Community driven development, climate change, and resiliency : lessons from Solomon Islands

Abstract

Between 2009 and 2022, the Rural Development Program (RDP) built 663 small scale infrastructure projects chosen by communities across Solomon Islands. As RDP closed, the author visited 68 projects to assess a) the utility of the Community Driven Development (CDD) methodology, and b) how CDD may have been used by communities to ameliorate climate and disaster impacts. He surprisingly found that communities used CDD to replace water sources damaged by logging. Overall, CDD proved robust and adaptable, and was used by communities to build needed climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure. However, the ability for communities to respond to climate risk was limited due to the scale of sea level rise. This paper concludes with recommendations to make community-led interventions more resilient to climate and disaster risk.