilience Approach Description Examples from the Convening
Using information to learn from
past mistakes, make better
diagnosis and inform future
decisions
Many speakers highlighted how their own approach had
been informed by a failure of other approaches, and how,
by getting the right information and data, they had been
able to deliver better development outcomes.
• SpatialCollectivetrain‘localexperts’(e.g.slumresidents)
to gather data that can then transform understanding
of specific problems (e.g. fear of crime), and at the same
time empower communities to use this data to address
such problems themselves.
• New technologies, such as satellite imagery, were
mentioned by Africa RC, Pula Advisors and Hunger
Saftey Net Programme (HSNP) as critical in delivering
faster and better services such as insurance cover and
also in understanding the impacts of changing climate.
• ESRI presented their work in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where
they used innovative data platforms to harmonise the
way different departments and agencies working in
the city were able to collect and use data and track the
impact of their joint efforts.
• Africa’s Voices explained how they deliver world-class
research to partners, allowing them to listen to the
views of ordinary people as expressed in real social
spaces. They use innovative approaches to gather
digital data such as SMS, social media and instant
messages. Conversational and messy in nature, they
make sense of this big data through multidisciplinary
analysis techniques.
Diverse and Resourceful Accepts that demand or needs
will shoot up at times of crisis
and then reduce i.e. they have
planned for the fact that crises
and shocks will happen even if
we don’t know what they are yet
(built in redundancy)
TheGovernmentofKenya’sHungerSafetyNetProgramme
provides regular cash transfers to 25% of households via
bank accounts in the poorest Counties of Kenya. However
the programme has also provided bank accounts to the
other 75% of households so that temporary, emergency
cash transfers can be made in times of drought or other
emergencies.
7. Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report 7
Characteristics ofResilience Approach Description Examples from the Convening
Recognising alternative ways
to use resources that produce
the same, or significantly better,
results (innovation)
Many innovations were shared:
• TropicalPoweraprivatecompanyworkinginEastAfrica
has developed bio-fuel plants that deliver renewable
power with waste from flower and vegetable farms.
There are additional multiple benefits;
• Produces heat which is sold to
neighbouring greenhouse farms;
• Sell surplus electricity sold to national power
company
• Produces liquid fertiliser and compost put back
on farm;
• Farm is in control of its own energy (no outages).
• Salim Khalila from Mastercard explained how its
incubation hub has examined over 450 ideas on how to
expand resilient financial services to poor households
in Africa.
Self-Regulating and Robust Ensures continued functioning
without extreme malfunction
or catastrophic collapse, (safe
failure)
Rose Goslinga from Pula Advisers demonstrated the
impact of micro insurance on small holder farmers. Using
innovative sales strategies with seed producers she
explained how over 400,000 farmers were now insured
against rain failure enabling them to endure crop failure
with out catastrophic collapse
Well-conceived, planned
and constructed,considering
the long term management,
maintenance and financial
viability beyond the life of a
programme (sustainability)
Delegates visited the Human Needs Project (HNP)
community centre which provides both physical services
such as water, latrines and laundry facilities in addition
to skills and livelihood support to local residents in the
Kibera slum in Nairobi. It is not provided on a charitable
basis but will be operated in the long term by the
community as a co-op, thus ensuring sustainability and
social cohesion.
Adaptive and Flexible Adjusts to changing
circumstances with new plans,
new actions, or modified
behaviors, particularly when it is
not possible or wise to go back
to the way things were before
Lakshmi Iyer explained how Digital Green based its
interventions on research that showed farmers learn
more from their peers than any other source. They used
this insight to get frontline workers (government, private
sector and civil society) to support farmers to produce
and share locally relevant agricultural videos. Analysis of
their programmes has found that this approach increases
the adoption rate by seven times and is ten times cheaper
to deliver, when compares to similar programmes.
8. 8 Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report
Characteristics ofResilience Approach Description Examples from the Convening
Scalable (solutions that work at
the scale needed to address the
problem or gap)
Ekhosuehi Iyahen form the Africa Risk Capacity (ARC)
explained how ARC was created to insure whole countries
in Africa against the economic impact of drought and
also address the issues caused by the traditional late
response to such droughts. ARC aims to provide cost-
effective contingency funding very early in the drought
cycle to enable governments and households to protect
individual and national development gains.
Inclusive Prioritising broad consultation
to create a sense of shared
ownership in decision making
• Giridhar Srivasan from the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) cited an example from Nepal, where
it is funding the development of a hydro-electric
power station. 10% of the value of the project will go to
‘affected community’ to ensure they get an equitable
share of the value of the project.
