Disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in the urban context of the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Honduras. The challenge of integration.

Abstract

This paper brings together six chapters that discuss possibilities and challenges to adapting to climate change in urban areas in three low- and middle-income countries, in particular the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Honduras. It is focused on the challenge of integration of climate change adaptation strategies into disaster risk reduction programmes, while emphasising the urban context. The thesis explores to which extent current disaster risk management policies are taking climate change adaptation strategies into account, and identifies the challenges that arise. Based on mixed research methods with agents, actors, and the population, this thesis shows that although progress has been made in each of the case study locations, forward movement depends on up-to-date policies and regulatory instruments. Further on, the allocation of budget for either disaster risk reduction programmes or climate change adaptation strategies was identified as a limit of integration. Moreover, challenges arose to translate scientific data into managerial instruments, in a way that the information becomes useful for the executive body and decision-makers. Overall the research suggests the need for a more exhaustive approach to understand adaptive capacities.