Giving Compass' Take:

• A joint report made by the Asian Development Bank, the U.N. Development Program, and the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific recommends incorporating resilience thinking when battling climate issues in development work.

• How does resilience thinking help in development programming? How does resilience thinking operate differently in a developing country?

• Read about the effects of climate change on migration.

Countries in Asia-Pacific are increasingly exposed to a variety of risks, including physical and financial, undermining the region’s potential to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, according to a new report published Wednesday.

Climate change, for instance, is exposing more populations to natural hazards such as flooding. But it is also impacting livelihoods and putting a strain on people’s income and other natural resources.

In order to deal with these risks, the joint report by the Asian Development Bank, the U.N. Development Programme and the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, recommends the region build its resilience, which is also anchored across multiple SDGs. And it identifies four ways in which policymakers as well as development organizations can build their resilience capacities:

  1. Anticipating and reducing impacts through careful planning and preparedness.
  2. Absorbing and developing coping mechanisms.
  3. Learning to adjust and adapt to risks.
  4. Taking steps to change systems that create the risks, vulnerabilities or inequalities.

The report proposes a “three-step approach” to incorporate resilience thinking into policy making and development interventions: First, identify risks; second, explore potential impacts on human systems and vulnerable groups; and then third, identify the policies and institutional responses that can effectively build resilience.

Read the full article about resilience thinking by Jenny Lei Ravelo at Devex.