• PrimozKovacicfromSpatialCollective[spatialcollective.
com] provided examples of how communities in
Mathare slum in Nairobi have been empowered to
collect information on key issues affecting their lives,
such as waste management and security. This enables
active engagement with the city authorities and
other stakeholders and results in better planned and
implemented service delivery.
Approaches that ensure full
participation of stakeholders
throughout the entire
programme cycle and
sustainably in the longer term.
Also ensures their inclusion in
decision making and response
in times of stress and crisis
The Chief Resilience Officer from Surat, India, Kamlesh
Yagnik, explained that severe flooding in Surat in 2006
resulted in $4.5 billion economic losses, 45,000 low-
income families affected and 70% of the city inundated
for days. They could have invested millions in concrete
flood defences, but instead worked with multiple city
and state departments, as well as communities, to create
end-end warning and diversion systems so people could
be better prepared to respond to the rains when they
came. Whilst this work did not lead to physical changes,
but rather enhanced people and institutional capacity
(through increased communication and government and
community engagement), this approach led to virtually
no economic losses when severe rains hit again in 2013.
Integrated Brings together a range of
distinct systems and institutions
There are many examples of how the private sector
(and its profit or results based thinking) is providing the
services and support communities need to be resilient:
• Delegates visited farmers in Limuru supported by Sun
Culture who have radically improved their harvests
and incomes with solar powered irrigation systems
• Pamoja Life was cited as an example of a private
company distributing clean energy solutions and
affordable finance to purchase them. Investors are
looking for social returns and not just profit.
• Diane Mak from Social Finance explained the Social
Impact Bond innovation whereby private sector
finance is secured for social projects with dividends or
interest paid to investors by donors or government on
the basis of the results achieved.
9. Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report 9
Characteristics ofResilience Approach Description Examples from the Convening
Thinkingacrosssectorse.g.using
impact and benefits in other
sectors to justify investments in
ways that were not previously
common.
Dr.KifleWoldearegay of Mekelle University explained how
theEthiopiangovernmentispromotingnewtechnologies
and cross sectoral working by the Agriculture, Water,
Environment and Road Ministries, inorder to upscale the
Government’s resilient approach to road building, with
the following benefits:
• Harvests/manages surface water,
• Enhances groundwater recharge,
• Controls flooding and landslides,
• Reduces negative effects: erosion, siltation, etc,
• Promotes sustainable/ productive use of water for
humans, livestock and agriculture.
Encourages cross-sectoral and
interdepartmental working in
traditionally blinkered and very
hierarchical institutions
Sandy Andelman from the Resilience Atlas explained how
Conservation International is working with a number of
African Governments to improve their data management
and analysis. She cited examples of several countries
where their initial support is to enable central statistics
bureaux to gain authority to access information collected
by other Governmentdepartments.
Individuals, groups, and
organisations can bring
together disparate thoughts
and elements into cohesive
solutions and actions
Dr Charles Muchungu from the Kenya Renewable Energy
Association (KREA) explained how the multiple off grid
pay-as-you-go private sector companies in Kenya are
providing an invaluable service in bringing electricity to
the underserved millions. KREA has worked to galvanise
community and private sector players to lobby the
Government of Kenya to remove taxes on sustainable
energy products. This helps to ensure access to electricity
is expanded but also enables businesses in the sector to
become profitable and grow.
10. 10 Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report
Diamniadio New Town in Senegal
“Previously GEF invested $500m in urban programming but
projects were disconnected one-offs implemented by one (or max
two) partners with limited community engagement. There was no
shared learning.
New resilience aware urban programming in Diamnidio is different:
• Minimum of 5 different implementing partners
• Developed to reduce pollution and chemical waste
• Initial risk assessment to protect streets and infrastructure from
floods
• Ensuring that maintenance plans are in place as part of the initial
development
• Keeping the strong socio-economic links with Dakar and other
cities
• Strong civic engagement wth 24 different initiatives.”
Fareeha Iqbal – Global Environment Facility (GEF)
Resilience In Action
The Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Convening provided the
opportunity for Rockefeller Foundation partners and others to
showcase how they are applying resilience in practice. There were
side sessions on a variety of topics that explained and explored
resilience in action in a variety of contexts.
Resilient Cities
In 2013, the Foundation pioneered 100 Resilient Cities (100RC)
to help more cities build resilience to the physical, social, and
economic challenges that are a growing part of the 21st century.
