Integrating climate resilience in the road transport sector

IMC Worldwide was contracted by the Caribbean Development Bank to help its Borrowing Member Countries to increase the resilience of the transport sector to the impacts of climate change and natural hazards.

An IMC Worldwide-led consortium, which also includes Acclimatise, the University of the West Indies and CEP Dominica, is implementing the project, which aims to increase the climate resilience of the transport sector in the Caribbean Development Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries.

We will demonstrate how gender-sensitive climate and disaster resilience measures could be integrated into the road transport sector. We will also develop a package of materials that will provide guidance, lessons learnt and technical notes to help practitioners and BMCs in the region to implement the approach.

Building on existing methods and tools, work is successfully being carried out with Saint Lucia, Guyana and Dominica on the following tasks:

• Assessment of the vulnerability of key infrastructure and assets in the road by developing a Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) of the road transport sector of each country.
• Assessment of the adaptive capacity in the road transport agencies and other key institutions and recommendations for strengthening.
• Preparation of a climate resilient investment plan that will include priority infrastructure investments and proposals and strategies to deliver the identified adaptation options. 
• Gender-sensitive climate screening of relevant policies, plans and strategies in the sector and recommendations for integrating resilience.
• Development of a road transport sector resilience index to measure progress on adaptation.

The project will achieve this through the development of a suite of planning tools and guidance resources for institutions responsible for road transport policies, plans and the implementation of investment programmes to assess and design effective climate resilient actions.

Building on similar experience, IMC successfully developed and completed a ‘benchmarking exercise’ with the BMCs at the beginning of the project whereby their capacity, data availability, finance and other factors was assessed and recorded in a participatory way.

The benchmarking results will help ensure the final toolkit and guidance is appropriate for and reflects the differing situations within the BMCs. Successful uptake and application of these resources will help practitioners establish robust and effective climate resilience sector policies and investment plans and identify potential financing for effective implementation.