Building Coastal Resilience in Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Colombia: Country Experiences with Mainstreaming Climate Adaptation

More severe flooding and erosion, more intense storms, rising seas, increased salinization, and higher storm surges are some of the new realities around the world that make coastal areas particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts. This paper examines case studies from three regions— Bangladesh, Malabon City (Philippines) and Cartegana (Colombia) —that are making progress on integrating climate adaptation into planning and implementing on-the-ground actions to build coastal resilience. The paper identifies a common set of factors that have contributed to these successes: having political will and champions to lead the process of mainstreaming adaptation and disaster risk reduction into policies and legislation; having access to credible climate information to inform resilience plans; coordinating across diverse stakeholders who form robust alliances; and allocating domestic funds combined with international funding. The enabling factors and challenges shared by these locations can serve as models and inspiration to other countries that are grappling with similar issues as they work to narrow the “implementation gap” between planning and action.