In Africa 10 cities have been selected: Enugu, Nairobi, Kigali, Dakar,
Paynesville, Accra, Cape Town, Addis Ababa, Durban and Lagos.
Speakers from 100RC, their platform partners and others explained
how their approach urban development is changing.
“Crisis is the new normal for cities in the 21st century.”
While cities can’t predict which disruptions will come next, they
can plan for many of them, often by learning from how they were
affected by previous shocks. They need to embed this thinking into
all development plans for the city, so that any or all investments,
from employment schemes to improved parks, all consider how
they would mitigate or accommodate acute and chronic stresses.
In other words, how they can achieve“resilience dividends”that can
make cities better places to live not just in times of emergency, but
every single day. Click here
“A city is only as strong as its weakest link.” Kamlesh Yagnik,
Chief Resilience Officer, Surat India
Resilient Agriculture
What does resilience mean for African agriculture?
The continent is witnessing major advancements in agribusinesses
and on millions of small family farms that are Africa’s main source of
food, employment, and income. Alliance for a Green Revolution in
Africa (AGRA) exists to fulfil the vision that Africa can feed itself and
the world. Speakers from AGRA, and other innovators, explained
how they are expanding the application of resilient approaches
to agriculture, to ensure farmers move from a solitary struggle to
survive to running a business that thrives.
Rebbie Harawa, Interim Head of Farmer Solutions, AGRA, explained
that agricultural interventions should work at three levels at the
same time:
• Farm level
• Systems level
• Country level
Interventions at all levels need to improve the following:
• Resilient productivity
• Resilient markets for farmers
• Enabling policy environment and capacity building
Examples of how to do this were showcased.
11. Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report 11
“Not all investments in agriculture are resilient. Not all
African smallholder farmers are ‘thriving’; many have
been barely surviving. We moved into productivity without
sustainability. One year we over produce, the next we
starve. A truly functioning value chain is the missing
link.”
“We need to shift the way we look at smallholder farmers
from vulnerable beneficiaries to customers seeking to
transform their lives and ensure Africa’s food security.”
Sun Culture’s Founder, Samir Ibrahim
“Agriculture will unlock youth unemployment.” Salim
Khalila, Mastercard
“We need to be sharper in developing the business case
for the farmer (how much does the farmer actually make
at the end of the day?)” Rose Goslinga, Pula Advisors
Resilient Infrastructure
The current shortfall in infrastructure in many African countries
provides an abundant opportunity to include resilience in future
project planning and delivery. Key factors highlighted in taking a
resilient approach to infrastructure included:
• A long term perspective – inbuilt redundancy, with an emphasis
on construct and finance for the future.
• Inclusivity – participation and inclusion of the right stakeholders,
i.e. the current and potential users of the infrastructure.
• Consideration of risk and change as inherent – with plans and
strategies to address them.
• Multi-disciplinary – considers the inter-relationships with sectors
or services that were not traditionally considered relevant to
infrastructure, e.g. education or health.
• Innovative – embraces new and improved technologies that
further enhance resilience and hence impact of infrastructure.
Delegates heard some excellent experiences of how future African
infrastructure is being created to withstand the rapidly changing
environment it serves.
resilient productivity
Case Study of Success: “Treesilience”
Dennis Garrity from ICRAF recorded his presentation explaining how the
introduction of resilient practices in the use of indigenous trees transformed the
landscape and increased the productivity and incomes of 1.2m farmer in Niger
resilient MARKETS FOR FARMERS
Case Study of Success: Climate smart agri-value chain finance
Dr Moses Ochieng presented learning from DFID STARCK programme in
supporting MFIs to fund aggregators to on-lend to small holder farmers and other
value chain actors in a range of climate+ smart commodities.
12. 12 Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report
mombasa’s resilient port development
David Stanton, Director General of Trademark East Africa (TMEA)
David explained that much of the effort in developing a resilient port was not all about concrete and
construction. Instead all stakeholders were included in assessing what development was required to
make the port resilient in the long term. This highlighted the need to improve a wide range of institutional
and management issues that actually reduced the need for finance for infrastructural works. For example;
improving the productivity, IT systems and staff training in the Kenya Ports Authority and revising the
Mombasa Port Charter.
makng roads work for climate resilience
Frank Van Steenbergen, Director of Meta Meta
Water and roads, particularly unpaved roads, are often natural enemies. Meta Meta has developed an
approach that reverses this problem and harvests water from roads in semi-arid areas, with relatively low
cost investments that increase the lifespan of roads; plus reduces the damage to the wider landscape by
flash floods; and creates assets that store water for production and consumption.
