Cartago City, Costa Rica has observed an increase in the damages and losses due to floods and landslides in recent decades. The city faces a challenge to enhance disaster risk management (DRM) capacity in order to reduce increasing disaster risk. This research identifies factors that enhance local DRM capacity in the context of increasing climate-related events, focusing on the ability of communities that can complement local government's DRM initiative. The study involved 240 household surveys in four high flood risk communities in Cartago and found positive outcomes stemming from communities' perception of global climate change and awareness of local climaterelated disaster risk. Furthermore, the study identified two factors that increase awareness. Despite the communities' higher local climate-related disaster risk awareness, however, the study found that communities take few disaster risk reduction (DRR) actions. Hence, the study identified three factors for promoting greater community DRR action.KEY WORDS: global climate change perception, flood risk awareness, community disaster risk awareness, Costa Rica
Disaster losses due to climate and weather related events are increasing worldwide. Risk associated with climate and weather related events will be exacerbated by climate change in the coming decades. The high frequency of climate and weather related disasters intensifies vulnerability in developing countries. Costa Rica has recently approved the national policy instruments (Act 8488, PNGR 2010–2015, and ENCC) and incorporated the context of climate change threats into DRM planning. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities for incorporating climate change threats into DRM planning at the national level. A “checklist,” developed by the authorities of Latin American and Caribbean countries, is applied as a case study in Costa Rica. Results of the study indicate that the national policy instruments did provide an opportunity for incorporating climate change threats into DRM planning, especially within the context of risk identification, monitoring, and evaluation. However, several gaps are also identified when doing so in practice.
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