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Global Risks and Resilience

ODI’s Global Risks and Resilience programme promotes risk-informed development.
Hero image description: Complex risks Image credit:Steven Dickie Image license:© Steven Dickie

What we do

New and emerging global threats, from climate change to pandemics, are more complex and interconnected than ever before. If not handled effectively, these risks could completely alter our socio-economic, environmental, peace and security systems.

ODI’s Global Risks and Resilience programme promotes risk-informed development. Our international team of experts work with policymakers and businesses across different sectors and countries: supporting them to understand risks, acknowledge trade-offs, and build resilience in a rapidly changing world.

Our risk-informed development (RID) approach assesses complex threats, and helps development decisionmakers to understand the risks, opportunities, uncertainties and options they face. This foundational report explains the importance of RID, and why “only resilient development can become sustainable development".

Featured work

New podcast: Dynamic Drylands

Farmers and herders living in the drylands of Africa and the Middle East are used to dealing with uncertainty. But their resilience is being tested by new and complex challenges.

Dynamic Drylands is a four-part podcast mini-series which explores new ways of thinking about aid, development and resilience in the drylands of Africa and the Middle East. It is produced by ODI's Global Risks and Resilience team for research programme Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises (SPARC).

Find out more about Global Risks and Resilience team's work on SPARC here.

Listen to Dynamic Drylands here

Dynamic Drylands - artwork

Understanding transboundary climate risks

Climate change does not respect borders, yet transboundary climate risks remain a neglected topic of research and policy. The Global Risks and Resilience programme pioneers research into understanding these risks, as well as the impacts and trade-offs that the adaptation and mitigation actions of one country can create for other countries. Our evidence is used to advise institutions, policymaking bodies and others on how to work together to reduce risks and more effectively build climate resilient development.

Supporting resilient Small Island Developing States

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face unique climate challenges. ODI’s global advisory network, the Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative (RESI), works with SIDS and their partners to build more resilient economies and societies, and achieve climate justice.

Finance for resilience

Financing plays a key role in the implementation of international agreements on climate change, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. Global Risks and Resilience focuses on the financial flows, mechanisms and tools which contribute to climate resilience and adaptation in the context of multiple risks. This includes looking at how to scale up finance flows to Small Island Developing States and fragile and conflict-affected countries: two groups which receive less adaptation finance than other developing countries despite their disproportionate vulnerability to climate change.

How can development partners support food security in protracted crises?

Between 2001 and 2021, international donors invested billions of dollars in an almost unparalleled effort to transform Afghanistan - yet studies have broadly concluded that the results were very disappointing. Using examples from Afghanistan, this SPARC report and accompanying policy briefs outline 10 traps that practitioners and donors working in fragile and conflict-affected regions must avoid if aid is to engage effectively with context. It is accompanied by five briefing notes, which cover village-level governance structures, informal credit, rural differentiation, engaging in markets and post-harvest storage and processing in Afghanistan.

Find out more

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Adapting to a changing climate

Global Risks and Resilience generates research and advises decison-makers on effective, inclusive climate change adaptation. This includes promoting locally led and gender-responsive adaptation work, and understanding how nature-based solutions can be a key part of more sustainable development in a changing climate.

The geopolitics of connectivity

Interconnectivity and globalisation have transformed the way the world works. But while these changes have brought many benefits, they have also created threats which cross national borders, and which give rise to complex risks. Global Risks and Resilience supports decisionmakers to better understand the risks, opportunities and uncertainties they face, and the options they have to make more informed development decisions.

Understanding energy transitions

The transition from fossil fuel dependence to a low-carbon world is critical; it will also be difficult. Global Risks and Resilience supports businesses and decision-makers to navigate energy security concerns and possible development trade-offs related to the energy transition, and to make sure that renewable energy systems are resilient to rapidly changing threats.

China 2049

How China views and responds to global risks has significant relevance to world affairs. With its wealth of China expertise, Global Risks and Resilience generates in-depth analysis of how the country is addressing global challenges and risks: going beyond day-to-day coverage to provide reports, commentary, training and bespoke advisory services to a wide range of stakeholders.

Rebecca Nadin on China's relationship with the Global South

Rebecca Nadin, Director of ODI’s Global Risks and Resilience (GRR) programme, was interviewed by Iain Martin on China’s relationship with the Global South as the CERGE-EI Foundation Price of War conference 2023.

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Our team

All Global Risks and Resilience content

  1. Policy implementation and the socio-political geography of small island contexts

    Working paper

  2. Institutional capacity, useability of data, and evidence-based decision-making for sustainable development in Small Island Developing States

    Working paper

  3. Collaborative governance for development: Strengthening institutional social capital for sustainable development in Small Island Developing States

    Working paper

  4. The role of natural capital accounting in enhancing climate resilience in Small Island Developing States

    Working paper

  5. Keep the Ocean Blue: The opportunity cost of deep-sea mining and compensation for ecosystem services provided by Pacific Small Island Developing States

    Working paper

  6. Building resilient and dynamic Small Island Developing State cities

    Working paper

  7. Closing the blue funding gap: How can Small Island Developing States mobilise a blue innovation fund for community development?

    Working paper

  8. The essential role of climate information systems for early action interventions and resilience-focused decision-making

    Working paper

  9. Pastoralism and agriculture in conflicts and crises: a review of three years of SPARC research

    Literature review

  10. Understanding and characterising collective tenure and tenure security in pastoral systems: Kenya, Sudan and Burkina Faso

    Research report

  11. Nigeria: Impacts of Naira redesign on livelihoods in Hayin Ade and Wuro Bappate

    Briefing/policy paper

  12. Nurturing civil society in SIDS: how can civic space be expanded and strengthened for greater inclusion, equity and empowerment?

    Working paper

  13. Small Islands Big Picture episode 8: Why are so many small states turning to Citizenship by Investment (CBI) schemes?

    Podcast

  14. Humanitarian action on climate and conflict: narratives, challenges and opportunities

    Research report

  15. Dynamic Drylands episode 4: Pastoralism 4.0: Inventiveness and innovation in the drylands

    Podcast

  16. Dynamic Drylands episode 3: Livestock: Inside the economic engine of the drylands

    Podcast

  17. Dynamic Drylands episode 2: Untangling land tenure and conflict in the drylands

    Podcast

  18. Dynamic Drylands episode 1: Do we need to rethink aid in the drylands?

    Podcast

Elsewhere on the web