USAID’s Resilience and Economic Growth in the Arid Lands – Improving Resilience
(REGAL-IR)
This project aims to decrease vulnerabilities, build resilience and stimulate growth in selected drought
affected areas of northern Kenya. The programme’s Deputy Chief of Party, Joseph Salgi Ikul, stressed
the importance of strengthening community self-determination through continuous capacity building,
combined with understanding that drought is not going to go away. Revitalising the role of customary
institutions is influential and makes a bigger difference than relying on top down Government structures.
FARMERS and the private sector
Field Visit: Farmers accessing new technologies and knowledge
On day one of the Convening, delegates visited two farmers who are customers of Sun
Culture’s solar powered agricultural products and capacity building expertise. The benefits
in terms of production and income were strking.
Disaster Resilience
Discussion on disaster resilience highlighted how far resilience
thinking has already shifted our approach towards climatic shocks,
such as drought and floods. Luca Alinovi, Chief Executive of the
Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), reflected that we no longer
view climatic events as being ‘the problem’, but focus on the
impact of these events as being the symptom of a wide range of
systemic issues. Many speakers recognised that little can be done
to prevent droughts, but a resilient approach will help to prevent
them becoming disasters.
“Development and resilience doesn’t have to take a long time
– people are very quick to pick up things that work. Listen to the
people, find the specific answer, dive in, dive back out, try again,
make it work.”Luca Alinovi, Chief Execurive, GRP
13. Rockefeller Resilience Convening Report 13
The Resilience Atlas
Understanding the underlying factors that turn stressors and shocks into disasters requires accessing the
right information to undertake this analysis. Sandy Andelman of the Resilience Atlas explained how the
Atlas was an interactive analytical tool for building:
(1) understanding of the extent and severity of some of the key stressors and shocks that are affect-
ing rural livelihoods, production systems, and ecosystems in the Sahel, Horn of Africa and South
and Southeast Asia; and
(2) insights into the ways that different types of wealth and assets (i.e., natural capital, human
capital, social capital, financial capital and manufactured capital) – and combinations among these
– impact resilience in particular contexts.
USAID’s NiWajibu Wetu (NIWETU) Programme
Selline Korir, the Deputy Chief of Party, explained that terrorism can only be addressed by tackling
underlying causal factors – primarily poverty, but exacerbated by other issues such as widespread
corruption, lack of security and justice and social exclusion. Expanding economic opportunities including
skills and training is (one) important response.
Building The Field Of Resilience – The
Unifinished Agenda
The final session examined efforts being made to ensure resilience
becomes firmly mainstreamed by greater numbers of development
actors in Africa. The experiences and organisations showcased
during the Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Convening, illustrated
that resilience thinking is becoming more firmly embedded. It is
clear that many actors are taking a resilient approach, even when
it may not be explicit. Some key explicit interventions that were
mentioned include:
• Resilience Academies – The Academies represent a key effort
on the part of the Rockefeller Foundation to mainstream a
resilient approach. A series of Resilience Academy workshops
are planned in Africa (the first followed the convening in
Nairobi). The two-day Academy workshop is designed to walk
teams through a series of facilitated exercises and presentations
intended to build their capacity to design projects that address
systemic shocks and stresses, deliver multiple benefits, and
ultimately achieve the resilience dividend.
• Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) – GRP is taking the issue
of innovation and changing mindsets seriously, with a series of
competitions (or ‘Challenges’) being launched for partners to
apply with ideas to tackle the world’s most intractable problems.
Through the ‘Challenges’, the Resilience Partnership surfaces
bold, innovative ideas with real-world impact, that may start
small, but have the potential to scale up.
• The IFC (International Finance Corporation) – As a member
of the World Bank Group, the corporation is launching a
project development facility aimed at unlocking private sector
investment for infrastructure that helps build resilience across
emerging markets. Global institutional investors are keen to
invest in infrastructure, but the IFC has found there aren’t enough
well-structured projects. Often, governments lack the capacity
to structure, negotiate, and manage complex infrastructure
transactions. The facility will provide grant funding to support
legal, technical, and financial advice to governments working
with IFC on infrastructure projects that help cities build resilience
and support poor and vulnerable people.
• City Resilience Framework – As part of the Rockefeller
Foundation’ssupporttoitsresilientcitiesagenda,theRockefeller
Foundation supported Arup to develop a framework for cities, to
help cities assess the extent of their resilience, to identify critical
areas of weakness, and to identify actions and programmes to
improve each city’s resilience.