The Community Resilience Partnership Program (CRPP) is a partnership program to help countries and communities in Asia and the Pacific region scale up investments in climate adaptation, especially investments at the community level, that explicitly target the nexus between climate change, poverty, and gender. The CRPP has a dedicated gender window with funds earmarked specifically for supporting women-focused investments. 

The first CRPP Forum was conducted in Bangkok, Thailand from 28 February to 1 March 2023. The background of the CRPP Forum this year is climate change that causes devastating impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods across Asia and the Pacific. As these climate shocks and stresses unfold in parallel with other global trends, such as the increase in inequality and an increase in biodiversity loss, it is the poor and vulnerable populations that are often hardest hit. 

The forum has brought together community leaders, government officials, leading academics, think tanks, financing institutions, and global climate funds to discuss what role poverty reduction programs play in building climate resilience. YEU participated in this forum with the presence of Agnes Meiria and Debora Dian Utami along with Syarifah Anggraeni (YEU local community champion, representative of grassroots women groups) in this forum.

^{Picture 1:  Syarifah (in yellow hijab on the right) joined the working group session.}

Syarifah shared the involvement of YEU in this forum discussion on the need to address social protection, food security, and agriculture  as key issues in poverty alleviation, as correlated with disaster and climate change impact. Through this discussion, YEU learned about practical ways to design and execute programs to respond to climate risk, overcome the fundamental causes of vulnerability, and community empowerment. 

^{Picture 2: Roundtable Dialogue}

The understanding of CRPP and Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) became deeper in which YEU learned about Climate Risk Information for ASP, nature-based solutions through active labor market programs, and poverty reduction and climate resilience: livelihood diversification, investing in women farmers. In this forum, YEU also conveyed the need for partnership and flexible funding for grassroots women groups related to the implementation of ASP.

This forum resulted in several points such as CRPP funding agreements by donor agencies in participating countries, inter-agency cooperation for the follow-up of the CRPP Forum, and a national action plan for CRPP. Indonesia itself is still waiting for further updates regarding  the official mechanism of CRPP funding.

^{Picture 3: Syarifah delivered her remarks in the opening session of the CRPP Forum.} 

In the opening session of the CRPP, Syarifah Anggraeni (Chair of the Migunani Farmer Women's Group), who is a representative of the grassroots women's group members of the Huairou Commission, shared about resilience in adapting to disaster situations and climate change. She shared his experiences regarding the actions taken by her groups such as managing waste banks, fulfilling the right to decent housing, adaptive farming, and many other activities that have had a big impact on her group and communities, including marginalized groups.

She also said that failure did not hamper her enthusiasm because repeated learning actually gave better results and effective benefits, both economically and socially. The CRPP forum meeting became a space for her to learn, discuss and share experiences of grassroots women's group activities, as well as obtain information and opportunities for collaboration in climate change impact adaptation activities. At the end of her remarks, she stated that cooperation with the government and various parties was needed, including support for providing space for innovation, flexible funding with accessible procedures, and meaningful community involvement in formal planning, implementation, and monitoring mechanisms.

The CRPP aims to help countries and communities in Asia and the Pacific to scale up investments in climate adaptation that directly benefit poor and vulnerable people and address the underlying issues of inequality that drive their vulnerability. The program will do this by supporting the delivery of adaptation measures hand-in-hand with large-scale government programs on human development and poverty reduction, in sectors such as agriculture, health, education, and social protection. 

^{Picture 4: Debora Dian Utami as a panelist in the Plenary 1 session.}

Debora Dian Utami (YEU Director) became one of the panelists in Plenary 1 (one) that talked about Poverty Reduction and Climate Resilience in Context: Adaptive Social Protection. She shared four main points about this issue, were;

1. Grassroots women have been strategic actors in social protection. In the context of adaptive social protection, organized grassroots women can really play in the planning process by contributing to identifying risk, capacity, and trends in the community toward disaster, climate, social, and cultural context. Oftentimes, grassroots women assist the government village field officers, identifying, collecting, and verifying community members to access poverty alleviation programs so that the program can reach the right target. 

2. A lot of good practices in addressing crises or needs in the community have been started at the local level by grassroots women. They have shown that they have skills to manage practices not only benefiting themselves or the groups but also the community. Grassroots women have built relationships with different stakeholders and partnered with the government to co-create and become facilitators, experts, and trainers in topics that they have done in everyday life. Not only that it benefits the government but also enriches their capacity and leadership. 

3. Grassroots women bridge communication with the government, they share information and refer to related stakeholders.

4. The role of grassroots women must be recognized and formalized in the adaptive social protection from planning to monitoring and evaluation and more investment and support, not only flexible but also able to address and reduce the vulnerability on the right target in a timely manner.

By the end of the forum discussion, it is encouraged that organization need to increase its understanding of climate change (adaptation & mitigation, funding), social protection, and roles/authorities at the national-provincial-regency/city level and what roles can be taken by community groups, including community group and women’s group. It is necessary for YEU to learn more about the CRPP implementation action plan in Indonesia and its derivatives in the Provinces/Districts/Cities. It also encourages  women's groups to actively engage in the networking with related agencies who have the authority to implement CRPP or PSA funds. 

 

See the Opening Remarks of the CRPP Forum by Syarifah Anggraeni on this link: https://www.facebook.com/AsianClimateChange/videos/734892691543770/ 

See Debora Dian Utami in Plenary 1 on this link:

https://www.facebook.com/AsianClimateChange/videos/890603741992990/