Strengthening social resilience to climate change

Finchannel.com: The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved a US$300.75 million Development Policy Loan to support the institutionalization of policies aimed at strengthening social resilience to extreme situations -- in particular those caused by climate change -- and overcoming them.

According to the World Bank , to this end, it promotes State-level climate change action planning; disaster risk reduction and the implementation of land development activities, especially at the municipal level; and community-level sustainable forest management.

The initiative focuses in particular on Mexico's neediest and under-served communities, representing the first time the WB develops a program whose central, explicit theme is reducing the social impact, particularly among the most vulnerable, from climate change effects.

Among the objectives of this project is increasing access to relevant information, and the participation of civil society groups in the development of climate change adaptation policies. It also seeks to improve infrastructure risk and service management, and to restore forests, wetlands and other ecosystems that protect the poor from natural disasters and contribute to their well-being.

The loan supports, for example, efforts made by the Federal Government to establish the Regional Climate Change Adaptation Strategy in the Yucatan Peninsula, which includes measures to confront unsustainable tourist growth in coastal areas and protect the habitat of indigenous communities. In total, 3,000 rural indigenous communities across the country will benefit. Moreover, it will increase the land surface covered by climate risk insurance by five percent....

In the Yucatan, a view of a part of the main plaza of Dzibilchaltún from the top of Structure 36, shot by Vmenkov, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported,