Strengthening community-led development of adaptive pathways to rural resilient infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific

ABSTRACT Adaptive Pathways (APs) enable holistic preparedness for infrastructure assets management across their life cycle, especially in face of disasters. Affected rural communities lose their habitat, food and livelihoods, and access to connectivity. Nevertheless, they can still take ownership and contribute in developing APs for building resilient infrastructure and enhancing combined resilience (physical, economic, community). A coding-based weighted model is used to analyse 8 Case Studies. Key findings are: (a) Strengthening of communities and local institutions through capacity building (communications APs) from inception is prerequisite for combined resilience. This is significant even in absence of other AP factors including evidence-based policy, governance, innovation; (b) Capacity building should focus on designing local resource-based approaches [LRBA], nature-based solutions [NBS], and community indigenous knowledge thereby improving other AP factors; (c) Policy formulation on asset management and quality assurance should be pre-requisite for mobilisation and funds allocation to strengthen community-led APs for combined resilience.