Successful Climate Adaptation Strategies Worldwide

From saving lives to securing livelihoods, nations worldwide are rising to the challenge with innovative climate adaptation strategies.

India’s extreme heat alerts have saved over 2,000 lives, while Albania’s energy diversification efforts have successfully brought electricity to 66,000 homes.

Enhancements to hydrometeorological services in Bangladesh have led to better climate and weather information, significantly reducing crop losses caused by adverse weather.

Meanwhile, Pacific Island nations are incorporating climate resilience into their transportation systems, resulting in stronger roads, airports, bridges, and wharves and lower maintenance and disaster recovery costs.

Brazil’s First Water Cisterns (FWC) initiative has constructed 1 million cisterns in its semi-arid northeast, ensuring sufficient water supply for a family of five during the eight-month dry season.

These examples highlight the diverse climate adaptation and resilience strategies from both public and private sectors, as detailed in the 2024 World Bank report.

The World Bank Report, “Rising to the Challenge: Success Stories and Strategies for Achieving Climate Adaptation and Resilience”, published on 31 October 2024, presents 30 examples from the private sector, from the agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and finance industries, and nine from the public sector of innovative climate adaptation and resilience strategies and programmes that are already helping communities and countries better prepare and respond to climate change impacts.

These case studies also provide key takeaways and lessons learned, including information on how other countries can replicate or scale up to accelerate global climate adaptation and development to bolster resilience.

According to the report, estimates from 103 countries, which comprise 86% of the world’s population, show that 1.2 billion people are exposed to at least one climate-related hazard and are highly vulnerable on at least one dimension in 2021.

Rising temperatures have already led to more frequent and intense climate extremes— including heatwaves, droughts, storms, floods, and wildfires—with vulnerable countries, people, and communities disproportionately affected.

The report shows examples of the impacts of extreme events around the world.

“Over the past two decades, extreme weather events have cost the world $2.8 trillion. Heatwaves have gripped many Asian, North American, European, and Middle Eastern countries. One study estimates that, between 2000 and 2019, extreme heat caused 489,000 deaths annually, with half occurring in Asia. In August 2024, flash floods and monsoons affected nearly 6 million people in Bangladesh, destroying infrastructure and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.”

“In Eastern Africa, cyclones, heavy rainfall, and flooding during the 2024 monsoon season affected over 1.6 million people, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and communities in Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, and Ethiopia. Meanwhile, a prolonged drought in Southern Africa decimated almost half of Zambia’s maize-growing area, causing crop failures and threatening food security. Children are extremely vulnerable to climate risks, with long-term impacts on economic and human capital development.”

It notes that this report is only a start and acknowledges that the impact of policies and public and private initiatives takes time and decades to implement and measure its benefits. The World Bank aims to continue collecting, analysing, and sharing examples of successful (and less successful) climate adaptation and resilience interventions to inform decision-making worldwide, hoping to spark discussions among government and private sectors to accelerate more climate adaptation and resilience policies and initiatives.

Watch the World Bank’s short video on Climate Adaptation: