About Us
The Alliance is a multi-sectoral partnership, powered by the Z Zurich Foundation, focused on enhancing resilience to climate hazards in both rural and urban communities.
Formerly the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, we have over a decade of experience in generating evidence of communities’ current levels of climate resilience and identifying appropriate solutions.
Our partners are drawn from the humanitarian, NGO, research and private sectors. We work together to achieve our vision by implementing solutions, promoting good practice, influencing policy and facilitating systemic change.
The Alliance Partners
Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organization that strives for a world free from poverty, fear and oppression.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies aims to support and improve the lives of vulnerable people before, during and after disasters.
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) advances systems analysis and applies its research methods to identify solutions to reduce human footprints, enhance the resilience of natural and socioeconomic systems.
ISET-International (ISET), the Alliance’s MERL lead and an implementing partner in Vietnam, builds climate resilience through program design, implementation, evaluation, and learning.
The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment is a multidisciplinary centre for policy-relevant research and training on climate change and the environment.
Mercy Corps’ mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities.
Plan International promotes gender equality and child protection in the areas of inclusive education, youth economic empowerment and climate resilience.
Practical Action is developing innovative real-world solutions to build sustainable lives and livelihoods for people living on the frontlines of poverty and climate change.
Zurich is transforming insurance by offering prevention services such as those that enhance climate resilience, in addition to providing insurance protection.
Enhance and increase the resilience of urban and rural communities to climate hazards.
Promote the widespread adoption of good climate resilience practices.
Increase the funding available to communities to improve their climate resilience.
Improve the policy environment for building community resilience to climate hazards.
As an Alliance, we work to achieve our objectives through long-term, flexible, community-centered programming and a focus on systemic change.
We do this by delivering programmes, conducting evidence-based research, sharing our knowledge and influencing key stakeholders on resilience to climate hazards.
Key themes
Several key themes have emerged from our work on community flood resilience over the past 10 years. These are areas where we have technical expertise and community knowledge across multiple countries and regions.
Early Warning Systems
Early Warning Systems (EWS) help those at risk of floods, heatwaves and other climate hazards to take meaningful and impactful action to keep themselves and their assets safe – yet they remain absent from many at-risk communities. In others, the information provided by the EWS is hard to access or understand, leading to costly inaction. As well as supporting communities in developing and maintaining inclusive systems, the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance is working with partners to achieve sustainable change at scale in EWS, so that they deliver essential services for the most vulnerable.
Adaptation Governance
Climate adaptation governance refers to the set of actors, policies, processes, and institutions through which societies adapt to the impacts of climate change. It encompasses a wide range of decisions, strategies, and actions taken by governments, communities, businesses, and other stakeholders to adapt to changing climate conditions and reduce vulnerability to its effects. At the local, provincial, national and global levels, the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance works with multiple stakeholders to influence effective government adaptation policy and practice. To achieve this we focus on:
- Supporting effective adaptation policies, strategies, and plans
- Advocating for and influencing access to increased amounts of high-quality adaptation finance
- Increasing technical expertise and capacity
- Enabling stronger collaborations and partnership working
Heat
Incidents of extreme heat are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more deadly. Infants, older people, and those with chronic health conditions are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves, especially those in cities. Extreme heat also has significant consequences for other areas of society, such as reduced economic output, strained health systems, and rolling power outages.
Drawing on over a decade’s experience of identifying and managing flood risks, and using a data-driven, collaborative approach to determine the most appropriate interventions, the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance is working to reduce the impacts of extreme heat events, in both rural and urban communities.
Urban
More than half of the world's population lives in urban areas, projected to rise to two-thirds by 2050. Rapid and unplanned urbanization increases the risk of exposure to disasters, diseases and the impacts of climate change, especially among the poorest and most vulnerable. The Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance is building on existing urban-based flood resilience programmes to support communities, authorities and civil society organizations looking to addressing climate resilience challenges specific to urban contexts.
Evidence-based and community-led solutions
Our website shares practical knowledge alongside the latest evidence and research about how to build community resilience to climate hazards. We share learnings generated through the Alliance’s work across the world, as well as from many other sources of evidence.
