From Vulnerability to Resilience (V2R)

This documents sets out the key factors that contribute to peoples' vulnerability: exposure to hazards and stresses and fragile livelihoods. It provides detailed explanation of the linkages between these factors, as well as ideas for action to strengthen resilience.

Uncertain Futures

Jonathan Ensor

Community-based adaptation is a new concept whose meaning is still to be fully understood. Most agree that communities should be supported to respond to the challenges they face, and some see this as the goal of community-based adaptation. By contrast, Uncertain Futures proposes that community-based...

Expanding Energy Access in Developing Countries

For centuries, water pumping, food processing, and manufacturing , amongst other productive uses, have been enhanced by the application of mechanical power. Recent technological advances in mechanical power have further enhanced productivity and reduced the drudgery of human labour associated with t...

More People, More Trees

William Critchley

Over 20 years ago, concerned famers’ groups in Kenya and Burkina Faso began to adopt new measures to conserve soil and water and to re-establish trees in their fields. Two videos, Looking after our Land and Building on Traditions, recorded the new participatory approaches for land conservation being...

Capacity Development for Scaling up Decentralized Energy Access

Elisabeth Clemens, Kamal Rijal, Minoru Takada

Micro hydro power is ideally suited to meeting the energy needs of remote communities.A national micro hydro programme has been operating for more than a decade in Nepal. Similarly a fuel-wood-conserving cooking stoves programme has been operating in Nepal for decades. Capacity development for scali...

Hydraulic Ram Pumps

The technical brief contains the detailed information on hydraulic ram pumps that can be used by communities around the world allowing access to water where the source of water is lower than the compound.

Treadle Pumps

A treadle pump is a human-powered low-cost pump designed to lift shallow water sources for irrigation.

The Hidden Energy Crisis

Teodoro Sanchez

Billions of people worldwide are without access to clean, modern energy, which leads to drudgery, ill health and sometimes death. Although a lack of adequate energy affects people's health and well-being, as well as their productive and educational capacities, addressing this deficit is a low priori...

Making Good Local Governance Grow

Patrick Robinson, Sara Wehrli

"Making Good Governance Grow" presents experiences of participatory natural resource management based on four case studies from Helvetas projects in Bhutan, Guatemala, Mali and the Dominican Republic. The approach considers how to involve the local population in the sustainable management and sharin...

Climate Change and Gender Justice

Geraldine Terry

Climate change is often framed as a problem that needs mainly technical and economic solutions. Climate Change and Gender Justice considers how gender issues are entwined with people’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change, and how gender identities and roles may affect women’s and men’s pe...