Climate-resilient development : a framework for understanding and addressing climate change

The framework"s objective is to support the development process by assisting development practitioners in identifying, evaluating, selecting, implementing, and adjusting actions to reduce climate vulnerabilities and improve development outcomes. The framework is designed to promote actions that ensure progress toward development goals by including climate stressors, both climate variability and climate change. It focuses on how climate can be incorporated into existing planning and decision-making processes -- also known as mainstreaming - and focuses on achieving development goals -- which we call a "development-first" approach. The framework supplements and builds upon the United States Agency for International Development project cycle management framework with additional tools designed to simplify the challenge of understanding how climate impacts can affect development strategies, programs, and projects by providing a five-stage, systematic process for understanding and prioritizing current and projected climate-related vulnerabilities. The first three stages of this framework differ more from conventional development practice than the last two stages, and so the framework spends more time discussing the first three stages. The five stages are: (1) scope; (2) assess; (3) design; (4) implement and manage; and (5) evaluate and adjust. (Excerpt, modified)